Album Review: Anthony Cedric Vuagniaux – Danse avec le tonnerre

If your music has found favour with cinema legend David Lynch, then you know you’re doing something inventive, and right.

From the very first minutes of Danse avec le tonnerre, the latest album from Geneva, Switzerland based musician Anthony Cedric Vuagniaux, it’s easy to tell what would have attracted Lynch to the musician’s work.

L’écho de l’ombre could easily have comprised part of the soundtrack to Eraserhead, uneasy listening that is perfect on its own, ready to add unspoken dimensions to any chosen visual experience.

That mix becomes more in tune with Italian movie scores of the 60s and 70s on Soir de tonnerre – initially you’d think it perfect for a pivotal scene in an Italian Western, but it slowly mutates into a very retro-futurist giallo piece, dripping with suspense. The latter texture continues on L’enivrement des rayons gamma – though there are flourishes that remind you of where the likes of Daft Punk and Air found much of their early inspirations.

The first track with lyrics is Joli Cheval, a spoken word piece set to music – and what music. You couldn’t say it is influenced by, say, Broadcast or Röyksopp: it references the 60s and 70s experiments with electronic music that helped those bands to form their own musical identities.

Vuagniaux certainly creates his own identity in Danse avec le tonnerre as an album, one where Delia Derbyshire, Silver Apples, Ennio Morricone, and Wendy Carlos dominate the airwaves and, like here, give us music that plays with the expectations and narratives of pop music, remaining accessible all the while.

The title track draws all that together and more – you can feel the tension build within it from the opening seconds, akin to an excursion into hauntology, some eldritch folk horror ready to spring at you from the icy blackness of your own imagination.

It’s that ability to get those listening to create their own visuals for the music that is a real strength on the album – you might not know the background of various sound effects and samples, but you instinctively know how they are meant to make you feel on an emotional level; Argento, Leone, and indeed Lynch himself would have loved to have this album as part of their own works.

Danse avec le tonnerre was released on the 27th of April, 2025, via Plombage Records – along with previous releases by Vuagniaux, it is available to stream on Spotify and download on Bandcamp. Connect with Anthony Cedric Vuagniaux on Facebook or Instagram for all the latest artist news.