* En anglais uniquement
Under the name
Melody's Echo Chamber, French musician
Melody Prochet crafts sweet and swirling psych pop that brings in elements of prog and folk while casting out bewitching melodies as well. She holds her own on collaborations with musicians from
Tame Impala (on 2012's self-titled album) and
Dungen (on 2018's
Bon Voyage), and by the time of 2022's
Emotional Eternal, staked out her own sonic territory.
Prochet worked in various bands before starting
Melody's Echo Chamber in 2012 after having a dream that the acoustics of her bedroom projected an infinite delay. No stranger to performance,
Prochet had already worked with the twee pop
Narcoleptic Dancers and the dreamy
My Bee's Garden, a project she was very much central to. When
My Bee's Garden supported Australian guitar rockers
Tame Impala on a European tour in 2010,
Prochet bonded with Kevin Parker, who offered to help with production of her new solo material as
Melody's Echo Chamber. The two worked quickly, with some elements of the project's lushly dreamy songs recorded in Parker's makeshift studio and some laid down in her grandmother's seaside home in the South of France. The self-titled album was released on Fat Possum Records in the fall of 2012, and
Prochet assembled a live band to fill out her solo songs as plans for tours and live performances started accumulating.
She began working on a second album with Parker, but things stalled out after a couple years of recording.
Prochet moved to Sweden, and along the way met up with
Dungen's
Reine Fiske and
the Amazing's
Fredrik Swahn. The trio, along with
Dungen's
Gustav Ejstes and
Johan Holmegard, crafted a free-flowing mix of prog, psych, and pop that had a much looser and surprising feel than her debut. They finished the album and a song was released in April of 2017, but then
Prochet suffered a major injury that halted the record's planned release to allow her time to heal. A little more than a year later,
Bon Voyage was issued by Fat Possum. Following the record's release,
Prochet stepped away from music entirely, moving to the Alps with her partner and starting a family. Inspired by the only music she heard, the ambient music that played while her partner mediated, her mind gradually turned back to composing and she teamed again with
Fiske. The pair began work on new songs by trading files over the internet. Early sessions were halted by the COVID pandemic, then when they began again, the duo were joined by
Swahn. The music they created was a less maximalist, more personal take on the sound of
Bon Voyage, focused more on healing than on the exorcizing of demons. It also dealt with themes of motherhood and added some Turkish psych to the musical mix. The resulting album,
Emotional Eternal, was released by Domino in April of 2022. ~ Fred Thomas & Tim Sendra