Articles
Colleen
Take and Glen Porter

Albums
Aquarelle
Victor Bermon
Bogenschutzer
Boy in Static
Celer
Colleen
Copy
Damiak
Dan Deacon
Matthew Dear
Decomposure
Elegi
Brian Ellis
The Fields of Hay
Formication
The Fun Years
Guthrie & Budd
Tobias Hellkvist
J Dilla
Library Tapes
Maps
Maserati
Mokira
Ontayso
Morgan Packard
Glen Porter
Proem
Radical Fashion
Rain-cloud
Retina.IT
Run_Return
Ulrich Schnauss
Signalform + Tachikoma
Someone Else
Take
Jedediah White
Wiley
Wolf Eyes
Yard
Zelienople

Compilations / Mixes
Ellen Allien
Famous When Dead 5
A Private Shade of Green
Speicher 3
Telefon Tel Aviv

3"/ 7"/ 10"/ 12"/ EPs
Apples & Milk
Canson / Styro2000
Chrom
Claro Intelecto
Dartriix
Death is Nothing to Fear 2
Deepchord : Echospace
Ditch
Easy Changes
Monsieur Black
Brian James
Koljah
Liviu Groza
mha
Andy Stott
Vektormusik

DVD
Packard / Ott

Ulrich Schnauss: Goodbye
Domino

A mere ten seconds into Goodbye and it's clear Ulrich Schnauss has taken the full shoegaze plunge, with the album's ten epic songs calling to mind the glory days of Lush in particular as well as Slowdive, Ride, Cocteau Twins, and My Bloody Valentine. Not that the move is in any way objectionable when Schnauss shows himself to be such a deft practitioner of the genre, and when his vocal partner on the trip is Judith Beck. Of course, there's always been a shoegaze quality to his music but it's never been as pronounced as it is on this third album; furthermore, 2001's Far Away Trains Passing By and 2003's A Strangely Isolated Place were more generally populated with lush instrumental settings whereas Goodbye, despite the presence of an instrumental or two, is structurally more song-oriented.

Throughout the album, Schnauss constructs massive, guitar-heavy cathedrals of sound which intensify explosively during the songs' choruses (apparently, some of the songs have about one hundred tracks playing simultaneously). The walls of sound in “Shine” and “A Song About Hope,” for example, rise to frankly awesome pitches during the songs' most climactic moments, while “Stars” ascends from not-quite-a-whisper to a thunderous roar. One strains to decipher lyrics amidst the sonic eruptions but, ultimately, whatever words Beck's singing are immaterial, as her voice is designed to function primarily as a sonic element (vocals amount to little more than a blur during the storm of “Medusa,” for instance). Schnauss lowers the volume and intensity for “In Between the Years,” a shuddering ambient instrumental style that would have fit comfortably on either of his previous albums, while the becalmed “For Good” provides a sweet, lullaby-like coda. The album's eight-minute title track is perhaps the most ambitious as it breezily flows through different moods and parts, sparkling beatifically at one moment and soaring grandiosely the next. Goodbye impresses as a fine example of the shoegaze genre, though admittedly its more singularly circumscribed dynamic range doesn't allow for the degree of nuance that characterize Schnauss's first two albums.

July 2007