Robert Schroeder

This article is about the musician Robert Schroeder. For other people see Robert Schröder .

Robert Schroeder (born May 20, 1955 in Aachen ) is a German musician and composer of electronic music . Schroeder is a representative of the Berlin School .

Life

Early years

Schroeder made his first musical experiences on the guitar . After initial attempts at various methods of electronic noise generation, he switched to the synthesizer . After Schroeder had played in several bands, he chose the path of solo musician. He began to change devices electronically for sound development and turned his hobby into a profession through a mail order business for electronic components. In addition, he developed and manufactured devices for music production as well as recording studio equipment and his own synthesizers.

When Schroeder's second son was born in 1978, he also named him Klaus after his musical role model Klaus Schulze . He also managed to win this as a godfather for his son. During the christening ceremony, Schulze became aware of Schroeder's self-composed background music, whereupon he received a record deal with the Schulze record company that same year.

Schroeder ended his professional career as an electrical engineer with the publication of a generally understandable textbook about building a so-called step sequencer.

Professional music

From 1979 he primarily devoted himself to music, but also worked for other artists, above all Klaus Schulze, for whom he developed and built various devices.

He released his first album Harmonic Ascendant in 1979 with the help of Udo Mattusch on guitar and Wolfgang Tiepold on cello. The music had to be completely reworked because the decision-makers at the sales company WEA did not initially like it. The album is characterized by the combination of electronic and acoustic elements. The second album, entitled Floating Music , was released in 1980 and was named one of the best electronic music productions of the year by the press. With the third album Mosaique from 1981, Schroeder's music became more rhythmic. With the support of Charly Büchel (guitar), Rob van Schaik (bass) and Fred Severloh (drums), he was now increasingly incorporating experimental sounds.

For the ars electronica in Linz in 1982, Schroeder converted the radio signals of the galaxy Cygnus-A in the constellation Swan captured by what was then the largest mobile radio telescope in the world and amplified them into the audible frequency range. The “white noise” generated in this way formed the basis for Schroeder's “Music-Computer-Symphony”, which later came out as the album Galaxie Cygnus-A . During the televised event, music and images were synchronized with one another on a large screen.

In 1983 Schroeder's fifth album Paradise was released . Guenther Beckers (acoustic guitar and guitar synthesizer) and Ecky Zillman (drums) participated in this production. The title Skywalker became his first small single success. In 1984 the next album Computer Voice was released by Schroeder's new record company da-music GmbH. The album contained a selection of Schroeder's best pieces to date as well as some new tracks. For the title track he was supported by bassist Micki Meuser.

In 1985 he composed the soundtrack for the film Des Lebens Überfluss , using the so-called artificial head technique. The soundtrack was released in the same year under the name Brain Voyager . In 1986 he had the idea for a project called Double Fantasy . He was responsible for the entire concept, from designing the cover and writing the lyrics to recording and mixing the music. He was supported musically by Charly Büchel . The resulting album Universal Ave. was published on the IC-Digit label.

The music was created during long, improvised studio sessions. The album was particularly popular in the USA and made it into the LA radio charts. The music hit exactly the style of "easy listening" popular in America at the time. The project ended due to differences between Schroeder and IC-Digit. After a long legal dispute, the naming rights for Double Fantasy remained with the record label, so that later albums came out under the name, but they have no relation to Robert Schroeder.

At the beginning of 1987 Schroeder released the successful solo album Timewaves , the successor Driftin was similarly successful in 1988. The pieces, subtitled as "electronic ballads", met the taste of the time, so that Schroeder was once again found well ahead in the audience surveys of various radio broadcasts such as vibrations in the WDR .

Two years later, IC-Digit released an album based on a production from 1982 that was originally intended to be released as a music cassette to accompany a science fiction novel by several musicians. However, Schroeder had not released production due to various differences. Pegasus came onto the market in 1990 as a pure Robert Schroeder album.

1990s

In 1991, Schroeder separated from da-music and founded his own label NEWS-music . The first self-directed album was Hamaja in September of the same year. It is interesting that the first letters of the six pieces again form the word Hamaja. And if you read the titles one after the other, the sentence arises: "Hamaja - animation music for your senses - anytime you listen, join your forces and you will find a place of refuge." The 1993 album MindWalk resulted from Schroeder's live program in 1990 , which he recorded again and added a few compositions. Just like at the live concert at the time, Charly Büchel can be heard on guitar alongside Schroeder.

On October 8, 1994 Robert Schroeder played together with the guitarist Christian Guth and the drummer Horst Schippers at the KLEM Festival in Nijmegen, Holland. A revised version of this concert was released as an album under the title Everdreams . After a longer creative break, the album D.MO Vol. 1 was released by CUE-records in 1998 , a compilation of older material on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Robert Schroeder's musicianship. The partly experimentally produced recordings were neither post-processed nor remastered, which gives this compilation a nostalgic appeal .

2000s

After a break of several years, a new solo album was released in 2005 under the title brainCHIPS by the Essen electronics label Spheric Music . The CD was released in two versions. In addition to the purely instrumental version, there was also a vocal version on which Rahal Brimil sang some tracks .

The quasi-official successor to the first Double Fantasy album from 1986 was released in mid-2006 . However, the use of the band name Double Fantasy was waived with due regard for the legal situation. The formation was instead called Food For Fantasy . Recorded by Robert Schroeder, who, in addition to synthesizers, also played guitar under the pseudonym Phil Molto , which was used here for the first time . In 2007 he published his sixteenth solo album SphereWare , in 2008 another CD with unpublished recordings from 1980 to 1983 followed under the title D.MO Vol.2 . Among them are titles of the then planned project NOMAD . The music was played partly with self-made and partly with industrially manufactured devices. The very dynamic and clear production sound for the time was achieved by a self-made 24-channel mixer.

Discography

• 1979: Harmonic Ascendant
• 1980: Floating Music
• 1981: Mosaique
• 1982: Galaxy Cygnus-A
• 1983: Paradise
• 1983: Skywalker / Space Detective 12 "
• 1983: Skywalker / Space Detective 7 "
• 1984: Galactic Floor / Black Out 12 "
• 1984: Computer Voice
• 1985: Brain Voyager
• 1986: Universal Ave (as Double Fantasy)
• 1987: TimeWaves
• 1989: driftin '
• 1990: Pegasus (1982)
• 1991: Hamaja
• 1993: MindWalk
• 1994: Everdreams
• 1998: D.MO Vol.1
• 2005: brainCHIPS (vocal)
• 2005: brainCHIPS (instrumental)
• 2006: The Secret of Dreamin '(as Food For Fantasy)
• 2007: SphereWare
• 2008: D.MO Vol. 2
• 2008: Fruits Of Fantasy (as Food For Fantasy)
• 2009: Taste It
• 2009: 30 Years After
• 2010: New Frequencies Vol.1
• 2010: Cream
• 2010: Fresh Food (as Food For Fantasy)
• 2010: Cygnus-A
• 2011: ClubChill Vol.1
• 2011: Bochum Live 2011
• 2011: Esthetique
• 2012: D.MO Vol. 3
• 2012: New Frequencies Vol.2
• 2012: Ferro Oxid
• 2013: Cool Vibes (as Food For Fantasy)
• 2013: slow motion
• 2016: Ambient Occlusion

Web links

• Robert Schroeder's website
• Robert Schroeder on Facebook
• Robert Schroeder on myspace.com
• Food For Fantasy on myspace.com