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Conrad Schnitzler – Biography
Conrad Schnitzler
Born in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1937, Conrad Schnitzler is an essential name in the history of electronic music music during the 60’s and 70’s.
Having been pupil of composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and being inspired by the likes of Pierre Schaeffer and John Cage, Schnitzler was co-founder of the Zodiak Club in Berlin in 1968, where the pioneering psychedelic band Agitation Free used to play. Conrad Schnitzler became a member of Tangerine Dream in 1969 recording their first and legendary album “Electronic Meditation”.
Conrad Schnitzler left the band in 1970 to form the project that would became a master key of the krautrock and experimental vanguard in Germany: the band Kluster, which was formed along with the early electronica masters Hans-Jaochim Roedelius Roedelius and Dieter Moebius. Schniztler left the band after a couple of albums to develop a solo career oriented to the electronic and analogue synthesis experimentation.
In 1971, Schnitzler started a trilogy of albums (“Schwartz”, “Blau”, and “Rot”) in an almost extreme attitude of melodic, tonal, rhythmic, and structural minimalismism-definition”>minimalismism, setting the foundations of modern electronic minimalism music.
During the first half of the 70’s, Schnitzler produced numerous experiments, but this hardly saw the light until 1978 when Peter Baumann from Tangerine Dream instigated the release of his works.
By the early 80’s, Conrad Schnitzler started series of numerous releases, most of them synth pop oriented, and he finally moved back to his most experimental side in the 90’s with a series of releases in the Plate Lunch label.
Jean Laurendeau and the Ondes Martenot
A wonderful video of Jean Laurendeau showing the antecessor of the synthesizer, the Ondes Martenot.
Jimmy Page’s boathouse on sale
If you are a rich Led Zeppelin fan this is your opportunity to live in the very place where the band was born in 1968: The Boathouse, in Pangbourne, West Berkshire.
Jimmy Page bought the Boathouse in 1967 when he was still a member of The Yardbirds. A year later, he was introduced to Robert Plant and he later invited him to stay at the Boathouse to discuss his proposals to create a new band. It was also at this house where Led Zeppelin -The New Yardbirds at the time- rehearsed for their for their first gigs at The Marquee Club. It was also filmed at this location the part where Jimmy Page plays the hurdy-gurdy by the riverside in the movie “The Song RemainsThe Same”.
This is not the only famous house that the guitarist owned in England, he also lived at Boleskine House, the legendary hunting lodge in Loch Ness that used to be owned by the magician Alistair Crowley, the beautiful Towe House at London’s Holland Park built by Waterhouse that he bought from the actor Richard Harris, and Mill House in Windsor, which he bought from Michael Caine.