Spacerider – Love at First Sight by Chandeen is one of those albums that stray away from my usual tastes but eventually leads me to more like it. It was released on Sept. 23, 1998 with one CD issue under Synthetic Symphony. This is their fifth album released out of their discography of 13 albums. It was produced by Harald Löwy, who is one of the members of the band (group, duo, alias? I’ll get into it in the next paragraph) and it’s pretty important. Some genres for this are pop rock, trip hop, dream pop and darkwave.
Chandeen was a nightmare to research, there are a ton of past members and so many credits to scan through. The head honcho here seems to be Harald Löwy, from what I can see he is the constant in this band’s lifetime. Harald is credited with electronics, piano, organ, percussion, guitar and mixing. Another member is Axel Henninger who has credits for acoustic guitar, co-producing and engineering. Then there are two vocalists, those being Antje Schulz (tracks: 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12) and Stephanie Härich (tracks: 1 to 3, 6, 9, 11, 12). There are so many past members and Discogs likes to sort credits in a way I don’t like.
This album has a weird alternation between vocalists, the tones change so much and I gotta say I prefer Stephanie Härich’s over Antje’s. I think this album is at its best when the vocalist is prominent, without them it is pretty boring. My favorites are “Spacerider”, “Be With You” and “Love Flag.” I love the trip hop portions of this album are my favorite, it’s so unexpected but its end result is extremely good. This album to me gives off a spooky sound, so it’s pretty unexpected when strays like “Mighty Lorena” sound fantastical. The tracklist is pretty solid, but like two of the twelve leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.
Straight to the point this album is a 3.7/5 in my opinion, there is one big reason it lost so much. What was the decision to make the last track like a minute of a great sound and then the next six minutes pure silence with some random samples at the end? I’m also quite against the existence of other tracks. I’d recommend this to people who like “Halloween music.” I hate the concept of it but yeah that’s what people like for some reason. Christmas is the only holiday that can get away with a genre that isn’t just instrumentals.
