Brannten Schnüre、Läuten der SeeleのメンバーによるTABI TAPES!
Leibzig-based artist Christian Schoppik digs deep into his musical memory bank and reveals a staggeringly electric range of influences that underpin his sainted Brannten Schnüre and Läuten der Seele projects for our in-house mixtape series Tabi Tapes. We are in awe.
Working as something of a hallucinatory waking dream, Schoppik meticulously assembles antiquated sound fragments, worldly folk, spliced interviews and scraps of obscure European arthouse cinema in a way so fluid and effortless it feels like a world you want to live inside forever. Submitting to this and allowing the mind to drift between raw Greek traditional music, delicate Volksmusik and that shreds of mysterious film dialogue really feels like a key to unlocking the Brannten Schnüre puzzle. Whereas in Christian’s own music, many of his mildewed, sepia-coated music samples are stretched into a warbling slurry, here we’re allowed to bask in them unaltered and unadorned. For us, this is the essence of what a mixtape should be - a totally disorientating collage of sound that over time becomes something of a companion. Rarely has something had us this swoon from the off, perhaps not since the very first Tabi Tape back in 2019 from pianola (which we not so incidentally reprinted this week for that very reason). Those nerdy trainspotters on the hunt for Schoppik’s source material may be left wanting, save for a few tiny snippets we’re in total terra incognita, but our ears pricked up on a Schnüre track that could be unreleased. So yeah…a genuinely extraordinary, oddly romantic and richly cinematic triumph in threading a cord through disparate worlds and traditions that feels like a future classic from the very first place. Sublime.