In the studio with Ulrich Schnauss

In the studio with Ulrich Schnauss

18 November, 2009 | 10.20AM

• Written by: pollylavine
• Filed under: Music News: domino, independiente, ulrich schnauss

Ulrich Schnauss ushers me, with slight hesitance, into his East London studio. He fidgets and fusses over inanimate objects that do not need attention.

For a figure whose music drips with solitude and melancholy, this is a rare moment of exposure, and he seems uncomfortable, unnerved by the stranger who has entered his lair.

He sits surrounded by a cavern of instruments and electronic gadgets, machines that enabled him to create the richly textured melodies and harmonies that brought about the comparisons to Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream in the music press.

Originating from Kiel, Germany, Schnauss spent most of the 1990s engineering dance music for artists in Germany. He moved to Berlin in 1996, and signed to the respected label City Centre Offices, who released his critically acclaimed debut album ‘Far Away Trains Passing By’, followed by 2003’s ‘A Strangely Isolated Place’.

As Berlin became the fashionable centre for the minimal generation, Schnauss fled to London, and jumped aboard Domino Records. In 2007, he released ‘Goodbye’, and with Domino’s clout in the US, sales of the album fared particularly well on the West Coast.

Schnauss’ studio is a homage to synthesisers, effects units, and other musical oddities. Oberheim, Roland, Yamaha, Arp - they’re all here. Brightly coloured cables are strewn messily across the floor connecting the oddly shaped machines together.

At the centre of it all sits a Apple Mac computer, the digital heartbeat for his aging studio machinery.

Did you actually study sound engineering?

No, I wanted to for a while but I realised if I did I would lose too much time and I was desperate to try to make a living out of the whole music thing, so I put all my energy into that.

So you just got stuck in?

Yeah pretty much but it took a long time. It took about seven or eight years before I started to earn a bit of money from it.

You’re originally from Kiel, did some time in Berlin, then moved to the UK in 2006. Why did you move away from Berlin just as everyone else moved in?

First of all, I think a lot of people are moving to Berlin, but some people are moving away from Berlin and probably for similar reasons to why I moved away.

After a while you find out that the city doesn’t live up to the hype that surrounds it. It’s good for some things, like if you’re a minimal techno DJ, it’s probably the best place in the world to be, but for a lot of other musical styles there is actually not a lot of stuff happening there and it is difficult to do anything there.

You can be really isolated in Berlin and that was kind of my situation. In 2004/2005 I started flying to the UK a lot and it became really tiring and I just thought ‘why don’t I just move here’? Musically it’s a much better climate here for me then Berlin.

Is there really not much happening in Berlin apart from minimal?

There are some people doing other stuff in Berlin, but there is not really a scene or any kind of infrastructure.

There’s just not other styles to the extent that you would expect. Even the people that do electronic music in my kind of style have their main audience in the UK and the US.

A lot of labels that are quite well known from Berlin, like Morr music or City Centre Offices, wouldn’t even exist without their sales in the US and the UK.

I find it a lot better here, especially if you want to work with different people as there are a lot more opportunities.

You seem to have cracked the US market?

Yeah, America has been really good. I’ve toured and played the key cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, which is fantastic.

I think LA is the city in the world where I have sold the most records. My profile was established in the UK first, and then in the US. The records were received well in Europe and then Domino decided to try it in the US and luckily it worked.

What I’m trying to do is ideally, to be seen more in the tradition of classic electronic music. My biggest influences like Tangerine Dream, are to me, music that is just made with synthesisers, rather then with guitars or drums and bass

The first real crossover success you saw, was when Sasha remixed your work for his Involver project.

Well I didn’t really pay a lot of attention to genre boundaries. I used to be a lot more focused on that in the 90s, but when I play gigs now that it seems to be people from all different backgrounds and scenes.

How did Sasha come across your music?

He approached me. I don’t know how he found me, I think he just heard my music and made the approach then.

You come from an indie and experimental background. Would you ever like to become more visible as a mainstream dance producer, and perform at big dance festivals?

No, I wouldn’t say that. What I’m trying to do is ideally, to be seen more in the tradition of classic electronic music. My biggest influences like Tangerine Dream, are to me, music that is just made with synthesisers, rather then with guitars, or drums and bass.

Ideally, I’d like to keep it away from narrow categories. Like any artist, I want to have as much freedom as possible. I mean I really appreciate the support from the dance scene but I don’t want to get categorized.

Have you been on any festival rotas yet, that are dance music focused like Creamfields?

I don’t think so, but in the last 12 months I’ve started to get a lot more club and rave gigs which happen in a dance environment with DJs playing dance stuff, whether it’s drum and bass, or techno before and after.

There seems to be a change in the style, which I actually quite enjoy. I think the vibe seems to be a bit different in the dance scene once again. I didn’t really like it for a while because it became really aggressive but it has become more open-minded again.

How do you feel about the fact that DJs are the main profile figures of dance music, and not the producers who actually make the music?

Well I think it would be pointless to complain about it because it has always been like that with dance music, hasn’t it?

Even records that are supposed to be artist records, a lot of the time, are done by other people. As far as i know Charlie May has had a lot of input in Sasha’s more recent releases for instance.

I mean I do understand it to some degree. Being a DJ is obviously a full time job already, and at the same time being a good producer is probably nearly impossible, so that whole model worked in the past because DJs were able to focus all their energy on promoting the music.

In the 90s, I did a lot of engineering for dance projects as well and my name didn’t even appear on a lot of these records. That’s just how the dance scene works.

Why do you think producers are becoming more visible now, and why are we seeing more of them step out of the shadows?

