Franck Vigroux – Sonnailles (Digital/Vinyl – Raster)
For more than twenty years, French artist Franck Vigroux has built an impressive discography, and this new album marks another compelling addition to his body of work. Vigroux has long sought to fuse music and rhythm with bodies in motion—an approach familiar from his live performances, which frequently incorporate dance.
Franck Vigroux remains a true ‘sound architect’, working like a scientist in a laboratory as he shapes, manipulates, and distorts sounds in his studio to forge distinctive sonic textures. On this album, he delivers an overwhelming sonic experience, combining powerful, immersive soundscapes with genuine hardcore rhythms. Hard-hitting kick drums merge with infectious Dance grooves, while moments of understated IDM emerge before the music shifts unexpectedly into more Cinematic territory. At times, chaotic Noise passages create a hypnotic, trance-inducing atmosphere, and the album eventually closes with Psychedelic loops that lean more heavily towards a dance-oriented aesthetic. Also striking is the way he adds various vocal effects to his songs—though not to all of them.
Franck Vigroux experiments freely throughout, clearly intent on getting listeners moving while offering a remarkably diverse collection of tracks. It is a versatile record, although I personally found the more restrained IDM passages to be its most captivating moments. (Rating:7½).
Listen to “Gabales”:
About Franck Vigroux
Franck Vigroux is a French musician, composer, and media artist. He began on guitar before turning to electronics, tape machines, and turntables, and his output moves across electro-acoustic music, experimental electronica, modern composition, improvisation, and avant-rock. He founded the label D’Autres Cordes (DAC Records) in 2002 and set up D’Autres Cordes as a performing-arts company in 2008. Vigroux has recorded with Mika Vainio, Elliott Sharp, Reinhold Friedl of Zeitkratzer, and Joey Baron, and works regularly with the visual artists Antoine Schmitt and Kurt d’Haeseleer.
He opened his solo discography with the “Lilas” trilogy in 2003 and moved toward noise and industrial techno on albums such as “Recolte” (2009) and “We (Nous Autres)” (2012). Vigroux released “Totem” on Aesthetical in 2019, “Ballades sur lac gele” on Raster in 2020, and “Atotal” on Aesthetical in 2022. In a 2019 ‘Click Interview’ with Franck Vigroux, he described himself as “a multifaceted artist”. “Sonnailles” returns him to Raster, the German label that issued “Ballades sur lac gele”.
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