Melody's Echo Chamber Makes Psychedelic Music For An Enchanted Planet

Melody Prochet makes music for an enchanted planet. It's been five years since the French musician has released a new record as Melody's Echo Chamber. Bon Voyage is a welcome return to her wildly imaginative psychedelic sphere swirled in rhythmic shuffles, wailing synths and recklessly buoyant guitar riffs. It's like a bell-bottomed glam rocker woke up in a retro-futuristic society overrun by elves and forest creatures.

"Cross My Heart" is one of the most ambitious tracks from Bon Voyage, a delicatessen of string-swept psychedelic funk layered like one of David Axelrod's most decadent compositions. A little over a minute into the lush soundscape, Prochet, along with Dungen's Reine Fiske and The Amazing's Fredrik Swahn, spins the track on its axis to a wobbly, flute-filled breakbeat. It inspires Prochet to switch from English to French, from singing about the sadness of "seasons passing by" to uncovering "une civilisation perdue / au fond d'un puit" ("a lost civilization at the bottom of a well.")

Director Dr D Foothead concludes the animated story found in previous videos for "Breathe In, Breathe Out" and "Desert Horse" with bubbling vegetation, cosmic deer, glowing ocarinas and blobs of pure light, resembling Moebius' surreal comics. In a palette of pink, purple and teal, the trilogy depicts a civilization lost and regained, of heavenly bodies broken and reconnected to earth through music, the healing force of the universe.

Bon Voyage comes out June 15 via Fat Possum.

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