I'd like to take a moment here to talk about Ulrich Schnauss, who got a bit of mention in the last post.

He's a guy from Berlin. He makes music. He's friggin' amazing.

It's like Orbital got a third member, and he really likes abstract, lilting synths, and heavy reverb effects. In other words, me.

But instead of simply bringing the lilting synths, the theme-build-destruction blueprint for songs, and enjoyment of a good reverb chamber, like me, Ulrich also brings compositional skills that can only be effectively described as "mad."

I can make the occasional neat synth sound, and I can mix it so it sounds cool, but if you added all of the good ones I've made in my life together you'd get like one Schnauss song. And my composition would blow by comparison. The man does things with intertwined basslines that make me gape.

As I found over the past couple days, this stuff is like alcohol. If you listen to it when you're sad, it will break your heart, and it will make you feel your despair all the more acutely. If you listen to it when you're happy, the uplifting peace and tranquility it imparts will make you feel like you can fly. Or it can simply assist in etching the right moment into your memory the way great movie scores do.

Even his titles are cool, and like what I aspire to in terms of images.

If you can't tell, I'm -REALLY- jazzed about this guy.

I gotta thank the Busa for reminding me of how much I used to love Groove Salad, and causing me to have it pumping during about 90% of my pre-Atlanta laundry binge. They played Blumenthal, and I was immediately hooked on this guy.

I'm still trying to find places for people to buy hard copies of the albums - I got digi ones, because I didn't want to wait for shipping, but here are a few links to shops, unfortunately both dealing in UK Pounds. boomkat - opalmusic

The boomkat site has some audio clips, but none are what I consider the best tracks from either album.

I haven't found the stuff in any of my typical US-based import houses for stuff like this, which would make it a lot cheaper, but I'll keep poking around.

For the moment, check out these, that I'm putting up in a good-faith word-spreading effort:

Passing By (from Far Away Trains Passing By)
Blumenthal (from A Strangely Isolated Place)

In the past day, I've found that these, Passing By especially, definitely benefit from headphones. They're still great driving tunes though. Blumenthal has the same kind of bassline coolness that made me such a fan of BT's Beta (3am mix), which I talked about a while back.

Anyway, this guy has spurred me to figure out a way to add a livejournalesque "music" field to each blog post. Who knows when I will actually get it done.

[n.p. ulrichschnaussbetweenusandthem]