Ulrich Schnauss - Goodbye
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CD Details
Artist: Ulrich SchnaussEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2007-07-10
Music Label: Domino
Soundtracks:
- Never Be The Same
- Shine
- Stars
- Einfeld
- In Between The Years
- Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
- Song About Hope, A
- Medusa
- Goodbye
- For Good
Music reviews of Goodbye
Music Review: Worth getting, although some of the tracks don't do it for me.
Rating: 4 Stars
I've read a couple of "professional" reviews that complain about how this CD belongs in the '90s because of (insert what some other artist I don't care about was doing in those days). I don't care if it belongs in the 1990s, or even the 1890s. Good music is timeless, and who cares what decade it's "from"? I don't spurn Beethoven because he isn't contemporary. These reviews smack of audio snobs pretending to be geniuses because they have some knowledge of what artist X was doing circa 1993, trying to be edgy by throwing out some needlessly cynical comparison that does nothing to tell the average listener whether they might like the album. "Professional" reviewers, please take note: Just because someone did something somewhat similar in the past doesn't mean that you look cool when you trash someone for doing something like it today. I would rather drive a modern Bentley than a Ford Model T, even though Ford "did it first." Thanks in advance.
The one thing the ranters say that I will agree on is that the vocals are so indistinct as to be maddening at times. Simply including the lyrics in the CD jacket would have satisfied my curiosity. Mixing the music so that the voices are distinct would have made this better, in my eyes. Schnauss could pursue a "voice as instrument, with the sound of the voice being more important than particular words" angle if he had just included the lyrics.
What I will tell you is this: Regardless of what Cygnus X was doing when I was in high school, and regardless of what Boards of Canada was doing when I bought my first car, or any other irrelevant tripe that brings you no closer to a buy/no-buy decision, this album is worth buying if you like Schnauss. Unfortunately, the album isn't available on Amazon MP3 at the time of writing. If you were hoping for another album the likes of Far Away Trains Passing By, this DOES have some tunes that are up to that standard. I don't think Stars is all that great. I would have left it out entirely, or just deleted the vocals. The constant and periodically not-properly-synchronized high speed flanging in In Between The Years is a little irritating as well. The remaining tracks are at the very least worth listening to, and in some cases, should reward the average Schnauss fan.
What really drew me to this album was Einfeld, and later, Goodbye. This is some of Schnauss' best work. If the album was available on Amazon MP3, and I had to pick only two tracks to download, they would be at the top of my list. If you have heard Far Away Trains..., and you liked it, you will probably find these worthy successors. They're right up there with Wherever You Are and similar tracks. Again, lyrics in the CD jacket would have been superb.
Because I find it irritating that someone had to spend several hours playing with an equalizer to sift out the lyrics to Goodbye, and because of the less-than-best-effort I see in Stars and In Between The Years, I'm knocking off one star. I would still buy this CD even if I had knowledge beforehand about these two songs. Einfeld and Goodbye are strong enough on their own to carry the other stuff on the CD. More to the point - Amazon, please do whatever it takes to get this on Amazon MP3 so that fans can decide for themselves what songs they want and what songs to leave behind.
Description of Goodbye
Ulrich's third album marks his first new release in four years. "An altogether lusher, more slouched, musical approach. The results have strong echoes of My Bloody Valentine or a turbo-charged Brian Eno..." - Music Week (May 2007). "A triumph of simplicity over pretension, of melody and harmony over pops and clicks and of the humane over the elusive" - Impose.Goodbye is not a farewell from German electronic artist Ulrich Schnauss, but it does mark the last in a trilogy that includes Far Away Trains Passing By and A Strangely Isolated Place. Both are landmark albums of melodically ecstatic electronica, and Goodbye flows from their digital loins. Tracks like "Never Be the Same" and "In Between the Years" share the same surging rhythms, heroic electronic melodies, and jangly shoe-gazer guitars heard on the earlier discs. A slight tweak on Goodbye is the shift toward more overt vocal tracks as opposed to the textural, chanting choruses Schnauss has always employed. Rob McVey, the singer from Longview, intones the epic strains of "Shine," while "Stars" places singer Judith Beck deep in echoes, singing like a delay-drenched, surf-music dervish. In fact, "delayed," "drenched," and "dervish" pretty much sum up Goodbye. Schnauss piles on effects and layers in a psychedelic melee that would leave Ozric Tentacles and Pink Floyd standing transfixed by his stroboscopic strategies. Unlike on his previous CDs, Schnauss doesn't let you get comfortable. Reverb-smeared vocals, feedback-oscillated synthesizers, and raging guitars of destruction crush through on tracks like "Medusa." But there are also moments of sublime beauty and the kind of haunting melodies that have made Schnauss a favorite for chill-out soundtracks of the imagination. Ice crystals glisten on the branches of "Einfeld" and the deliriously euphoric "Goodbye" simply lifts you higher, in a spiritual way. It may be goodbye to this era of Ulrich Schnauss, but it promises many happy returns. --John Diliberto
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