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Klaus Schulze released a number of live albums on Virgin Records in the early 1990s, beginning with The Dresden Performance. His next entries in the series, recorded in London and Cologne (The Dome Event), would further emphasize his experiments with sampling. Royal Festival Hall was recorded on September 10, 1991, and released the following year in two separate volumes. Both volumes are supplemented with shorter works that were later recorded in Klaus' studio the following summer (following the format of The Dresden Performance). I should be upfront and say that I haven't really been moved too much from what I've heard from this era of Schulze's work. Schulze's command of the digital gear of the day is impressive, but musically I don't find much fulfillment in what is represented here. The first volume consists of a nearly 45-minute suite entitled "Yen." It reminds me of taking a ship cruise, initially ‘docked' in a chaos of sound samples ("Out of Limbo"), and then slowly moving outward through a number of different musical terrains…only problem is that the terrains just aren't particularly interesting, unless you've never heard synth solos mimicking electric guitar ("Tempest"), violin ("Pastorale and Departure") or pan pipes ("Pastorale") before. The transitions between the suite's passages are abrupt, occurring with a snap of the fingers in an almost business-like way. The studio track, "Silence and Sequence" continues the samples voices amidst thudding booms. As was true of The Dome Event, there are no index breaks provided for the suite movements, so unless you're prepared for the annoyance of manually fast-forwarding or rewinding through this to get to where you want, then it's all or nothing, kid. Though in all honesty, the latter option won't kill me, as there are no particular moments that leap readily to mind here as being in dire need of jumping to. review by Joe McGlinchey — 2-20-09 —