Odessey & Oracle
Odessey & Oracle and The Casiotone Orchestra
Carton Records

Some 'chansons baroques et psychédéliques', anyone? Odessey & Oracle is a French pop trio (hailing from Lyon) counting Fanny L'Héritier (on lead vocals, baroque cello and electromechanical piano), Alice Baudoin (on electric harpsichord, analogue synths, recorders and vocals), and Guillaume Médioni (on guitar, dobro resonator guitar, banjo, viola da gamba and vocals). With tags (or references) like 'baroque pop', 'Brian Wilson', 'Duncan Browne', 'Odessey and Oracle', 'Robert Wyatt', 'Sagittarius' [the band, not within the astrology field] 'The Left Banke', 'The Beach Boys', 'The Zombies', 'White Noise', 'psychedelic pop' it's quite obvious that we're up for some different pop experimentalism experience. A chamber take on the classic 1960s pop pop favourites. You are dead serious and deeply into pop music when you name your band project after The Zombies' c.l.a.s.s.i.c. 1968 album, Odessey and Oracle (can you believe it: the group disbanded some months before its release...).

Odessey & Oracle and The Casiotone Orchestra is a string and keyboard (as in Korg MS-20, Juno-60, Pianet, Yamaha CP-25, and Casio tone keyboards kick-started by Médioni) 'version' of the 'song-cycle' (or being the song writing sound-a-likes) of The Zombies. This is music like it could have been/sounded like after a roundtrip, time-machine ride: 'contemporary' electric music (well, 60s rooted -- and the 60s are still contemporary some 50 years on, right?) whirl-pooled through the classical styled swirling and dizzying sounds of the 'Baroque', the 'Renaissance', and the 'Medieval'. It is for sure a true cure for pain ride, yes. Odessey & Oracle and The Casiotone Orchestra was put out near mid-December 2014, and it is a nifty and catchy (well, as catchy as barouqe music can be) ride.

The seventeen track of the album holds a lot of 'whole', full songs, plus a number of in-betweeners (from "Invention #1" to "Invention #8") like if they were some intermission-like tracks. However, intemissions or not, the tracks of (the total) of Odessey & Oracle and... are very joyful and with an intoxicating sounding. The content is all together quite splendid and fabulous. Come in, drop out, enjoy. In fact, it is quite super-duper sounding. Their musical esapaced have been described like being (or sounding like) "...incorporating various influences from the Middle Ages to the present day, from JS Bach to Dirty Projectors." (Boozetunes) Some sophisticated and marvellous pop music, anyone? Some sophisticated and marvellous pop music, anyone/someone? Here's quite a lot of it for you, I guess.

Copyright © 2015 Håvard 'jusqu'à une île' Oppøyen