Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place (City Centre Offices)
May 13th, 2003 by susanna
Until this CD had arrived I was, relatively speaking, an Ulrich Schnauss virgin. Apart from a wonderful but brief knee trembler courtesy of ‘You Were the Only One Around’ on Tom Middleton’s ‘Cosmos’ collection last year, I had heard none of his work. ‘Far Away Trains Passing By’, his first longplayer for City Centre Offices which gained so many plaudits last year, has yet to reach my ears, a situation I have immediately set about remedying on hearing his new work, ‘A Strangely Isolated Place’.
When you sit down to listen to music that you have heard so much about you can’t help but have expectations. I was surprised and moved by what I heard. The album title and many of the track titles (’Gone Forever’, ‘On My Own’, ‘A Letter from Home) suggested music about loneliness and loss. But these tracks are so much warmer than the titles suggest. I expected abstract electronica, but what I heard was involving and beautiful music which, although no doubt forged in electronic machines, seems to emanate from tangible sources - some real, some imagined. The sound of this album is a breath of fresh air, familiar and unusual in turns, all of it glowing with riches.
Even though the starting points for a lot of sounds that Schnauss employs are traditional: electric guitars, plucked bass, rhodes piano, drawbar organs and vocals, his treatment of these sources makes him a genuine innovator. Likewise with his approach to structure, harmony and melody. On first hearing this music reminiscences of the most unlikely artists are conjured up. ‘Gone Forever’, which opens the album, harks back in some ways to the sound of early Eno/U2 and Tears for Fears - strong chord progressions and meticulously layered arrangements framed in the wide expanse of a Vangelis film score.
From a shimmering cloud of noise at the beginning of this track emerges a song (without words, except from the odd, fleeting vocal phrase) that you imagine most guitar bands in this country would give their right arm to have a written. All the ingredients are here: verses that seamlessly, yet inexorably move into bridges into a chorus that rolls on and on as part after part is added just when you think the arrangement can’t hold anymore. ″Anthemic″ doesn’t seem to do this piece justice. The understated guitar solo in here is the kind of restrained and considered yet soulful playing that has music lovers swooning and musos vigorously nodding their heads in approval. Perhaps that is the key to Schnauss’ music - it manages to be clever and beautiful at the same time, displaying artistry and craftsmanship in equal measure.
‘Monday - Paracetamol’ which appears half way through the album is probably the biggest sounding composition on here. I’ve heard comparisons between the ″emotional intensity″ of this music and that of Beethoven and J.S. Bach. Not particularly illuminating comparisons but Schnauss does manage the feat of blending and combining his sound sources until they sound like an enormous orchestra - thousands of guitars, a drum kit the size of London, melodic lines arcing miles above your head. This colossal sound is given plenty of room to change and develop. Not that the music meanders - there can be sudden and exciting shifts to new grooves and textures á la Ozric Tentacles at their least flabby. There’s a real sense that this music is being performed by a cast of thousands as you listen - it’s hard to believe that most of this is just one man and some electronics.
It’s not all fresh air and light. The melted horns and abrasive strings of ‘Clear Day’ (an apparent contradiction but then I’m not sure I really ‘get’ the track titles) make for some uneasy listening in places but act as a great foil to what immediately follows. ‘Blumenthal’ starts with a gentle pad and arpeggios of guitar harmonics and builds to another big chorus with a vaulting melody soaring over the billowing accompaniment that rolls along underneath, a nifty key change pushing you wilfully into each recapitulation of the main theme.
If I have one complaint it’s that this music is occasionally relentlessly optimistic. ‘In All the Wrong Places’ ventures too far into euro cheese rock for my taste (or maybe I do get the titles after all). That said, the final, title track quells any doubts I had (seven and a half out of eight is still a pretty good strike rate). ‘A Strangely Isolated Place’ is of a darker hue than much of the album, with melodies that are more earthy and bass heavy driven by enormous percussion with a rolling, scraping snare sound that makes crash cymbals utterly redundant.
There’s an epilogue hidden at the end - a pulsating and wobbling combination of strings, brass and distorted Rhodes with glimpses of reversed vocals playing snippets of the last track as a kind of variation. After the highs and more highs of this album, Schnauss brings us down gently. After two plays of this CD I’m hooked and I doubt that it will leave my player until ‘Trains Passing’ arrives. The world needs more electronic music like this, music that doesn’t constantly wear its production techniques on its sleeve as a trophy of technique and for whom melody and harmony are not dirty words. I can’t wait to experience this stuff live at Eastnor.
Jez Wells
A Strangely Isolated Place is out UK and Japan June 2nd, and rest of the world June 9th
