Ulrich Schnauss |
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Discovered by the German imprint City Centre Offices, Schnauss released his critically-acclaimed debut, Far Away Trains Passing By in 2001 - an exquisitely crafted album of crisp breakbeats and emotionally-charged melodies. This was arguably equalled by Schnauss’ sophomore effort, A Strangely Isolated Place (2003). A
wealth of remix projects followed, including for Depeche Mode, Mojave
3 and Johannes Schmoelling (Tangerine Dream), whilst Schnauss threw
himself into live work, both solo and as a keyboard player for Manchester-based
Indie-rock band, Long-view. Now, after a four year semester, Schnauss
returns with his third long-player, Goodbye. Barcode wonders if the
album is as prophetic as its title. |
| Where are you based these days, are you still living in Berlin? I moved to North East London about a year ago. I could imagine living somewhere else but for the moment it’s where I’m living. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal coming out of Germany these days, unlike the 60s and 70s when you had so many innovators? I think that if you class dance stuff as electronic music as well - techno or whatever, then I think there’s probably still quite a lot of stuff coming out of Germany. I don’t know, since the early nineties at least I think that with electronica or ambient the more significant stuff seems to be coming out of England. All the big names that had a big influence on that sort of scene, from Aphex Twin to Black Dog or Boards of Canada are obviously all English. Did your own earliest influences come from Germany, or Europe and America? I definitely grew up with English music. As a kid you’re into stuff that’s happening right at the time when you’re growing up, and I used to listen to the BFBS (British Forces Radio) so I got into acid house and later on breakbeat and the indie stuff/shoegazing thing that was happening at the time as well. What got me into the classic or traditional electronic stuff was basically reading and listening to the LFO album, Frequencies, because they had a list of influences on their album sleeves and mentioned in one song as well Tangerine Dream and Yellow Magic Orchestra. I’d never heard these names in my life before, but because I loved Frequencies so much I wanted to check out what they were talking about. Yellow Magic Orchestra were quite an obscure band weren’t they? Yeah, throughout out the years I probably bought their entire back catalogue. I really like the [Ryuichi] Sakamoto solo stuff as well. So your new album is titled ‘Goodbye’, it’s quite a prophetic title, should this be cause for concern for your listeners? Obviously I was aware that such a title would lead to interpretations like that but I just thought that it was such a fitting title for the more emotional content of the record that I still wanted to go for that. It’s not really about me stopping music or that specific project, it’s more because most of the songs have got a topic which is based around farewell situations and, I don’t know, more hopeful but sometimes sad emotions connected to that and it just seemed to sum it up in a certain way. It definitely doesn’t have a meaning beyond that. How long had you been working on the album, did you begin straight after Strangely Isolated Places? No, I think that was a bit of a mistake scheduling wise actually, because I didn’t start working on the record earlier than one year after Isolated Places as there was a lot of really interesting remix opportunities that just delayed it and delayed it. I think that at the end of the day I probably worked for about three years on this new record, two years of just recording things and pretty much the last year trying to get the mix right and balancing things out in the right way. A lot of people say that third albums are quite difficult in that you’re not sure whether to stick with what has been successful or move away from that? Yeah, I obviously felt a certain pressure because when you’ve done something, at least for this side of music, fairly successful, then people expect something from you. On the other hand I always had a really clear vision of what I wanted this third album to sound like so I wasn’t really suffering to come up with the respective ideas. I always felt that this whole kind of idea of merging Indie and Electronica elements definitely had potential for another interesting album and I wanted to do that record even before Isolated Places came out. There are a lot of songs on the record which are really old as well, as far as pure song writing some songs are 10 years old, so it’s not so much born out of a specific situation in the last three years, it goes beyond that. You have a combination of male and female vocals on Goodbye; do you contribute on that side at all? I’m only doing backing vocals once in a while, but no lead vocals. On the second track I’m using Rob (McVey) from Long-view, which is the band I’m playing keyboards for as well. But I’m doing all the male backing vocals on Goodbye; they’re really low in the mix though, I mean I’m not even sure that you can hear them that well (laughs). Lyrically-speaking the vocals are quite incomprehensible and just melt into the music; do they tell a particular story? Not really, I don’t really consider myself to be a very good writer in terms of lyrics. I’m not very confident about my lyrics as well and it’s not really the purpose. It’s not really storytelling in that kind of way. I’m trying to use vocals more as an instrument, but I mean, certainly the actual lyrics are kind of related to what the song’s supposed to say anyway but I’m hoping the message comes across much