Johannes Schmoelling: a thousand times

[24db]

http://the-archive-plus.blogspot.com/20 ... annes.html

8/10

[biily-whizz]

Just got the cd from cd services dundee, Excellent cd .Like the mixture of tracks on the album.Some of the sounds take you back to td earlier years

[sparrow]

This is my fave JS album...no contest.

[24db]

This came in yesterday along with TD's "Epsilon Journey" cd. A big thanks to Vic Rik! Listening to it from beginning to end last night, I thought it was very good. I have "White Out" and "Wuivend Riet" and recently purchased "Early Beginnings" from Vic. You can hear some hints of TD. Especially the song "Palace of Dreams". Wuivend Riet is still my favorite from Johannes. I dont have all of Johannes's albums. But this is a good album to add to his collection. My next purchase from Johannes would have to be "Images and Memory". Any other recommendations from Johannes's albums??

instant city...instant classic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1. Passing By-Opens with soft melancholic string pads and Johannes' emotional grand-piano plus an oboe like synth melody. Approx 3 minutes in and a sequencer rhythm starts, with DX style spiked accents and some high notes from the piano, after a while a glassy synth lead is added. Drums punch in and a few chord stabs break the rhythm for a few bars, but the sequencer section soon returns to close. A good track, with a real feeling of passively watching landscapes from a moving vehicle... gets a 7/10

2. Giants out of the Fog-Starts with an echoing bass guitar note, over a panned synth modulation trill. A soft sequencer then takes over, whilst eerie phased chords and effects are added. Kettle drums punch and the whole piece is taken into a Vangelis like section complete with a few analog chords stabs and a fairly strong melody. Over long perhaps, but getting better 8/10

3. Instant city-Sub par Dream Mixes 1 stuff, sorry Johannes but this track is dreadful, I feel bad, but... 4/10

4. Contemplative Clouds-Nice and laid back, even with the DX piano and slight new-agey feel, 6/10

5. Joyful Solitude-Much better, great use of a repeated soft MiniMoog lead over a descending note backing, half way through the track changes direction and we get what sounds like Kyoto meets Serge Blenner with some classy piano over the top. Shouldn't work, should be cheesey as hell, but it's wonderful... 9/10

6. Rikscha Square-Ugh...I keep thinking Ceefax soundtrack meets keyboard demo tune, not my taste 6/10

7. Viktoriapark-Nice DX sounds with strange gasping vocal samples and drum hits intro, hints at Wuivend Riet throughout as the track develops with all sorts tricks, guitar samples, sinuous lead and chugging rhythm (and it's quite short). 9/10

8. A Long time ago-Hmmm a further nod to Wuivend Riet (A ghostly intro, complete with some subtle piano gives way to a bass pizzicato string section, with a falling string chord sequence. A strident rhythm takes hold and then Johannes lets rip with mucho-Moog soloing).The ghostly section returns to close 8/10

9. Big Cityscapes-Starts with a panned bass sequence and ethereal pads, with a echoing electric piano counterpoint, chords are added as the track changes key. The pace is kept up as drums are added and a trumpet like synth takes over the melody for a few bars, before falling away leaving a new airy sequence, only for the old theme to return. Nice simple melody. Nothing special, but nice nevertheless 7/10

10. It's your Birthday-Interesting stuff with a Joe Zawinul like melody (It reminded me a bit of Zawinul's I'll never forget you) over a lounge backing (can't say I like the repeated piano and synth melody though). 7/10

11. The Time Seller-Great track, the opening sounds reminded me a bit of the Keep soundtrack. I also liked the soft chord sequence, over this Johannes adds some fine Minimoog-like soloing (look out for his trade mark key changes and descending bass note motifs). The track develops with odd percussion, grand piano, and analog modulated synth chords...Johannes saves the day. 9/10

[tdream4ever]

This came in yesterday along with TD's "Epsilon Journey" cd. A big thanks to Vic Rik! Listening to it from beginning to end last night, I thought it was very good. I have "White Out" and "Wuivend Riet" and recently purchased "Early Beginnings" from Vic. You can hear some hints of TD. Especially the song "Palace of Dreams". Wuivend Riet is still my favorite from Johannes. I dont have all of Johannes's albums. But this is a good album to add to his collection. My next purchase from Johannes would have to be "Images and Memory". Any other recommendations from Johannes's albums??

instant city...instant classic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1. Passing By-Opens with soft melancholic string pads and Johannes' emotional grand-piano plus an oboe like synth melody. Approx 3 minutes in and a sequencer rhythm starts, with DX style spiked accents and some high notes from the piano, after a while a glassy synth lead is added. Drums punch in and a few chord stabs break the rhythm for a few bars, but the sequencer section soon returns to close. A good track, with a real feeling of passively watching landscapes from a moving vehicle... gets a 7/10

