AUDIO'M

With this new project, Audio M tends to make its place among the most original bands in contemporary progressive rock. This opus is a true homogeneous suite. It's not a simple succession of songs linked more or less skilfully and having no other link than to tell one story. Here, the cohesion of the whole is absolute. The themes vary, evolve, alternating moments of deep tension and more ethereal passages, carrying a strong female voice.

The group has refocused on the rock dimension of their music. The viola da gamba and the flute no longer appear here. This removes a bit of originality from the group's style but reinforces its coherence.

The general atmosphere is dark, even oppressive. If we want to link broadly their music to a traditional progressive trend, the group is not in line with the French theatrical progressive rock of Ange or Mona Lisa but rather in the lineage of groups like Carpe Diem or Arachnoid or even Shylock. Otherwise, the continual alternation of intense moments and respites can also be reminiscent of the king crimson of 1973.

Amateurs of poetry will also notice the rhymes are mainly rich.

Now, we have to wait for the 2nd act. Three acts are planned as a whole. Maybe it would be interesting to develop a little bit more some instrumental themes to better highlight the mastery of the musicians.

Exciting new group that displays flashes of great creativity, causing me to stop what I'm doing and listen! They understand how to settle on ideas which gives the music a grounding and power because it allows for drama when they go thru changes, I love how French artists in general have such a sensitive tonal palette. Tasteful and ear friendly. Most groups do not embrace tonal considerations and therefore sound too "samey". I view it as a necessary part of the composers craft and it just lazy or indulgent not to address it. I will keep an eye on them for sure!

Based on what I discern to be Progarchives rating trends I would give this a solid 4.1 stars and absolutely 4.3 at times. Non of their material quite displays a developed mature rendering but leans more on youthful creativity and discovery.

Coming from the southern Occitan region of France, the band AUDIO'M has been quite ambitious in its pursuit of reaching the pinnacle of progressive rock right from the very start. Take the band's name for example which is a clever amalgamation of the word "audio" with the unlikely pairing "oidium, a thin-wailed spore that is better known as a vineyard disease! Add to that with the band's self-titled debut that emerged in 2016, AUDIO'M featured a staggering ten vocalists and musicians that constructed a larger than life sound but just as soon as the band hit the prog scene seemed to fall into silence. 
Well that quiet time has ceased and in 2022 the band which has been whittled down to a mere seven members has returned with a most ambitious sophomore release titled GODZILLA which showcases a retro prog vibe of the golden age with ample doses of rock, folk, jazz and even baroque music. This time around the band has opted to go for the prog jugular by crafting a single 43 1/2 minute track! No small undertaking here. The entire album may be a mere single track but is broken down into three suits but what a track it is! The first suite is titled "Little Boy" followed by "Gaia" and "The Wake."

GODZILLA revolves around a fable that is told on three albums. This release is only the first but the premises originate on the last track of the debut album, "Friend-less-R" which began the tale of a firebird / phoenix. The story narrates the tale of a phoenix egg that hatches after the explosion of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and upon leaving the scene the hatchling sees the plane that delivered the fatal goods and thinks its his mother. The entire trilogy revolves around this fledgling phoenix searching the world for his perceived mother and his encounters with various mythological creatures and other trials of life. In short this is an ecological lesson set in super-prog prose. How's that for prog excess? Love it!

You don't have to be up on nerdy lyrical concepts to appreciate this fine release however. I usually ignore such storylines and am in it for the music itself. GODZILLA does not disappoint. This single track album experience delivers a nice mix of progressive rock workouts laid out in a 43 1/2 minute stream of consciousness. The track pretty much jumps right into the lyrical presentation with lead singer Emmanuelle Olmo-Cayuela belting out her vocal lines. Honestly i mistook her for a man given that she's a dead ringer for Gnidrolog's Colin Goldring. Although i missed this connection on the first album, the folky parts of AUDIO'M sound just like Gnidrolog in the modern era and that is NOT a bad thing.

Despite comprising a single track as an album experience, GODZILLA does not get bogged down in tedium. While easily digestible melodic motifs are what reel you in and keep you hooked, there are many prog workouts that take this into the world of true complexity. The music is soulful and intricate but never strays from its mission of narrating the tale. There is a brief moment of silence in the middle that effectively divides the album in two but there are actually three suites. The music ranges from lush pastoral progressive folk to fully fueled heavier rock with an active guitar presence, a bantering bass and drumming freneticism. All the musicians are quite skilled and conspire to create a larger sum of the parts.

This gargantuan rock opera certainly could be classified as retro prog as it tackles many styles of classic influences. Primarily existing in the symphonic prog world with crafty atmospheric backdrops and active key stabs tinkling intricate melodies and virtuosity, GODZILLA brings classic Camel, Genesis, Kansas and Focus to mind as well as some of the tricks of the trade from the Italian symphonic prog scene. Heavier passages occur but once again i cannot help but think of Gnidrolog's "Lake Lake" album as the key reference for comparison as even the heavier parts evoke that Goldring vocal style. The music is much denser and complex than anything Gnidrolog conjured up on that album so it's really a reference point only.

