Exposé print issues (1993-2011)
Robert Schroeder — Mosaique - Edit 2025
(Spheric Music SMCD RS1981, 1981/2025, CD)
by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-07-05
Robert Schroeder’s third album, Mosaique from 1981, is one of those LPs that fell through the cracks, released at a time well before the compact disc’s ascent to popularity, on Klaus Schulze’s Innovative Communications label initially, then later picked up by Racket Records and some other labels, but the most recent legitimate release was in 1984, still on LP; now in 2025 the rights to release the album on CD have been sorted out, and it’s finally getting its first CD release on Spheric Music with two bonus tracks, extending the original album by over fifteen minutes. The sounds of the original album are built upon the PPG-Wave-2 digital synthesizer, which Schroeder purchased on the spot at the Frankfurt Music Fair in 1981, driving it back to the studio and immediately getting to work producing the LP, along with the other keyboards he had in his arsenal at the time. Unlike many 80s electronic artists, Schroeder chose to use other musicians to fill out the sound on bass (Rob Van Schaik), drums (Fred Severloh and Tommy Betzler) and guitar (Charly Büchel), as needed, resulting in a more robust sound palette. While the two extra tracks are mainly electronic, it’s unclear whether they were recorded in the same sessions as the original LP, they were not produced by Klaus Schulze per the liner notes, but they are certainly worthy of accompanying the four original cuts. By far, the standout from the original LP is “Computervoice,” a thirteen-minute epic that closed the album, beginning in a most gentle setting, slowly introducing different ideas, then somewhere around the four-minute mark a powerful rhythm emerges from a sequence, the drums join and a thick blanket of rich sound follows the piece out to its concluding section. The twelve-minute title track opens the album, an interesting slab of would-be rock composition animated in an electronic setting. Of the bonus material, the nine-minute “Syntropia” is by far the standout, with layer upon layer of gorgeous synth sounds, drawing the listener into an unseen world. There’s still one more album from Schroeder’s early oeuvre (also on IC) that hasn’t got the CD treatment — Galaxie Cygnus-A from 1982, and hopefully that’s forthcoming on Spheric Music. In the meantime, listeners should grab a copy of Mosaique Edit 2025, it’s a limited edition of 500.
Filed under: Reissues, 2025 releases, 1981 recordings
Related artist(s): Robert Schroeder
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