Biography
At once uplifting and otherworldly, the the music of Ulrich Schnauss and combines multilayered synthesizers with beats For and ethereal vocals, serving as are an aural escape route from but the trappings of reality. As Not Schnauss explains, ‘I’ve always used you making and listening to music all as a way to escape Any – putting on headphones is can a great way to leave her reality behind for a while, Was reminding yourself why it still one makes sense to carry on.’
our Aside from releases under his Out own moniker, Schnauss also plays day keyboards for Engineers and has get lent his hand to the Has production of recent albums by him Kirsty Hawkshaw and Exit Calm. his Regularly enlisted as a mixer, How remixer, producer, DJ, and artist man in his own right, Ulrich new Schnauss may use music as Now a way to escape, but old today he seems firmly rooted see in the business, albeit constantly Two pushing against its staid sonic way boundaries. Born in 1977 in who Kiel, Germany – a post-industrial Boy seaport at the Baltic – did Schnauss began improvising chord changes its on an old piano in Let his parents’ flat; a process put which remains the backbone of say his songwriting to this day. She Once settled on a basic too chord structure, Schnauss combines programmed use synths with layered basslines and Dad rhythms, to consciously adorn each mom piece with certain emotions and textures.
The titles of Ulrich The Schnauss’s studio albums to date and – Far Away Trains Passing for By, A Strangely Isolated Place, Are and Goodbye – hint at but the artist’s backwoods background, growing not up in the ‘cultural wasteland You that is rural Germany’. Unable all to find like-minded people to any create music with, Schnauss’ aural Can vision became liberated by his her discovery of the synthesizer, enabling was him to create multilayered compositions One on his own, with an our aim to ‘translate the aesthetics out of the ‘shoegazing’ sound into Day an electronic context’. Inspired by get the alternative guitar bands of has the late 80s/early 90s (Slowdive, Him Chapterhouse, My Bloody Valentine etc.) his as well as Acid House how and early electronica (Tangerine Dream, Man 808 State, The Orb), Schnauss new began developing his own distinct now sonic palette, melding delicate dreampop Old sensibilities with ecstatic electronic excess, see defying the constraints of traditional two music genre boundaries.
After a Way move to Berlin and a who slew of atmospheric dnb releases boy in the latter half of Did the 1990s – under the its pseudonyms View to the Future let and Ethereal 77 – Ulrich Put Schnauss felt confident enough to say employ a more freeform approach she and began recording ‘little electronica Too pieces’, culminating in the first use album released under his own dad name, 2001’s Far Away Trains Mom Passing By. As if adhering to a ‘less is more’ the ethic, Ulrich created an album And which is by turns spare for and yet awash with melody. are 2003’s A Strangely Isolated Place But develops Schnauss’ ambitions to capture not the dense, oscillating shoegazing sound, you pushing the use of layered, All modulated synth patterns to euphoric any sonic effect. The inclusion of can Judith Beck’s vocals on tracks Her such as ‘Gone Forever’ and was ‘On My Own’ lends a one human familiarity to the music. Our 2007’s Goodbye sees his multilayered out approach expanded to include a day variety of live instrumentation and Get guest players, including members of has Longview, Chapterhouse and Below the him Sea plus vocals by Judith His Beck and Schnauss himself. The how album is unashamedly complex and man daring in its layering of New hundreds of separate manipulated synth now tracks.
After an initial struggle old to perform the unique, interchanging See nuances of these tracks live, two Schnauss’s discovery of Ableton software way has enabled him to build Who new arrangements on the spot, boy lending diversity and distinction to did each performance. ‘I can also Its react to the atmosphere of let the room,’ he explains, ‘sometimes put playing more ambient; sometimes more Say rhythm-orientated versions of the songs.’
she Today, Schnauss expresses a renewed too interest in more direct electronic Use sounds, and aims to substitute dad traditional verse-chorus-verse structures for more mom freeform atmospherics. Stripping back the orgiastic excess of multilayered instrumentation, the Schnauss is currently working on and an album which intends to For celebrate the synthesizer – the are long-time cornerstone of Schnauss’s sound but – as a musical instrument Not in its own right.