2. Giants out of the Fog-Starts with an echoing bass guitar note, over a panned synth modulation trill. A soft sequencer then takes over, whilst eerie phased chords and effects are added. Kettle drums punch and the whole piece is taken into a Vangelis like section complete with a few analog chords stabs and a fairly strong melody. Over long perhaps, but getting better 8/10

3. Instant city-Sub par Dream Mixes 1 stuff, sorry Johannes but this track is dreadful, I feel bad, but... 4/10

4. Contemplative Clouds-Nice and laid back, even with the DX piano and slight new-agey feel, 6/10

5. Joyful Solitude-Much better, great use of a repeated soft MiniMoog lead over a descending note backing, half way through the track changes direction and we get what sounds like Kyoto meets Serge Blenner with some classy piano over the top. Shouldn't work, should be cheesey as hell, but it's wonderful... 9/10

6. Rikscha Square-Ugh...I keep thinking Ceefax soundtrack meets keyboard demo tune, not my taste 6/10

7. Viktoriapark-Nice DX sounds with strange gasping vocal samples and drum hits intro, hints at Wuivend Riet throughout as the track develops with all sorts tricks, guitar samples, sinuous lead and chugging rhythm (and it's quite short). 9/10

8. A Long time ago-Hmmm a further nod to Wuivend Riet (A ghostly intro, complete with some subtle piano gives way to a bass pizzicato string section, with a falling string chord sequence. A strident rhythm takes hold and then Johannes lets rip with mucho-Moog soloing).The ghostly section returns to close 8/10

9. Big Cityscapes-Starts with a panned bass sequence and ethereal pads, with a echoing electric piano counterpoint, chords are added as the track changes key. The pace is kept up as drums are added and a trumpet like synth takes over the melody for a few bars, before falling away leaving a new airy sequence, only for the old theme to return. Nice simple melody. Nothing special, but nice nevertheless 7/10

10. It's your Birthday-Interesting stuff with a Joe Zawinul like melody (It reminded me a bit of Zawinul's I'll never forget you) over a lounge backing (can't say I like the repeated piano and synth melody though). 7/10

11. The Time Seller-Great track, the opening sounds reminded me a bit of the Keep soundtrack. I also liked the soft chord sequence, over this Johannes adds some fine Minimoog-like soloing (look out for his trade mark key changes and descending bass note motifs). The track develops with odd percussion, grand piano, and analog modulated synth chords...Johannes saves the day. 9/10

Thanks for the extensive review AK. This one is at the top of my list along with Zoo and Images. I'm looking around the usual places for these albums. I've found Zoo on ebay, but I'm looking for the 88 version. Images, I can get from Vic. At the moment I am trying to watch the wallet as the RAH gig is coming up real soon. Plus there are about 5-7 other albums I'm looking at on Vic's site that I would like to get my hands on. Dont remind me of the FAX albums. . . . . .

[24db]

FAX albums!

[cantosis]

Nice Review Andy, do you have one of White Out in your archives?

[24db]

Nice Review Andy, do you have one of White Out in your archives?

not by me...I might have one Andy G

[24db]

nope, but I have these

SynG@te (D)

The 2000 edition of White Out was the long-awaited re-release of one of the greatest albums in the history of Electronic Music. Remastered sounds better than re-recorded and remixed. A remix is only track 10. Track 5 "Rain Echoes" and track 8 "A Long Way Home" are even new recordings. The others are remastered and some are shortened, too. But shortened are only the sound samples - not the music! The order of the tracks is changed and the suitable new tracks are implemented to re-form the original idea of a concept album about the antarctic.

Lothar Lubitz, re-reviewed December 2001


Eurock (USA)
The original WHITE OUT album was produced in 1990. This CD is a newly recorded and re-mixed version composed, mixed and produced by Johannes Schmoelling at his Riet Studio Berlin in 2000 featuring two additional new tracks. The sonic result is a stunning work of dense, dynamic, electronic music. Layers of heavy synth are laced with subtle melodies and undulating sonic currents to create a total sound environment unlike anything else I’ve heard.

Archie Patterson, September 2001



I worked with short sound samples from Axel Engstfeld's documentary film "Antarctica Project" on the tracks "White Out", "The Big Nail" and "A Great Continent". In "A Great Continent" I used excerpts from Engstfeld's interview with Michael T. Halbouty, chairman of the antarctica treaty. I would like to thank Axel Engstfeld for his permission, to use special material from his film. This film and Martin Burckhardt's radio play "Bis ans Ende der Welt" have given me inspiration and musical ideas.
White Out - an optical illusion: the merging of heaven and earth,
the abscence of shadows, space without depth, without horizon
All of a sudden there was this feeling, the antarctic a concept album. No, it was not so sudden. This sudden was the crossover point of three things, all happening at the same time: a book (Christoph Ransmayrs "The terrors of the ice and the darkness"), a movie film ("Antarctica Project" by Axel Engstfeld), and finally a own study, an experimental sound performance, on which I was working together with the author Martin Burckhardt. And in this sense the "sudden" was nothing incidental, but a feeling of an inner inevitableness: a concept album, the antarctic.

