MELODY’S ECHO CHAMBER
Far-out French musician makes long-awaited, experimental return.
“I RETURNED TO MY CHILDHOOD MUSIC CONSERVATOIRE, WHICH WAS VERY SPECIAL AT AGE 30.” COSMIC CHAMBER: MELODY PROCHET IS SET TO ENCHANT WITH HER SECOND ALBUM.
Like bLue moons, Melody’s Echo Chamber albums don’t come around often. And like the moons, they’re otherworldly, luminous and sound as if they’re created with cosmic dust.
Provence-born Paris-based Melody Prochet released her self-titled debut in 2012, a bilingual psychedelic dreamscape produced by her then partner Kevin Parker of Tame Impala. Prochet’s live band elicited much love from European audiences, while Prochet herself appeared in Vogue and other style bibles thanks to her sartorial élan and Anita Pallenberg bangs. And then, nothing. Well, almost nothing.
From Pink They Fell Into Blue was a digital-only EP released in 2013, a fêted second collaboration between Prochet and Parker that wasn’t to be. So Melody’s forthcoming second album Bon Voyage isn’t so much a renaissance as an inspired reimagining: wilder, more experimental and teeming with vitality. The debut imbued the spirit of a more diaphanous Stereolab with lysergic rushes throughout, whereas Bon Voyage adds to the mix influences as diverse as old skool hip hop, Swedish jazz, Can and Alice Coltrane. It shouldn’t work but it really does. The method in all the madness was to “never break the rhythm”, explains Prochet.
Bon Voyage began when Prochet found kindred spirits in Swedish progressive rockers Dungen at the Levitation Festival in Angers in 2016. They talked of working together, which Prochet made happen when she relocated to Sweden to record in the studio of
Fredrik Swahn of The Amazing, situated in a wood in Solna, north of Stockholm. With contributions from Swahn, Dungen guitarist Reine Fiske and some turntable dexterity from Dungen frontman Gustav Ejstes, it’s a collaborative record with Prochet in full control.
“I was definitely the producer from the start,” she says.“At the end I was sculpting the sessions all night. But Reine’s sound makes the difference and Swahn’s endless patience and mindfulness made everything possible.”
Prochet resumed playing the violin – which she hadn’t touched since childhood – and went back to school to learn the drums: “I returned to my childhood music conservatoire, which was very special at age 30. Drums have always been my obsession but had become a source of frustration. I worked on it and got to play many of the beats on the record and finally be satisfied.”
Johan Holmegaard from Dungen, whom Melody calls “the master”, provides some rhythmic motifs on the epic Quand Les Larmes D’un Ange Font Danser Les Neige. Pond musician Nicholas Allbrook also drops in to drop some freestyle poetry slam.
Visions Of Someone Special nods to Serge Gainsbourg’s Ford Mustang, a guitar lick that was a happy accident.“We kept it in as a homage and made something special around it,” says Prochet, “though we were mostly inspired by the nylon guitar from Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges’ Clube Da Esquina.”
And then there’s Desert Horse, juxtaposing sparsity with wild bursts of arabesque ululations, backward loops and a cosmic vocoder.
Enjoy this incredible trip, because who knows when the next one will come around. JA