Conrad Schnitzler – Con

Bureau B present a reissue of Conrad Schnitzler’s Con, originally released in 1978. Conrad Schnitzler: In the electric garden by Wolfgang Seidel, May 2020: “… Whilst on shore leave in Düsseldorf, Conrad Schnitzler heard about a professor at the School of Art (Kunstschule) who also accepted students into his class without high school diplomas. Conrad Schnitzler became one of them. The spirit of a fundamental new beginning bonded this generation of artists together, with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig the most radical proponents. Perhaps it was due to the fact that music had been so corrupted under National Socialist rule, from classical to the Schlager variety. Schnitzler was fascinated by the new sounds he heard on the radio in the evenings. To his ears, they connected the struggle for independence to the planning and precision he had learned as a mechanical engineer. At the same time, he understood that music like this was only possible within an institutional framework to which he had no access. So, he set about creating his own framework. Schnitzler bought his first synthesizer in the early 1970s — a considerable investment at the time. The introduction of the compact cassette had liberated duplication and distribution from the realm of the record company, but Schnitzler also recognized the creative potential of the medium, beyond its practical functions. He built a ‘cassette organ’ out of 12 cassette recorders and two cases for his musical collages. Towards the end of the decade, he could be found on the Kurfürstendamm, West Berlin’s premier boulevard, cassette recorders slung over his shoulders as his music boomed out of battery-powered loudspeakers . . . Buoyed by the success of Tangerine Dream, Peter Baumann, Schnitzler’s successor in the band, established the Paragon Studio. Schnitzler had left after their first LP in the belief that the creative potential of the group had reached its limit, but their friendship endured. Baumann made use of downtime in the studio to pursue his own musical experiments. And then Conrad Schnitzler appeared at the door with a small Korg synthesizer, a sequencer, and his EMS Synthi (a portable model in an attaché case), having transported the whole lot on his delivery bicycle . . . The last record to be completed at Paragon reveals Schnitzler’s lighthearted rapprochement with German New Wave (Neue Deutsche Welle) . . . The Paragon Studio era, with sound engineer Will Roper, whose work with Schnitzler gave him the opportunity to demonstrate his skills in tape manipulation, splicing, editing, and looping, came to an end when the studio was sold and Peter Baumann moved to the USA.”