Ulrich Schnauss could very well be a vampire. While speaking to The Varsity by telephone last week the German electro-shoegazer artist had this to say about touring: “I find it difficult to adjust to this much daylight. When I’m at home I switch into a night rhythm where I sleep during the day and work during the night.” It sounds possible, no? “Why do you like the night so much?” I ask, looking for more evidence.
“It’s much nicer to work when its quiet and there are no distractions. I just generally really like nighttime, I find the atmosphere very nice, and very inspiring.”
While Schnauss may prefer the isolation of his London home studio to life on the road, his oneman live show has been turning a lot of heads in both the ambient-electro and shoegazer sets.
“I’d rather focus on studio work than playing too many gigs. But it’s not like I’m suffering out here, at the end of the day I do manage to have a good time,” says the well-spoken 30 year-old in his charming, German-inflected British accent.
In fact his accent is actually a pretty good indication of his musical style, which is inspired in equal parts by gothic German synths and British shoegazer ambience.
Interestingly, Schnauss, who was born in the northern port city of Kiel, describes his introduction to the shoegazer genre as a direct product of the Second World War.
“When I grew up in the late 80s, early 90s there were British and American troops here in Germany and they had their own radio station, and some of the shoegazing stuff made it into the top 40. That’s how I first got the opportunity to listen to that kind of music.”
Shoegazer, a short-lived guitar-driven rock movement in the UK during the late 80s and early 90s, essentially filled the gap between the chart dominance of Baggy and Brit-Pop. Despite its inability to cross into the North American mainstream, Shoegazer managed to find a small niche of young, dedicated fans, many of whom— like Schnauss—are now in bands of their own and leading a resurgence of the genre.
Schnauss’s newest record, Goodbye, which he says is the third part of “an accidental trilogy,” is packed with nocturnal soundscapes, ghostly vocal-lines, subdued beats, and strong songs and structure. At times, some of his dirtier synth patches bring to mind a hybrid of later Radiohead and the Cocteau Twins, or Hot Chip and My Bloody Valentine.
While a number of musicians are credited as performing on Goodbye, Schnauss’s live show is a one-man affair. In an effort to keep his performances fresh, he’s done some re-tooling since his last tour, trading backing tracks for loops.
“I was a bit unhappy with the way I was playing live previously. I was basically just playing backing tracks from the computer and keyboard on top. In the last couple of months I’ve put a lot of work into developing a new live setup where I spilt up all the songs from the album into small loops that I can improvise with, so the good thing is that this time its a bit more live and spontaneous than last time, which hopefully is going to create some interesting results.”
Ulrich Schnauss plays an intimate gig at the Rivoli on Wednesday, Sept. 26 with Madrid and Millimetrik. Cover is $15.