Well I think it might be just financial desperation, to be honest. Because the 90s model, where DJs basically promoted the music and all the parties involved benefitted, doesn’t work now because no one sells records anymore, due to illegal downloading.

So, the producers produce and produce, and the DJ cashes in the big DJ fees, but it doesn’t translate into record sales. At the same time I think that’s why a lot of producers are keen to step out of that shadow and say, ‘well hang on, there are actually people here who are making the music’. It’s probably a good thing.

What advice can you give to bedroom producers? Should they put their stuff out as soon as possible, or wait until they have something perfect?

It’s a difficult thing. If you’re too critical about your music, you might never release anything. I’m pretty much unhappy with everything I did to some degree until last night, and if I wait until I’ve got something that I’m happy with, I’d probably only release music in 20 years.

I think it’s good to approach it in a way that everything you do reflects how you felt, or what you were capable of, at that specific moment. I don’t think there is any need to release something that still feels perfect 10 years later. That would never happen for me.

You have to be ok with the fact that you’re probably going to disappoint some elements of the crowd for various reasons. People who come from an indie/rock background are going to see a guy with a laptop and some midi controllers, and wonder what you are doing

How did you deal with negativity over the course of your career?

I always felt like I never really had a choice. There was nothing else I could imagine doing so I just had to get through it. I mean I did encounter negativity, and do still to this day, but you just have to try to isolate yourself from that somehow and differentiate it from people who tell you things in a constructive way, or things that could even be helpful.

I’m really interested to hear the opinions of people whose musical tastes I respect, and I really take that criticism to heart, but if you Google your name all the time and you read everything out there, then you can become a bit paranoid and that’s probably something to stay away from.

You always play live. How does a Ulrich Schnauss live gig compare to a DJ set?

If I feel confident enough, I can improvise and react to the crowd. A DJ set to me is general entertainment and it pleases the crowd, but if you perform live you are ‘presenting’ your music essentially.

You have to be ok with the fact that you’re probably going to disappoint some elements of the crowd for various reasons. People who come from an indie/rock background are going to see a guy with a laptop and some midi controllers, and wonder what you are doing, whereas people who come from a dance music background are going to expect something more full on.

In the middle, if there is a bigger group of people who get what you’re doing, it’s going to be alright. Especially since I’ve started playing live, the way I’m playing is quite improvised and quite flexible. I’m getting a lot of positive reactions from people who understand it.

Your collaborating with Kirsty Hawkshaw on new material. Will this be part of your new album?

No, that’s a different project. Kirsty is writing complete songs - I always get a piano piece and vocals from her, and then I build electronic stuff around that to make a natural arrangement.

How do you feel about remix culture?

What I don’t really like are those stereotypical remixes where someone just takes a little snippet of the vocal, cuts it up, and just puts like a completely random dance track under it that’s not even remotely related to the original song.

What I try to do is keep the actual source composition and treat that quite respectively. Keep the basic chord changes and build a more electronic arrangement around it.

What I like about remixing though is that two different elements can clash, and to get that effect you have to keep a minimum amount of the source material alive. You can’t just grab a little piece and do something completely different, but that’s just my opinion.

How do you think artists feel when someone remixes their work, and changes it greatly from the original?

Well let’s face it, remixing in general is not what it used to be. Between ‘89 and ‘92, it still meant something and you probably had an original artist requesting a specific person like Andrew Weatherall to do a remix and it was almost like a collaboration.

These days it’s just an A&R at a label cross checking the names that are hip and thinking ‘wow we should get that guy to do a mix’, and the original artist is probably not even aware of what’s happening.

I think that’s a bit of a shame in a way. I was quite lucky though as I’ve had some positive experiences so far.

We’re sitting surrounded by a lot of synths. What’s your favourite one?

Well this ARP 2600 was previously owned by Duncan Forbes of Spooky. It was funny because I had no idea it was his, until I arrived at the place to collect it! Arp was a pretty famous synthesiser company that existed until the early 80s, then they went bust.

There’s a lot of Oberheim instruments here.

Yeah that’s one of my favourite companies. I just really like the sound of Oberheim, which is a classic sort of American sound. It’s a really warm, rich tone that’s very suitable for my kind of music.

What’s your favourite Oberheim synth then?

It’s the first polyphonic synth they built in the mid 70s - an Oberheim eight voice - I was really lucky to pick that up. There were only 40 of them made, and a museum went bust a few years ago and I got my hands on one from that. The first proper synth I bought was also an Oberheim, the OB8 - made around 1982.

What synth would you recommend to aspiring producers?

I’d recommend the Dave Smith Poly Evolver because it has two analog and two digital oscillators. Dave Smith is a guy who built all the legendary Prophet synthesisers in the 80s, and just a couple of years ago he started his own little company and started releasing synthesisers again.

It’s a really good instrument because you get a wide range of textures.

What software do you use?

I use Logic in the studio and Ableton for live perfomances. When I work with bands that use instruments I work with Pro Tools, but Logic is the better choice for electronic and sequenced music. I have a Mackie mixing desk, where

I basically plug in the synths and effects and blend it together before recording into the computer to treat it with additional plug-in fx.

Do you make your own sounds or use presets?

I’ve got nothing against using presets categorically, but I can hardly ever find any presets that I like so I think there are hardly any presets in my music.

Favourite effects processor?

My all time favourite is a French processer from the 70s. It does pitch shifting, loops, and delays and it has got a very unique sound because it’s very early digital. So it sounds very grainy and has a very unique texture.

• (19) Comments
• (2957) Views
• Get Ulrich Schnauss 'Goodbye'