In the movie a man was seen, in front of the american flag, who pronounced the antarctic as an immense reservoir of energy and resources. He had a voice as if money could speak. And the voice said: "I have no doubt, it will happen. Twenty years, thirty years, it will happen."

To tell a landscape - so long as it still exists.

Landscape. And a music that can create space.
Via the detour of the antarctic, via the empty white space I realized that this was really always my idealistic intuition of what electronic music could tell.

To start for a spacious open landscape. Whereby I never understood the newness and the unheard of the electronic sounds as a placeless point, as a phantom of weightlessness, but always as something on this side, "as from this world."

Not having the want to have me catapulted into the universe (it is said that in spite of all the sperical sounds the satellite garbage is piling up considerably) I preferred to limit myself to what is familiar to me. That means: running - instead of tumbling through weightlessness.

In this sense the sounds that I have used and changed will in no way deny their origin. They are noises: the sound of a sonar, the crackling and squeaking of radio sets, machines, the far away screeching of birds - and if we close our eyes then with each noise we immediately connect to some image of a landscape or surroundings. For me this was a reason to compose entire noise passages - a kind of foundation out of which the music actually is born.

In a scientific book on the antarctic I read of an optical phenomena, which occurs under certain conditions of temperature and of the air: WHITE OUT. it is a loss of space sensation, the white erases the space, sky and earth flow into each other, a space without depth and without horizon is created.

Maybe a concept album is nothing else but a voyage. A departure to another place, which slowly uncovers itself, a shore that comes closer and piles up as a mountain of ice. Arrival, first announced over the radio, the whir of the machine noises, the entertainment music, filling up the crewmens room.

And suddenly (where on the map appeared just an immense white spot), there is firm ground under your feet and you see: garbage, food throwouts, tin cans, as if to be preserved for eternity, discarded oil residue and a tire rut leading to the horizon, where an industrial complex arises, and then unconsciously: the feeling that here at the very end of the world a war announces itself, that the machines are already in position, that the fronts are lined up. And when you look around, there is the oldest landscape in the world. (a war with the purpose of eradicating the history of nature: WHITE OUT.)

As I finalized the work on the album Reinhold Messner and Arved Fuchs departed for the antarctic. Not like before (as was still done in the last century) to remove the white spots from map nor with the aim (as at the turn of the century) to hoist the flag of everywhich country, but solely because of the landscape itself, purely because of its being such and nothing else (at the present time).

And I thought that as a child, even in my wildest dreams, it never occurred to me that just taking a walk could one day become a political act.

(Johannes Schmoelling, 1990)
(Translation by John Battema, revised by Andreas Hedler, 1999/2000)

[cantosis]

ahh nice one, cheers.

[24db]

ahh nice one, cheers.

no problem, unusual that, i would have thought that Andy would have reviewed it...I'll have to check my hardrive

[tdream4ever]

ahh nice one, cheers.

no problem, unusual that, i would have thought that Andy would have reviewed it...I'll have to check my hardrive

Aah, I have the original White Out. Should I also buy the reworked White Out? Is the extra tracks worth the buy?

[24db]

ahh nice one, cheers.

no problem, unusual that, i would have thought that Andy would have reviewed it...I'll have to check my hardrive

Aah, I have the original White Out. Should I also buy the reworked White Out? Is the extra tracks worth the buy?

Hard one to call mate...I like the Ulrich Schnauss remix on the album, and the rest is quite nice, but I'm not sure I'd cancel buying Johannes's other albums to get it first (especially with a long list of FAX to buy...or not as well )

[cantosis]

no problem, unusual that, i would have thought that Andy would have reviewed it...I'll have to check my hardrive

Aah, I have the original White Out. Should I also buy the reworked White Out? Is the extra tracks worth the buy?

Hard one to call mate...I like the Ulrich Schnauss remix on the album, and the rest is quite nice, but I'm not sure I'd cancel buying Johannes's other albums to get it first (especially with a long list of FAX to buy...or not as well )

Unfortuntaely I dont have the original White Out anymore as I sold it with my TD collection some years ago but I like the new one. agree with Andy about the Ulrich remix

[Lewis]

Finally have this and have to say I love it. Some really great tracks, like a continuation of Instant City. 'Monochrome' is probably my favorite track.

My only complaint is the mastering fault with the distortion on Stigma It says the pre-mastering was done by the guy who wrote the last track ...either way it kind of spoils what would be a great intro, and its quite surprising nobody actually proof listened it before it was sent off to the CD plant ?