Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Knuddlemaus
2. Between Us and Them
3. Passing By
4. Blumenwiese Neben Autobahn
5. Nobody's Home
6. Molfsee

Disc 2:

1. Sunday Evening in Your Street
2. Suddenly the Trees
3. Nothing Happens in June
4. As If You've Never Been Away
5. Crazy For You
6. Wherever You Are

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1904 in Music
• Released on: 2005-11-01
• Number of discs: 2

Amazon.com
Ulrich Schnauss is a German electronic artist who is influenced by forebears like Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk--but unlike retro-space artists, he doesn't sound like he just emerged from their dusty studios after being marooned there for 30 years. Instead, his synthesizers bristle with contemporary electro-rhythms, a bit of New Wave romanticism, and melodies you want to last forever. Schnauss has perfected a balance between quiet yearning and joyful heroism in his music, with sweeping major-chord progressions that are triumphal without being ostentatious, expansive without being pompous. For someone who is so rhythm-centered with crackling snares and electro-glitches, it's ultimately the melodies that draw you in, turned on glistening, bell-like timbres and space-organ sustains. Far Away Trains Passing By is actually his first album, released in Europe in 2001, but it's been out of print and is being issued in the United States for the first time. The reissue comes with a bonus CD that includes six pieces pulled from various Schnauss side projects and tracks that didn't make the original album. Far Away Trains Passing By is electronica with a melancholy soul, and it has lost nothing in the intervening years. --John Diliberto

Remix
"Stunningly original and gushingly beautiful."

XLR8R
"Astonishingly gorgeous..a swirling opus of densely layered sounds and treated vocals."

Customer Reviews

Not very impressed!
I bought this CD because of all the great reviews. You people need to get out more often!

Sighhhhh...
...kick back, mellow out and listen to Schnauss. His simplistic compositions offer just the right amount of originality to be enjoyed either with full attention or as backround music. 'Love this guy!

Subtly majestic, if a little monotonous.
Full of wonderfully melancholy and atmospheric textures; lacks the dull synthetic drone of "space music". The cool strings and melodies kind of drift over warm, crunchy beats and basslines. It's the kind of thing you put on while you're working or, yes, driving.

While the music is beautiful, it inevitably draws comparisons to folks who have done the same thing with a little more thoughtfulness, which is why I've rated this a 4-star album. If you find more than one or two of Schnauss's drum loops original, I'll eat my hat. Most of the variation within the songs is found in adding and removing layers of melody and texture, and while Schnauss is very, very good at it, the music just lacks the musical variety of artists like, say, the Boards of Canada, who use much more original beats and clearly spend a lot more time on the details.

But the fact that there's better music to be had doesn't make this a bad disc. It's one of my favorite buys of the year, and it'll enjoy many a listen in my office (heck, it's going right now). Recommended.