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A STRANGELY ISOLATED PLACE
(Domino)
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German electronica producer Ulrich Schnauss released this modestly mesmerizing album in Europe in 2003 to great acclaim among future-music aficionados. The 28-year-old artist elicits an impressive array of otherworldly tones and textures from his keyboards and computers: "On My Own" has queasy smears of backwards guitar that Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood would appreciate; "Gone Forever" features a solo by what sounds like compressed oxygen escaping into deep space; "Clear Day" tweezes the aggression from a standard hip-hop boom-bap and reassigns it to a digitized choir murmuring menacing oohs. The Europeans made a big deal out of Schnauss’s alleged ability to wring honest-to-goodness songs from all this sliced-and-diced detritus, but outside the electronica hothouse, that seems a bit of an overstatement. Schnauss does manage the occasional wisp of sub–Sigur Rós melody, but the album’s pleasures still reside in the minutiae of its form, not in its fist-pumping function. And though earnest Cocteau Twins fans may hear the evidence of celestial heartbreak in his carefully constructed synth fluff, that doesn’t mean it’s there.