better through the music rather than the lyrics. Do you write the lyrics? I did it myself, but if Judith (Ulrich’s girlfriend and vocalist) ever wanted to write the lyrics I’d be happy to pass it on (laughs). You’ve always had a loose affinity with the Shoegazing scene, but the album certainly moves further towards that doesn’t it? Yeah, I think definitely with this album, but there might be a technical reason for that as well. It’s probably a bit of experimenting and trying out things to get synths to sound in a certain shoegazy, guitary sort of way. I think with the first album, Far Away Trains, it was much more about straight synth sounds with not that many effects and not that much processing on them. Throughout the years I’ve become more and more excited about the capabilities of processing things, that’s probably what has enabled me to get a bit closer to that sound idea. Do you feel uneasy being categorised as part of the Shoegazing scene, or any sort of categorisation? Well, there’s always that thing. As an artist obviously you’d rather not be categorised at all, but at the end of the day I’m actually quite proud of being compared or linked to the music that I grew up with and to the people I always admired, I’m certainly not going to complain about it. Did you use a combination of software and hardware when recording the new album? Yeah, that’s pretty much what I do. Basically, it’s really the same process throughout the whole thing, I’m always using hardware instruments for the source material and synths for recording the actual lines, and once I’ve got it in the computer I’m using mainly plug-ins and processing on top of it, but for specific things like reverb I’m still using a lot of hardware effects as well because I think that sound wise they’re still a bit advanced to most of the software solutions out there. What specific tools could we find in your studio? Well instrument wise what I’m really relying most heavily on is probably the Oberheim OBA synthesiser, which basically over the last 10 years has probably been my main instrument. My favourite synth is probably the Octave Plateau Voyetra 8, which is a great instrument, and in the digital world, probably the Prophet VS – I’m using that a lot as well. Effects wise, a couple of late eighties/early nineties Roland reverbs, the R-880 Digital Reverb is really nice and the whole SRV/STX series that Roland did in the early nineties is a nice reverb as well. Then I’m recording the stuff into the computer using Logic and plug-in-wise I’m using Pluggo mostly and Reaktor. Like the Voyetra 8, the Oberheim is quite a vintage synth? The Oberheim is probably the piece of equipment I’m feeling most comfortable with because I’ve had it for so many years now, I’d say my favourite synth though is definitely the Voyetra 8 because that’s such an amazing-sounding instrument from ‘82-‘83. So what is it you like about these synths, I don’t imagine you’re using them for their presets? I’m really into programming but the most important thing with any instrument is the way it sounds and if it’s got something unique to offer. I’m not really dogmatic about analogue or digital when it comes to that, I’m using a lot of digital gear as well. Last year I had the opportunity to by a cheap Hartmann Neuron, which is like a pretty new synth but has some really unique, very different sounding sounds in it as well – so I’ll use anything that’s interesting and adds something to the sound really. Do you think that using the same instruments over a series of albums helps to give an artist a unique sound? Probably yes, on the other hand it would probably work if I switched to completely different instruments because I think with programming it’s really like the way you play guitar or any other sort of instrument, you’ve got your own ‘handwriting’ after a while. So even if I start with a completely new instrument now I think I’m still going to come up with sounds that probably sound quite ‘me’ in a certain way. You do have a very distinctive sound though, almost as soon as you year the first note you know it’s an Ulrich Schnauss record. Mmm, yeah, I’m never sure if that’s an advantage or if that’s probably a disadvantage in some ways as well. Obviously it narrows down the variety of things that you’re capable of but on the other hand it’s a good thing as well, because if you’ve got your own identity, sound wise, that’s not something that a lot of people have. I always kind of admired artists who managed to create their own sound, I’m mainly thinking about people like Brian Eno or Cocteau Twins. And
sampling? Although I don’t detect too much sampling on your records?
Yeah,
I’m using the sampler for beats, but that’s probably about it – I’ve
still got my EMU E4 sampler. |
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"As an artist obviously you’d rather not be categorised at all, but at the end of the day I’m actually quite proud of being compared or linked to the music that I grew up with and to the people I always admired." |
And what sort of ambience do you like to immerse
yourself in whilst working? It’s
funny, the last room that I was working in on most of the album was
not even such a nice room, I had to put loads of fabric on the windows
to get it isolated sound-wise because there was a lot of street noise
leaking through all the time, so I didn’t even have daylight in that
room (laughs), which was probably not the best environment to make music
in. In a way though, going through that, I found out that it doesn’t
make such a great difference because once you’ve got your headphones
on you’re in a different place anyway and it doesn’t really seem to
affect me that much I think.
