KOROVA MILK BAR

A band and an album I forgot about. Thanks to the pandemic I have more time to spend at home without commuting by car, which means also more time to listen to albums carefully enough. And I'm regretting not having listened to this one in the right mode and in the right mood until now. It's good, well played, with a lot of ideas and good melodies, but the key to understand it was reading that they are from Bretagne. This is the element that I was previously unable to identify.

This is everything but a folk band, but the speech on Deconnexion with that keyboard background has made me recall Deliverance by Alan Stivell. Two totally different songs, but with something in common.

Apart of this unexpected "connexion", the quartet shows an excellent musicianship even if I must say that the bassist is the most remarkable of the four.

The band is also cinematic: Hal 9000, with the heavy breath of "David Bowman" is an unusual musical interpretation of one of the topic moments of Kubrik's 2001. I can't tell what the French speech says for sure, because of my poor French, but I caught some words and it seems the French tranlsation of what HAL tells to David when he's going to reset him. This in the first 3 minutes, the rest of this 10 minutes long track is an alternance of rock, jazz, electronics, funk, a bit of everything, let's say.

The whole album has a bit of everything: Methode Coue' has a '60s vibe, "Le Plus beau jour de votre vie (The most beautiful day of your life) is a sort of funky, "Apres Tout" (After All) has a melodic start of piano and voice as in some French "chansonnes", I also think to Harmonium, but later the piano becomes darker. It's still melodic enough, even when a tape played backward chenges the mood completely. I'm not sure but I have also the impression of a Theremin.

The closer is a chamber rock track on which the guitar reminds me to the style and the sounds of Angel Ontalva and his October Equus. But italso features a very good organ part.

So, it's a complex album, unfortunately a "one shot" release from a band that in my opinion would have deserved more appreciation. The problem is when there are lazy listeners like me. I have kept this album in a pocket for years before giving it the attention it deserved.