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Falter Bramnk — Vinyland Odyssee
(Bandcamp Attenuation Circuit ACU 1088, 2025, CD / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2026-03-02

Vinyland Odyssee Cover art

The French composer / improviser / turntablist / multi-instrumentalist Falter Bramnk has a long history going back at least a few decades, when he released his album Reflux at the end of the last century; since that time he has released around sixteen albums that are all very different, some based on field recordings, other focused on sound explorations, all seem to hover in the explorative avant-garde regions outside the realm of mainstream music, and his latest offering Vinyland Odyssee certainly upholds that tradition. The album’s nineteen tracks range from around five minutes all the way down to about fifteen seconds, everything carefully spliced together to form one sonic continuum, such that if you’re now watching the track counter you may not even realize that the track you were just listening to has already jumped to the next one. Time speeds up and slows down at will, there are all sorts of sounds herein, a variety of instruments, occasional singing, spoken parts, bizarre electronic sounds, dreamy sequences, crashing noises, disorientations… the listener is in for one pretty wild ride here. Bramnk handles vinyl records (little that I recognize right off), piano, guitar, zither, percussion, synthesizers, drum kit, harmonic pipe, trumpet, voice, loops and more. Also on board is Dave Willey playing accordion and bass guitar, Laurent Rigaut on saxophones and clarinet, Patrick Guionnet (voice), Xuan Mai Dang (voice and recorder), Sebastien Beaumont plays electric guitar on one track, and there are several additional vocalists one can hear throughout the various tracks. One track may sound like several pieces stitched together, the shortest pieces make a sonic statement and quickly move on to something new, it’s one wild and crazy ride through vinyland, but there’s plenty here of interest that warrants additional listens, one can never get it all in the first pass. Years ago something like this would have to be created by splicing sections of tape together and then adding additional parallel tracks and sound-on-sound; I know Zappa didn’t create Lumpy Gravy in a single afternoon. I have no idea how much time and effort it took to produce this, but I doubt it was an easy task, but if one can appreciate immersive and explorative sound collages, Vinyland Odyssee is a must-hear.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Falter Bramnk, Dave Willey

More info
http://falterbramnk.bandcamp.com/album/vinyland-odyssee

 

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