Album Review: Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters - Underrated Silence

Album Rating: B

There’s something quite ironic in how this pairing have chosen to title their release. Ulrich Schnauss, a man more than qualified in the art of straining lo-fi electronics through a fine, shoegaze mesh, and Mark Peters, himself a guitarist in the shoegazing outfit “The Engineers”, are not people you would initially expect to enjoy silence. Not least because their profession rotates about disturbing this “Underrated Silence”, especially with shoegaze as a whole often expanding to fill every quiet gap available.

Ignoring the title, the album develops just as you’d expect considering the musicians’ previous works. Soft, rich synthesisers create a warm backdrop: layers so thick and distorted they tend to spill into each other, forming a fluid, ever changing ground with which the melodies can interact. Peter’s guitar takes centre stage: calmly progressing atop each piece, rippling in the haze beneath it. Percussion discretely persists in the background; vocal samples emerge from the void only to sink back in again. “Underrated Silence” is nothing if not lazy, with its tracks quietly waltzing into climax, and their tones so impossibly optimistic.