Apart from vocalists, was anybody else brought in to work on the album or did you work on it pretty much alone? I did my own thing again completely, I think for this project I’d like to keep it that way. As long as I don’t run out of ideas I’d like to do at least one project just on my own and try to do what I want to do. And mastering the album? No, I definitely have to go elsewhere for that, because the problem is if you’re doing that kind of bedroom production you kind of rely on the advice of a good mastering engineer and especially also on the equipment that they have which I don’t have. So for things like compressing stuff in certain frequency ranges and EQing things to a level of precision that I couldn’t reach here, yes. I did try a couple of different mastering places and made sure it got done in the right way. How happy are you with the result of this new album, compared to the previous two? I’m very happy with it because I think Far Away Trains was still quite compromised in many ways and Isolated Place was probably for the first time hinting in the right direction but I still thought there was quite a lot I could do with it. With Goodbye, that process is now finished with me so I think with the next album I’m definitely going to move to a different style as well, I think with that whole idea of merging Indie and Electronica I’ve probably said everything that I have to say about that now. Does that change represent a fear or a challenge? Only when it comes to reactions from the outside, personally I’m really excited about it. I’m really looking forward to working on something new but obviously you never know what people’s reactions are going to be. I think everyone lies if they say it’s not difficult to deal with some reactions that you get, it always is difficult but that’s just a thing you have to put up with. Does the criticism, not that you’ve had any from what I’ve read, affect you at all? Yeah, I would definitely take it to heart, that’s a reasonable point. I do that all the time anyway because I’m playing the stuff to friends of mine and discuss it with other people. I try not to read reviews of stuff too much because I think you can get a bit paranoid if you do that – it’s important to try and keep the same mind (laughs). You seem to have been doing a lot of one off gigs over the last few years; will you be fully touring this album? I think I will probably have to do that, the label is kind of expecting that from me. So far the problem’s really been that I haven’t found a convincing way of doing this stuff in a live situation. What I did mainly was playing backing tracks from the hard drive and playing keyboards on top so like 99% of what you heard wasn’t really live, so at the moment I’m trying to figure out more interesting and improvised ways of doing the whole thing. And with your new album being more expansive and technology-reliant I presume that will not make it any easier? Yeah, what I’m trying to do at the moment is use some more spontaneous, open software, like Ableton Live and just reduce the tracks to something a lot more minimal and straightforward and try to come up with different interpretations of it. I think I read you’ve also been working on an album with Jonas Munk of Manual, how did that collaboration arise? Well there was some sort of connection right from the start because we both released stuff on Morr Music or CCO (City Centre Offices), which is pretty much the same thing. I think if you’re in that group or crowd of artists it’s very easy to hook up. Besides that, we have a very similar approach, to be honest I think Jonas is pretty much doing the same thing as I do - with the only difference that he uses guitar as source material but not synths. We’re not really sure what it’s going to turn out to be in the end – an EP or an album – I think we’ve done about six songs now that are not really finished but quite promising. Hopefully that’s going to be ready around autumn. Are there any other artists that excite you at the moment? Yeah, there’s a lot of great stuff happening in America at the moment, I mean only on an underground level but a whole generation of bands that are influenced by the same things that I’ve been influenced by as well, from My Bloody Valentine to Chapterhouse, Slowdive whatever, trying to do something new with that kind of heritage. Names that come to mind are Mahogany, and Day Sleeper is a really good band, Sound Pool from New York as well. There’s a band from the Chicago area that I’ve done a song together with for their next album, it’s a really nice scene and when I was touring the US I met most of these people and it was a very pleasant experience. Why do you think people are looking back, taking the music and then trying to progress it again? That always has happened, I think it’s just because this generation now are doing the sort of stuff that they grew up with and it’s obvious that it would happen sooner or later, although I’m not really sure it’s becoming that fashionable though. If you look at the mainstream music market it’s still the early eighties which are fashionable at the moment. |
Ulrich
Schnauss interview,
Barcode 2008
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