After a six-year absence from the New Releases shelf at your local record store, German shoegaze/electronica maestro Ulrich Schnauss is back with a new album called A Long Way to Fall. Due for a mysteeeeerious early 2013 release, Schnauss’ latest will come out via Domino in the US and through his own Scripted Realities label in the rest of the world. On his fourth album, the My Bloody Valentine-lovin’ bleep-blip-blopper is all about the synthesizer. According to Schnauss: “While I had spent a couple of years mainly listening to songwriting based music (a lot of ‘indie’/band-type stuff), I was now rediscovering my love for electronic music based on more open structures. This provided the main inspiration of trying to record an album that would celebrate the synthesizer as the very capable musical instrument that it is, but without the need to disguise it behind a wall of echo and reverb.” That’s right, Ulrich! Say it loud! We’re synthesizer lovers and proud! But the album isn’t just about synths and shoegaze and blip bloop blops. No! It’s also about art. And not just musical art. For Schnauss’ latest, the London-based photographers/visual artists Nat Urazmetova and Anastasija Nikitina have crafted visual works to go along with the tracks “A Ritual in Time and Death” and “I Take Comfort in Your Ignorance.” The latter track is also coming out as a single, with remixes by Tycho and ASC. As Missy Elliot once said, “Come, get your art on.”