Ulrich Scnauss, the man who brought us that 2001 gem, Far Away Trains Passing By, has delivered more of the same ambient brilliance on his second solo long player. Schnauss debut album was greeted by the music press as lovingly as a newborn puppy, so it was a tough call to expect him to reproduce such a musical gift twice running. Nevertheless, with A Strangely Isolated Place, he’s done just that. We live in an age when so many artists concentrate on image and genre-defying experimentalism that they tend to lose focus completely and therefore fail to give people what they really want. Stick to what you best at I say and Ulrich Schnauss seems to be doing just that. Layer by layer he builds his tracks on the foundation of a killer bass line, with subtle chord changes and heart-warming strings and melodies floating around like summertime butterflies.

As soon as A Strangely Isolated Place kicks off, you know its going to be another cracker, as the dulcet beauty of Gone Forever soothes your ills with its soul-melting charm. Then there’s the beautifully entwined guitar melody of Monday-Paracetamol, brought to life by some magical keys, plucked from his soft-synth like freshly picked fruit from nature’s tree. Clear Day has a slightly more sinister edge, with Schnauss pitch bending his keyboard lines to give them an eerily leftfield indie style. However, the best is yet to come. Blumenthal takes a while to get going, but when it does you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Its melodic bliss is simply timeless and is worth the price of the album alone. Not far behind is the feel-good cracker In All The Wrong Places, with its cutesy drum pads, flapping synths and sprinkled sound particles, which eventually burst into life with a stunningly melodious middle section that makes you utterly euphoric.

The title track closes the album, and offers a mixture of calm beauty and impending hope through its clattering drum loops and high pitched keyboard tones. Schnauss even tops things off with a Boards-Of-Canada-style weird outro. This doesn’t quite have the immediacy of Far Away Trains… but its every bit as good, as the two extra tracks make up for a very slight shortfall in song writing quality. If you liked his debut, you’ll love this, if you haven’t heard either, what are you waiting for, buy them both!