Ulrich Schnauss, known for his ambient electronic musical creations, has returned with his third full-length disc that springs a few more vocals into his tracks, alongside numerous guitar riffs, for something a little more up-tempo than some of his previous sounds. Schnauss has built something of a reputation for having such a small oeuvre, and Goodbye proves why.
The disc starts off with the ever-expanding “Never Be The Same,” a rather typical ambient track producing that familiar feeling of drowning in a rush of music. In “Shine,” Schnauss evokes a Depeche Mode sound that maintains his more characteristic “new age” (for lack of a better descriptor) twinge, fusing two elements into his ambient tracks. “Stars” begins the up-tempo for the disc with a fast beat back track on a song that could have been much improved if the vocals weren’t drowned out into a choral sound.
As the disc continues, “Einfeld” and “In Between the Years” maintain his slow ambient pattern, while “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” features more vocals and guitar on the tracks, maintaining a fairly consistent, albeit familiar, new sound throughout the disc, which can only be described as Enya, Enigma, and brief moments of Depeche Mode. “A Song About Hope,” sounds like more of the same, and “Medusa” begins to pick up the pace with some extremely guitar-heavy, explosive moments fused with Atari sounding bleeps.
It is the penultimate track “Goodbye” which makes one wish the disc was actually longer and a bit more blended with diverse approaches. While the track clocks in at almost 8 minutes, it still doesn’t quite feel like enough to have this gem essentially close out the disc, followed by the brief, calming, and plain, “For Good.”
Schnauss’ remixes of other artists’ tracks are notorious for their electronic contributions to the original, but are somehow always bogged down by repetition. Goodbye maintains that reputation, which, while contributing some great new ambient tracks with a bit of a different sound to his work, doesn’t make for a disc that offers either a strong enough diverse sampling of sounds or a perfectly crafted and consistent flow – it ends up being a little bit of both, but not quite enough.
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