Recommended by
No Further Ahead Than Today
Ulrich Schnauss’s fifth solo album is another collection of soaring, widescreen, electronic mini-epics, drawing together new age, shoegaze and IDM, set to pitter-pattering percussion and brisk, incisive electronic beats. His synth palette - rich, ornate, stately, emotive - remains the same through much of this album as though his previous work, and he wields it to carve out bittersweet electro-emo downtempo grooves that mutate into big, lush, airy peaks. It switches between meditative and expansive, Schnauss relying heavily on the sonic uncertainty and otherworldliness available when you cram together stacks of sequenced synth lines, chiming arpeggios, pulsating drones and rich pad chords, like a futurist Brian Wilson or Phil Spector sans singers, and the soaring, hopeful, glittering results here are as pleasing as anything else in his catalogue.