The cult German electronic musician and producer, Ulrich Schnauss made his return to The Haunt following his previous performance in the city at 2014’s Drill Festival. His ambient sounds were to flood the city’s infamous club, The Haunt with the visual attack to be provided by none other than Nat Urazmetova. Urazmetova was to bring her combination of apocalyptic, post-industrial tracking shots and the free, open roads that would drag dreamers through the Route 66 of America straight to the heart of Schnauss’s utopia.

Schnauss’s sound blends and twists from 90s shoe-gaze – that of My Bloody Valentine, Lush and Swervedriver through to the electronic ancestors of his German homeland, giving nods to his Krautrock roots. Ultimately, what Schnauss produces through his multi-layered synthesised beats is an ethereal groove that transports you and your consciousness to a different reality. It is a sonic, boundary push that relies on your acceptance and participation, when you lock into the situation and Urazmetova’s visual accompaniment, the beautiful picture begins to unravel.

Opening the night for Schnauss was Inwards, a local Brighton musician that has seen his own work expand through the ambient, electronic constraints. It was fantastic to see a local talent, so worthy of his position on a bill that was so fitting for his style with his euphoric twist on Methodrone-era Brian Jonestown Massacre. His own name is becoming quite the household title in many minds down here having earned himself the deserved title as Brighton’s young Apex Twin.

Arriving onstage at around 8:45pm to a loud applause was Ulrich Schnauss himself, washed in Urazmetova’s warm visuals depicting images of old steel mills and manufacturing plants. The slow throb of Schanuss’s beats began to undercut the imagery as the tempo of machines began to synchronise marvellously with that of Schnauss’s beat laden music. It was admittedly hard to immerse yourself within at first, arriving onstage at 8:45 seemed too early for this sort of music that apparently relied upon a slightly more lucid state of mind than most were wishing to offer at this time. It is the type of music that requires you to be flexible and open with your thoughts, it opened up hyper-realities and aural escape routes that took the crowd about 15 minutes or so to warm to.

The lush instrumentation of Schnauss’s rhythm began to compliment the imagery perfectly, the new direction that the producer seems to be going down celebrates that of the synthesiser more than ever. Previously Schnauss has relied heavily upon quick tempo beats that incorporate kicks in the form of a motorik beat however, now he opens you up to the warming experience of encapsulating synth. This new approach leads for less of a song structure – there is less start, stop, verse, chorus and more continuity allowing it to feel completely like a journey and story; it acts as Ulrich’s touching sentiment with a lot of beauty wrapped within it.

It is important to remember that this was not a general ‘gig’, it was a completely different thing and the other main contributor to the overall performance was the work of Nat Urazmetova. As the set pushed on towards the hour mark, she consistently matched Schnauss toe for toe, taking audience members through the open roads of America via heady, kaleidoscopic tumbles. It is something that really tries your imagination giving you various visual cues as cameras pan over the New York skyline seeing stuttered, jagged lightning cut abrasively through dark night skies. It teases you out of the uncomfortable reality and mundanity of your average day-to-day life, giving you tangents to veer off on, audience members really leapt at this opportunity, eventually. As the set evolved, crowd members began shaking and moving in possessed manners, it was a marvel to watch and once again emphasised everything you want music to be, it was an escape in its most visual and obvious presence.

As music goes, this was a different thing completely. Having visited psychedelic festivals in the past, it felt like it was an experience that was in tune with that vein of thinking. It relied on audience participation but the credit to Ulrich Schnauss and Nat Urazmetova was that they made the experience as accessible as possible. The delicacy with how Urazmetova engulfed the crowd within Schnauss’s music allowed for the duo to bring down the curtains over the audience’s reality, allow them to literally tune in and then drop out.
Tom Churchill

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