Schiller (album 2 - Weltreise (world travel) / Voyage

Schiller's second album marks a shift in its entirety: if you recall, the first album, Zeitgeist had a few spoken word lyrics, all in German. The music was Trance and Ambient. 

Weltreise ( meaning World travel), is the first Trance and Synthpop, and also the first to invite vocalists for several songs as you'll see on these images of my special, 2 cd, limited edition

The first vocalist is Kim Sanders, who sings on tracks distance, and dancing with loneliness - tracks 2 and 10 of the German, original editions.  

The second and third vocalists are Peter Heppner, from German band Wolfsheim (Dream of you, track 3), and Isgaard who offers backing vocals on Dream of you, and main vocals on Ein Schöner Tag (track 5, German edition, and track 5, international release under title a beautiful day, but seems to retain the German vocals as far as I can find).

The other tracks are either instrumental or have spoken words (tracks 1,6,9, 15,17 & 18 ; track 5 has some, alongside the singing parts). 

Kim and Peter both collaborated writing their songs, whilst the entire album's melodies have been composed by Schiller - at the time still 2 members (Von Deylen and Schlieffen ; the latter would leave before album 3). 

Track 9 spoken words (by Otto Sander) are taken from Khalil Gibran's the Prophet. 

The other performers for these spoken words are Franziska Pigulla (1, 5, 15, 17 & 18), and Benjamin Völz (6). 

Schiller composed all melodies, except on track 7, which was by Rolf Lovland & text by Peter Skavlan. 

The melodies in this album makes one mentally travel around the world, with different beats, and embody the change of direction Schiller's music would have from now on : all subsequent albums incorporate instrumental pieces, as well as spoken word and songs, inviting several vocalists and collaborations that will never leave Schiller's world from this point on - at least until now, 15 years later.

I enjoy this album immensely, even more so than Zeitgeist from 1999, and especially tracks 2, 3, 6, 10,13 & 14 - each for their own unique sounds and lyrics (where applies).

As you saw on the previous images, my limited edition has a second CD with a another continuous 14 minutes Schil Out mix, just like the first album had done. 

Weltreise's is also produced in Dolby Surround, offering good rendering on multi-channel settings, though not produced as a multi-channel source. 

If you want to discover it, I offer you this & this chill out portion as well. 

It was also the first album to have a DVD release, with extra goodies.