Johannes Schmoelling: a thousand times

j_pertou · Post by **j_pertou** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 12:49 am

sparrow wrote:My fave of all Johannes albums.. Love it .

Also my favourite JS album. Extremely well done. Wish TD would make such elaborate albums again.

Desert_Voyager · Post by **Desert_Voyager** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 2:35 am

A Thousand Times is my favourite electronic music since the live recording of the Tangerine Dream concert in Berlin 1987. Johannes Schmoelling is my favourite past member of TD because his music is close to the heart.

sparrow · Post by **sparrow** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 6:08 pm

Desert_Voyager wrote:A Thousand Times is my favourite electronic music since the live recording of the Tangerine Dream concert in Berlin 1987. Johannes Schmoelling is my favourite past member of TD because his music is close to the heart.

Nice to see you posting again jason.. Been a long time..

Desert_Voyager · Post by **Desert_Voyager** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 9:41 pm

sparrow wrote:
Desert_Voyager wrote:A Thousand Times is my favourite electronic music since the live recording of the Tangerine Dream concert in Berlin 1987. Johannes Schmoelling is my favourite past member of TD because his music is close to the heart.
Nice to see you posting again jason.. Been a long time..

Thanks John, it's good to be back.

cantosis · Post by **cantosis** » Sun Feb 28, 2010 10:17 am

Wish I could feel so positive about this album it seems I am the only one who isn`t keen. when I listen to the likes of White Out,The Zoo Of Tranquility or Wuivend Riet then I am afraid for me this one is quite far behind. I have always liked JS albums as they have always tended to be slightly quirky and definitely a style of their own but this album seems to have gone down a different road of mediocrity. Sure it has some pleasant enough sounds on it but for me that isn`t enough.

I hope the next album is back to his high standard.

rigel · Post by **rigel** » Sun Feb 28, 2010 12:32 pm

My all-time favourite JS album is "The Zoo of Tranquillity" (the original Theta version, NOT the remix!). I think those first three albums were superb and, a somewhat hard act to follow, so I kind of know where you are coming from. Subsequent albums have all had their highlights, but perhaps don't reach the great heights acheived on "White Out", etc.

However "A Thousand Times" is a beautiful work, with delightful arrangements and lots of fun nods to his past with TD. It is also an emotionally satisfying album; I find "Monochrome" and "Funereal Tears" particularly evocative.

I also feel that it is a more consistent album than "Instant City". Although there are some similar sounds with its predecessor, "A Thousand Times" can be listened to right through, whereas there were some pieces on "Instant City" which did not bear up to repeated listens, the title track, for one. In contrast, there are no single tracks on "A Thousand Times" that I actively dislike.

Chris Monk · Post by **Chris Monk** » Sun Feb 28, 2010 3:17 pm

I too miss JS's more experimental music. He's obviously decided to concentrate more on the composition side of things, which IMHO is a shame. His first three albums have some really great ideas and sounds.

24db · Post by **24db** » Wed Mar 03, 2010 7:07 pm

good to see that Johannes is getting generally good reviews, even if you don't think it's best I hope it gives encouragement to produce the next album

ant · Post by **ant** » Thu Mar 04, 2010 4:13 pm

I love A Thousand Times. Yes White Out, and Zoo etc were fantastic albums but so are his new ones but just not in the same style as those early ones. It's a bit like TD fans wishing all there albums would be like Phaedra or Rubycon etc. It doesn't work that way. That was then and this is now. Because they are not so 'experimental' does not mean they are less well put together or musically sound. They are, IMHO, still brilliant albums but in a different way to his early work. I just love all he does and hope there are plenty more to come. Just wish he would make an appearance with TD again, even if it was just to do one track for half an hour. That would be awesome. To see the great man again after 25 years would indeed be amazing.

cantosis · Post by **cantosis** » Thu Mar 04, 2010 6:05 pm

ant wrote: I love A Thousand Times. Yes White Out, and Zoo etc were fantastic albums but so are his new ones but just not in the same style as those early ones. It's a bit like TD fans wishing all there albums would be like Phaedra or Rubycon etc. It doesn't work that way. That was then and this is now. Because they are not so 'experimental' does not mean they are less well put together or musically sound. They are, IMHO, still brilliant albums but in a different way to his early work. I just love all he does and hope there are plenty more to come. Just wish he would make an appearance with TD again, even if it was just to do one track for half an hour. That would be awesome. To see the great man again after 25 years would indeed be amazing.

I dont wish he makes albums like his previous ones, I just wish he didn`t go down the bland road. lets be honest there isnt anything here that makes it stand out for being different or a bit quirky something that I always loved in a JS album. this could have been a solo project he did in 1985. It is well produced and nicely put together and shows he is talanted but its just very safe, maybe I always have high hopes from JS but sorry this is a let down.

I dont like knocking JS as I am a massive fan of the guy have been for years but I cant pretend to like something I don`t.

