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Brannten Schnüre

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Läuten der Seele, “Unterhaltungen mit Larven und Überresten” (World of Echo, 2025)

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This latest opus from Bavarian hauntological supernova Christian Schoppik is a bit of a departure from his excellent “Water” trilogy in a couple of significant ways. The big one is that Nový Svět’s Jota Solo (Jürgen Weber) has joined the fold on vocals, but this release also marks Schoppik’s return to more conventional song lengths after three albums in a row of longform collages.

Any resemblance to conventional songcraft pretty much begins and ends with those shorter durations and the presence of a vocalist, however, as all of these pieces remain very much in the “hallucinatory soundscape” vein (albeit now with some hushed German-language spoken word thrown into the mix). Unsurprisingly, this is another great Läuten der Seele album, as the best pieces feel like a more sophisticated, Germanic, and playful channeling of Current 93’s dreamlike “TheInmostLight” trilogy.    

The album’s unusual and inscrutable title translates as “Conversations With Larvae and Fossilized Remains,” which deceptively suggests that this album is likely to resemble one of Richard Skelton’s more earthy, dark ambient releases. The title makes a bit more sense in light of Margot Benetti’s insightful album description, however, as she likens this release to a crack in a stone wall that hides a completely different and unrecognizable reality.

In a microscopic sense, that would literally be true, but Schoppik’s vision is considerably more fun, surreal, and eclectic than the secret inner life of a pile of rocks. While the exact character of that secret wonderland is quite a challenge to describe due to the disorienting and shifting juxtapositions of disparate sounds and eras in Schoppik’s sound collages, “a hallucinatory mash-up of Grimm’s fairy tales, German cabaret, and ancient folk rituals” is probably as close to the mark as it is possible to get. 

Sadly, my grasp of German is not strong enough to fully comprehend most of Weber’s lyrics, but I am not sure how much that matters, as he has an endearingly well-documented history of throwing himself wholeheartedly into singing in other languages that he has not come close to mastering. The important thing is that the essence and character come through and his raspy presence is a welcome addition to the Läuten der Seele vision. Sometimes he sings a bit, but he primary functions as an enigmatic narrator for my trip down an endlessly shifting and temporarily elusive rabbit hole of Bavarian mindfuckery and he nicely imbues the festivities with a deep gravitas (regardless of what flavor of eclectic and anachronistic samples Schoppik throws his way). More importantly, Weber seems uniquely well-attuned to Schoppik’s freewheeling and mischievously phantasmagoric vision of hauntological folklore and whimsy. 

To my ears, the album’s zenith is arguably the one-two punch of “Wir Zwei Allein” & “Das Alles Dass.” In the former, a slow and beautiful cello theme anchors a delirious swirl of bittersweet woodwinds, heavenly choral samples, hushed spoken word, and insistently cheery German pop music. In the latter, a host of streaking and blooping electronics flickers across a shapeshifting and warmly murmuring backdrop of layered voices, acoustic guitars, and carnivalesque calliope. Impressively, that hot streak improbably extends for at least the next four songs, as Schoppik’s vibrant collages weave through a mesmerizing dream-fog of croaking frogs, gently sloshing waves, shivering strings, ancient pagan rituals, operatic vocal samples, and mournful accordion melodies. 

Elsewhere, “Schein und Haben” beautifully transforms from shimmering and spacy ambiance into a final act that sounds like a surprisingly soulful and lovely duet between a Christmas-y sounding ‘60s pop song and a strangled/deflating saxophone. The closing “Ein Englisches Lied” is yet another stunner, as Schoppik weaves a compelling maelstrom of choral voices, streaking electronics, accordion melodies, and some darkly sensuous singing from Weber. That definitely ends the album on a very strong note, but there are not really any lulls or missteps to be found before that point, as the album’s weaker tracks tend to simply be interludes rather than fully formed pieces that lacked inspiration.

Schoppik truly outdid himself as a sonic magpie on this album, as very few other artists could craft a sustained and seamless spell of shimmering unreality that freely dabbles in everything from space music to sea shanties to flamenco to something resembling a beachside jazz funeral. The overall effect is akin to experiencing a warmly beautiful cascade of someone else’s flickering memories of German seaside vacations in ‘60s mingled with hints of something a bit darker, more timeless, more mysterious, and a bit otherworldly. It is extremely impressive that Schoppik managed to pull off such an illusion for an entire album without ever losing the sense of wonder that tenderly pervades everything. This one may very well be Schoppik’s masterpiece. If it isn’t, it is at least one of the best headphone albums of 2025 by a landslide.

Listen here.

