Time & Perspective Quote by Klaus Schulze

Schulze’s line is a shrug with teeth: a quiet refusal to let biography be treated like a plug-in you can install to “explain” an artist. He answers a familiar media ritual - the interviewer’s demand for a tidy narrative of influence, trauma, politics, or gear - by revealing it as exactly that: ritual. The change isn’t shaping his music in some neat before-and-after; the question is shaping the conversation around his music, forcing him into a story arc that flatters the listener’s need for causality.

Coming from a composer associated with long-form electronic immersion, the jab lands harder. Schulze’s work often resists event-based thinking. It unfolds like weather: gradual, textural, uninterested in milestones. So the interview prompt (“How did this or that change you?”) feels mismatched to the art form, like asking a coastline which wave made it.

The subtext is also protective. By admitting he only thinks about “it” when asked, he’s drawing a boundary around process. Creation happens in doing, not in retroactive self-exegesis. He won’t pretend every shift in sound has a quotable origin point; he won’t let the interviewer appoint themselves the translator of his inner life.

There’s humor in the dryness, but it’s not cute. It’s a critique of a culture that consumes music with the same appetite it has for behind-the-scenes content: explanations as a substitute for listening. Schulze doesn’t just dodge the question; he exposes the question as the real instrument being played.