- Code:
-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
ARTIST..: Mediavolo
ALBUM...: Soleil Sans Retour
GENRE...: Rock
STYLE...: Ethereal, Darkwave, Shoegaze, Progressive Rock, Hard Rock
YEAR....: 2003
LABEL...: Saravah
ENCODER.: LAME 3.98.4 -V0 TRACKS..: 10
BITRATE.: 250 kbps avg SOURCE..: CD
QUALITY.: 44.1kHz/Stereo SIZE....: 87.58 MB
URL..: http://www.last.fm/music/Mediavolo
- TRACKLIST
1 Soleil Sans Retour 5:01
2 Cryogénie 5:10
3 Ma Rédemption 4:06
4 La Fille de Ryan 4:04
5 Antichambre 4:48
6 Maxime 4:13
7 Ballon Rouge 2:18
8 Le Gouffre Aux Chiméres 7:09
9 Derniére Fantaisie 4:46
10 Final 7:55
Total Playtime: 49:30
It was in 1999 in Brest Mediavolo born. The group is composed of five
members: PhylTmon (drums and texts), Mr. Dupraz (guitar, production), Jac
(composition, arrangement and bass), Fabrice Duhamel (keyboards) replaced in
2000 by Azraelle, and Geraldine (vocals) . This training takes out a
self-produced 4 tracks Lost in space that allows them to sign with the label
Saravah Nantes and released their first album back in 2003 without Sun.
In 2004 the members of a group. All that remains of the original group that
Geraldine and Jac and hence the duo gives birth to A secret sound, the first
album entirely in English. The group now takes another artistic direction,
combining its melodic pop rock almost brutal. On stage, Fabrice Duhamel joins
on keyboards, followed by Eric Lepape on drums and David Carquet first on
guitar and the bass. They are then signed by a German record label"
Kalinkaland " and the album was released in January 2006. In 2008, the band
signed with the French label "PrikosnovTnie". The fourth album, Unaltered
Empire, released the same year. Mediavolo sucks sounds of the 70's and 80's.
The singer GTraldinea sometimes accents 'Liz Frazer'. Inspired by the
'Metamorphosis' by Kafka, the album tells the story of this young woman who
gradually transforms into a butterfly. First facing the rejection of others,
it will accept its wings and finally fly.
*
With an amazing sharpness of depth, the French band Mediavolo (GTraldine Le
Cocq and Jacques Henry), unroll the sequencers and the guitars into the last
corner of their sound and give us a fantastic journey in the dimension of the
Romantic-Wave. France, the country where love sometimes feels like a comedy,
has not only Zidane, Joan of Arc and AIR, but also an innovative,
sophisticated underground scene.
*
There's a reason why Pandora starter songs are called "seeds": each has
potential to grow into something magnificent. My first time using said online
radio service, I'd created a Cocteau Twins station to maintain my sanity
during some rote task or another, and periodically heard a mysterious song
for which I was compelled to stop what I was doing and pay attention every
time it came on. That song was "Misunderstanding" by Mediavolo, and my life
as a listener was never the same. The music of Mediavolo has touched me like
that of no other band. In an age where so many songs and their creators
ephemerally surface before drowning in an unfathomable data stream, such life
preservers are few and far between.
Mediavolo hails from the port town of Brest, in northwestern France. The band
has shuffled its cards a few times over the years but, since 2000, GTraldine
Le Cocq (who sings and writes all lyrics) and Jacques Henry (who handles all
music, instruments, and production) have been its constant aces. Known
affectionately as GT and Jac, they took over officially as a duo in 2004, a
binary star pulling other galactic talents into their sessions' orbits but
always shining brightest at the center of them all. Music had always been a
vital force in their lives, prompting Jac to pick up a guitar at age six, and
GT the harp at seven. "We met thanks to common musical connections," GT
recalls. "I joined the band Jac had with his brother and other friends, as it
needed a new lead singer, which led to a name change: that's how Mediavolo
was born." To that name, there is no meaning, save for whatever one brings to
it. Naked and clothed alike, it embraces us as we are and slides around the
brain until it becomes a single bead of dew on a blade of tomorrow.
Listening to any Mediavolo album is an exercise in pareidolia+that
psychological phenomenon by which we see familiar shapes in clouds, stars,
and the occasional potato chip. In this manner we may read core influences
into the band's multifaceted sound, including Cocteau Twins, Kate Bush,
Blonde Redhead, David Bowie, and various new-wave synth acts of the 70s and
80s. For me, Cocteau Twins looms largest of these (for those keeping score,
check out "Resolve," "To the Eye," "Fanciest Scheme," "Up Ahead," and "Wh").
Are these a conscious homage to the band, or does the affinity come about
organically? Jac: "I discovered Cocteau Twins very late, when the band had
just imploded. What struck me most, the first time I heard one of their
songs, is that I felt at home. I think it's a bit of both: I've an organic
link to their music, no doubt, and somehow, I set out to carry on with their
music in my own way." Jac, it bears noting, grew up on a steady diet of Beach
Boys and Beatles, neither of which bear out on his compositional world, but
whom he credits nonetheless for making him the musician he is today. Whatever
the persuasion, Mediavolo is a universe unto itself, where popular footholds
are white dwarves at best. As in a kaleidoscope, such elements are fragmented
beyond recognition, so that from them a new mosaic emerges.
Soleil Sans Retour (2003) - is a self-styled "collection of short stories on
the difficulty of living in today's world." By way of introduction, the title
song orchestrates our inclusion in a sound-world dappled with shadow and the
promise of skin-to-skin contact. With its tasteful keyboard accents, this
compact drama evokes old discoveries and new nostalgias. As with much of what
follows, there is antiqueness at play, a chain of vignettes swimming in
increasingly potent fire. "CryogTnie" is a strangely tender crawl inward and
spins GT's reverbed voice atop a crunchier peak. Touches of mandolin speak of
sconce-lit catacombs, while above ground lovers wander, ignorant, through
catacombs of their own.
"DemiTre Fantaisie" (Last Fantasy) feathers the album's swan, working its
contortions through the instrumental simmer of "Final" and on to the smooth
echo chamber of "Wh." Between their frame lies a treasure trove of faded
photographs. From the slices of 70s rock that clasp then release us through
the chronological reckoning of "Ma redemption" and "Ballon rouge" to the
ever-after wayfaring of "Le Gouffre aux chimFres," we sense reams of trauma
with every lyric sweep, but also the marginalia of difference between them
(note, for instance, the watery play of harpsichord and vibraphone in
"Antichambre"). What distinguishes Soleil is its malleability: just when
you've pegged a song's psychological shape, it contorts into something new
yet clearly underwritten by the same genetic signature. Furthermore, with "La
Fille de Ryan" (Ryan's Daughter)+a nod to the David Lean film of the same
name+it foreshadows Effets Personnels, which takes listeners on a soldier's
"philosophical and surrealist journey" through the First World War.
-=- SHGZ -=-
P.S.
** Thanks ***
*** BCC FNT IPC SSR ***
*** For Knowing Where The Music Is At ***
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