Melody’s Echo Chamber Drops Animated “Desert Horse” Video From Bon Voyage

French artist Melody Prochet made her first real international waves under the moniker of Melody’s Echo Chamber, but there were definitely a couple of other groups that she was involved with prior to embarking on her solo career.  One of these bands was a synth pop outfit called My Bee’s Garden, with whom she opened for Aussie monsters, Tame Impala.  Eventually, Prochet would form both a personal and professional partnership with Tame Impala mastermind, Kevin Parker, who would go on to produce and perform on the self-titled Melody’s Echo Chamber debut in 2012.  Recording at Kevin‘s home studio in Perth, Australia, she discovered ways to merge his rock background and unorthodox approach to sonics with her own history as a viola player with a dozen years of formal training under her belt.  She’s spoken of her draw toward collaborating with Parker as an organic one stemming from feelings that her solo material felt too stifled by her more structured classical background; the songs were too “pretty,” and she recognized him as the ideal collaborator to help rough them up a bit.  She would later return to France to record her vocals alone, isolated in her grandparents beach house.  The result was hear soaring, dreamlike vocals laid over a mixture of psychedelia, krautrock, spacey electronica, and her French roots, with a sound that remains uniquely Prochet at its core.  It proved to be a critically acclaimed effort that helped to put her name on the map, but that was 5 years ago.  Next month, Melody finally returns with her long awaited followup.

With a June 15th release date, Bon Voyage promises “seven expansive tracks,” but it’s an album that was that was initially expected to hit shelves last year, or even as far back as 2015, depending how you look at it.  News of the multi-instrumentalist’s, yet unnamed, sophomore LP was first announced in 2014 with the release of a song titled, “Shirim,” which the songwriter produced herself.  At that point, it was stated that it would appear on her next album coming in “spring of 2015.”  But while that date came and went without a release, “Shirim” is still listed as the final track on Bon Voyage, albeit, most likely, an updated version.

What did happen in 2015, however, was Prochet‘s meeting and instant connection with the jazzy Swedish pastoral psych-prog outfit, Dungen.  They spoke of working together, so she eventually just up and moved there in the winter of 2016 to make it happen.  Dungen guitarist, and all around prolific Swedish prog figure, Reine Fiske, helped Prochet co-produce Bon Voyage alongside Fredrik Swahn, whose group, The Amazing, Fiske has also been heavily involved with.  For Melody‘s 30th birthday, which fell on April 3rd of last year, she dropped a surprise cut titled “Cross My Heart” in a YouTube video featuring a still of the Bon Voyage illustrated cover art.  If any of you have listened to my weekly radio program, Pedal Error, you might have heard me play this one back on Episode 16, in March.   The tune credits Dungen frontman, Gustav Ejstes for the organ work, but the drumkit definitely sounds as if it was manned by Johan Holmegaard (Dungen, The Amazing), who is also credited with appearing on the album, along with Nick Allbrook (Pond, Mink Mussel Creek, ex-Tame Impala) on bass.  An epic, sprawling number, “Cross My Heart” was an encouraging preview of what’s to come.  The foundation possessed an undeniable Dungen influence — something that I’ll always welcome — with vocals reminiscent of Kazu Makino from Blonde Redhead.  Prochet has no qualms with allowing her influences to bleed through, and “Cross My Heart” has an almost Unknown Mortal Orchestra-style neo-soul beakdown, partway through, before coming out the other side in full-on Stereolab mode.

This time, the album would definitely be coming out in 2017.  How could it not?  The title was attached and even the cover art.  In fact, it still lists the Bon Voyage with a 2017 date under the aforementioned YouTube video.  Instead, the project was delayed after Melody suffered a serious injury that involved broken vertebrae and an aneurysm, which required both hospitalization and surgery.  Through all of this, Bon Voyage has been an, undoubtedly, ambitious undertaking that is only now getting ready to reveal itself.  Testing herself in ways that she hadn’t in the past, Prochet takes on 3 different languages, singing in English, French, and Swedish, at various points throughout the LP; and even overcomes previous hesitations to take a crack at the drums for this recording.  According to the press release, Melody‘s collaboration with Fiske and Swahn involved her “sculpting and producing the sessions as well as encouraging the players around her to experiment, often with instruments that might be less familiar to them.”  Content-wise, Melody is said to have packed the album with “fables of spiritual search and emotional healing,” but it’s that desire to experiment and push herself in new directions that intrigues me the most about the upcoming release.

We now receive the latest offering from Bon Voyage, titled “Desert Horse,” a track that Melody claims “was a monster.”  Adding, “It’s the most sculptural and mad I guess. It embodies my difficult life journey these last few years through my own personal desert of heartaches, thirst, mirages, moving sands, disillusionment and of becoming an adult woman in a mad world. It’s a little punk to me somehow.“

Check out “Desert Horse” below, in the form of a bugged-out, hallucinogenic animated video directed by Daniel Foothead, which both continues and follows in the footsteps of the similarly animated video for the song “Breathe In, Breathe Out” that dropped last month.

BON VOYAGE
Tracklisting