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Brannten Schnüre, “Sommer im Pfirsichhain” (Aguirre, 2015)

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Perpetual frontrunners Natural Snow Buildings and My Cat is an Alien aside, the single most unique and transcendental album of 2015 was this full-length debut from Würzburg,-based experimental folk duo Brannten Schnüre. While previous releases were primarily focused upon crackling, ritualistic-sounding, and eerily beautiful abstract collages, Sommer im Pfirsichhain (Summer in Peach Grove) takes Christian Schoppik’s “German hauntology” aesthetic to a whole new plane, sounding like nothing less than the ghost of a lovesick Weimar Republic busker who happened upon an accordion, an out-of-tune violin, and a battered four-track in the spirit world and somehow managed to mail the resultant album to the Aguirre office in Belgium. As if that were not enough, Sommer improves upon that already appealing description by balancing its more macabre and experimental tendencies with an unexpected warmth, sweetness, and innocence.

Christian Schoppik’s Brannten Schnüre project first surfaced with a now impossible to find split release in 2011 on Germany’s SicSic cassette label. The excellent Aprilnacht tape then appeared on the same label in 2014 and earned Schoppik a bit more well-deserved attention, as his surreal loop collages of weathered traditional folk and classical music samples, melancholy accordion, enigmatic dialogue, and lilting, half-sung German vocals were both beautifully constructed, wonderfully otherworldly, and completely unstuck in time. 

It seemed like a perfect and fully formed aesthetic, so his decision to expand into a duo with vocalist Katie Rich and transition from loop-based soundscapes into actual songs for this latest album was quite an unexpected and bold one. It seems to have worked brilliantly, however, as everything that made Aprilnacht so singular is still more or less intact, but Schoppik has found a way to transform that vision into something a bit more melodic, tender, and memorable.

The transformation was not a complete one, however, as Rich’s haunting ballads are still interspersed with a number of more drone-based pieces that would not have been at all out of place on Aprilnacht. Schoppik excels equally at the two veins and they balance each other nicely, even if the vocal pieces tend to be the ones that stick in my head a bit longer. Among the instrumental pieces, the opening “Vom Baum im Hof” probably stands out the most, as a languorous melody unfolds over a sensuous bed of churning and bleary strings as floating synth tones flutter and bleed together in the periphery. 

It is followed by one of Rich’s lovely and melancholy accordion ballads (“Schweiß“), which is ingeniously made surreal and ghostly with the addition of quivering string stabs and deep, bleary, and ominous horns. “Feldweg,” on the other hand, is such a perfectly eerie song that it does not need much more than a simple guitar arpeggio and Rich’s vocals to cast a sublimely, mesmerizing spell (though it does benefit from some nice additional touches, like a bittersweet accordion melody, washes of guitar shimmer, and high-pitched backing vocals that sound like a chorus of ghost puppets). 

Later in the album, “Brüderchen Und Schwesterchen” manages to hit the wonderful place where the two strains of Schoppik’s vision intersect, as corroded loops of undulating accordion arpeggios steadily grow in power while Rich seems to be distractedly half-singing by herself in another reality altogether. The rattling and undulating beauty of “Nachmittagsschwüle” is likely the album’s zenith, however, sounding like an epic tour de force of heartache, mourning, and occult nocturnal ritual condensed into just three perfect minutes.

There is an enormous amount to like about Sommer, so it is difficult to think of any real flaws other than the inclusion of a few instrumentals that are not quite as strong as the material surrounding them (“Lichter am Weiher” and “Mithra im Jardin Botanique”). That minor quibble (“why isn’t the album absolutely perfect?!?”) is naturally eclipsed by the many ways in which Sommer is truly wonderful and utterly mesmerizing. Great melodies and excellent songwriting aside, Brannten Schnüre excel the most at the more intangible and fundamental things, such as lightness of touch, use of space, dynamics, sequencing, and texture. 

In particular, I was most struck by how effectively Rich and Schoppik maintained a spell of bittersweet, mysterious beauty without ever erring into oppressive sadness. Schoppik’s talent for texture deserves a special mention as well, as Sommer‘s half-dream/half-nightmare spell would not be nearly as effective if the various instruments were not all frayed, rusted, submerged, or shrouded in audio fog. 

Sommer im Pfirsichhein so effectively creates its own little dream world that it feels like gazing into an extremely lovely and elaborate version of whatever the summer equivalent of a snowglobe would be, then noticing all kinds of disconcerting little details amidst all the beautiful seaside houses and picturesque tree-lined streets, like menacing shadows; a haunted-looking, hollow-eyed child; a body hanging from a tree; or a large rotting animal carcass on a perfectly manicured lawn. In short, exactly the sort of thing that I love. This album is absolutely stellar.

Listen here.