Chris Monk · Post by **Chris Monk** » Thu Mar 04, 2010 6:52 pm

ant wrote: I love A Thousand Times. Yes White Out, and Zoo etc were fantastic albums but so are his new ones but just not in the same style as those early ones. It's a bit like TD fans wishing all there albums would be like Phaedra or Rubycon etc. It doesn't work that way. That was then and this is now. Because they are not so 'experimental' does not mean they are less well put together or musically sound. They are, IMHO, still brilliant albums but in a different way to his early work. I just love all he does and hope there are plenty more to come. Just wish he would make an appearance with TD again, even if it was just to do one track for half an hour. That would be awesome. To see the great man again after 25 years would indeed be amazing.

Just to make things clear, I love A Thousand Times. The composition, rhythms and melodies are fabulous. It's a work of great beauty. I also have no wish for him to try to repeat the glories of the past. I have no burning desire to hear a White Out II or Beyond The Zoo of Tranquility but it is clear that he isn't being as experimental as he used to be and that's something I miss.

24db · Post by **24db** » Thu Mar 04, 2010 7:16 pm

gotta say each to their own, I don't think anyone is really saying that Johannes's latest album is poor, are we?

I seem to remember Johannes saying that he had stopped doing so much sound research, until a few years back when he started to use some software synths. I'm not saying that to explain any strengths or weaknesses in his music (that's down to the indiividual), but just to add a bit of info on Johannes's sound creation.

The only way Johannes would ever please us all and not be compared with his past work and that would have been to call it quits after the very first album...and then we would have all lost out.

I very much doubt that even the harshest critic of his music is even near as critical as Johannes is with his own music.

cantosis · Post by **cantosis** » Thu Mar 04, 2010 7:22 pm

24db wrote:gotta say each to their own, I don't think anyone is really saying that Johannes's latest album is poor, are we?

I seem to remember Johannes saying that he had stopped doing so much sound research, until a few years back when he started to use some software synths. I'm not saying that to explain any strengths or weaknesses in his music (that's down to the indiividual), but just to add a bit of info on Johannes's sound creation.

The only way Johannes would ever please us all and not be compared with his past work and that would have been to call it quits after the very first album...and then we would have all lost out.

I very much doubt that even the harshest critic of his music is even near as critical as Johannes is with his own music.

No Andy certainly not poor just not to my taste really and I dont find it challenging enough to say that it could be a grower.

But full credit to Johannes as all in all the album seems to be a hit with the masses aand of course you cant please everyone all of the time.

24db · Post by **24db** » Thu Mar 04, 2010 7:45 pm

cantosis wrote:
24db wrote:gotta say each to their own, I don't think anyone is really saying that Johannes's latest album is poor, are we?

I seem to remember Johannes saying that he had stopped doing so much sound research, until a few years back when he started to use some software synths. I'm not saying that to explain any strengths or weaknesses in his music (that's down to the indiividual), but just to add a bit of info on Johannes's sound creation.

The only way Johannes would ever please us all and not be compared with his past work and that would have been to call it quits after the very first album...and then we would have all lost out.

I very much doubt that even the harshest critic of his music is even near as critical as Johannes is with his own music.
No Andy certainly not poor just not to my taste really and I dont find it challenging enough to say that it could be a grower.

But full credit to Johannes as all in all the album seems to be a hit with the masses aand of course you cant please everyone all of the time.

I'll certainly keep buying whatever Johannes puts out, whether I like it or not is my problem

.

Part of the 'problem' for all EM artists these days is there's no WOW-factor anymore, analog, digital, sampling or software we've basically heard it all before, the art now is not the sound, but the composition, the message and the emotion, in some ways EM has gone the way of Classical Music, I don't hear millions of people complaining if a pianist does 10 records with the same sound on it (hey man can't you pitch bend it or something?). There's a very slight double standard with Synthesiser based music, some people want the wheel re-invented every few minutes, just because the synth was meant to be the chameleon of the musical world. Decades later it's more than obvious that the real revolution in sound is over and we (musicals and audience alike) need to reaccess what Electronic Music means these days and to be frank if electronic music as some people describe is basically over as a new form or genre of music. The last time I was really surprised by a sound on a TD album was Le Parc, but I still continued to buy and enjoy the music because I realised that EM is more than just about the sound and or equipment. You need something to say before you worry about what timbre you use, for a while EM musicians did it the other way round and sadly some didn't have much to say beyond the equipment and their latest sound effect. All IMHO of course...sorry went off topic

Johannes Schmoelling, totally top musician...I'd recommend all of his music to anyone, I don't have their ears and they don't have mine, to be honest it would be a bit confusing if we did

cantosis · Post by **cantosis** » Thu Mar 04, 2010 8:16 pm

Even so Andy you still get new music coming out that sounds original and fresh even if the technology is old hat. and what about granular synthesis? I dont know much about it but it sounded quite fresh from what I have heard on the Namlook albums?