While two track albums have been fairly common in prog history, single track albums have been much rarer. I can only think of a few. Jethro Tull's "A Passion Play," Al-BIrd's "Sodom & Gomorra XXI - Progressive Symphonic Poem," a few Buckethead Pikes, Cheer-Accident's "Trading Balloons," Daal's "Navels Falling Into A Living Origami," a few Devil Doll albums, Edge of Sanity's "Crimson" and "Crimson II," Green Carnation's "Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness," well you get the point. Such ambitious album long tracks have to pack an album's worth of ideas into its lengthy run and there's where i feel GODZILLA falls a little short. The track is excellent as a continuous listening experience but seems to lack enough variety to warrant its running time. Another factor that brings this down a tad bit is the fact that Emannuelle Olmo-Cayuela as competent as she is doesn't have a wide vocal range which would expand this album's appeal a bit.

Overall i may not find the album perfect but this is still one of my favorite albums of 2022 as the musical aspects are simply amazing and although i would have loved to hear more adventurous deviations from the musical procession that seems fairly uniform, i am more than impressed by the number of variations the band has eked out from more or less a basic theme. This is a fine accomplishment indeed and only the first of the three trilogies so that means there are two more albums in the horizon. I'm confident this band will expand and develop its sound into ever more nooks and crannies of the prog world. This is an excellent first installment of this ambitious project and not one to be missed. For those who love crazy complex and overweening prog then this was made for you! Definitely one that requires a few attentive listening sessions but the music continues to deliver time and time again. A huge hit for this French group. AUDIO'M is here to stay!

An eclectic band from the South of France (near the Spanish border) here comes up with their sophomore release after 2016's well-acclaimed self-titled debut.

1. "Godzilla" (43:00) opening with Mellotron-drenched heaviness like Italy's DAAL, the vocals of Emmanuelle Olmo-Cayuela are, I'm afraid, an acquired taste--something my ears and brain have failed to acquire (much less tolerate) successfully after four listens. She has such an odd range and styling for the female lead vocalist--and she seems to be constantly struggling to stay on pitch. Nice acoustic guitar work in the pastoral section but nothing very virtuosic, only a progression of arpeggiate chords all played with the same tinger-picked pattern and tempo, but I like the switch from major to minor keys--and Emmanuelle's choices of melody during this section. At 5:28 we are off and running in a more abrasive, DAAL-like passage with Emmanuelle stretching her voice both dynamically and in pitch (though I like the Eliana Valenzuela [of Chilean band Homínido] power she projects here). A brief quiet down passage with Manu's whispers is followed by a section that contains Manu's worst vocal passages. Some cool ideas she just doesn't have the control to pull them off. I love the instrumental palette of the instrumental tenth minute--probably my favorite part of the suite. The next motif is in a bit of an odd time signature and founded in a powerful church organ but then transitions into a brief guitar power chord bridge to a smoother theme. By this point (approaching the one-third mark) the poor drum sound is really starting to grate on me. The move to front of the chunkier jazz-funk bass is cool, though. In the fifteenth minute two guitars solo in their own worlds over the jazz-funk theme. At 15:25 everything stops for pipe organ and Manu to transition us to a brief cinematic guitar solo over "harp", but then we return to a previous theme for a short bit before interesting cinematic "old time" organ transfers us to a more classic four chord blues rock progression over which organ and guitar solo in an URIAH HEEP/early YES kind of way. Manu's regurgitating of the previously established dominant melody takes us out of this and into an eerie doldrums waiting area. Then, at 20:13 guitar and clavichord/organ take us into a kind of IL BALLETTO DI BRONZO passage of psychological frenzy before we are suddenly dropped into a rather idyllic and quite melodic fully-formed ostinato-based motif that borrows quite openly from MIKE OLDFIELD's Incantations from the end of the 20th minute through the 24th minutes we are firmly anchored in that groove--though there is a shift at 23:03 into a bit of a different Oldfield motif--over which Manu sings (almost in an uncanny imitation of the great MADDY PRIOR from Oldfield's original recordings of the album). Even with tempo and instrumental palette changes over the successive minutes, the music still bears quite a striking resemblance to several of Mike Oldfield's 1970s works or themes--including the guitar tones selected for the lead guitar and keys in the 29th minute. Godzilla is still in the cave at the 30-minute mark, though he is here being hailed as the "Messiah." The alternating acoustic guitar pastoral passages and electric guitar-dominated themes are still well within the Oldfield catalog of referents until finally a new GENESIS-like motif is introduced a the 32-minute mark. Another slow, pastoral section in the 36th minute is extinguished in the second half of the 37th minute by a bombastic and melodic motif elevated by Emmanuelle's spirited vocalise. While the music is delightfully complex in its many sudden twists and turns as well in its recapitulations of several recurrent themes, the production feels weak, the vocalist is challenged (despite her obvious confidence and bravery), the subject matter of questionable interest or accuracy, and many of the motifs "incomplete." If there is one other high point in the album's existence, it is for the feeling of a wonderfully cohesive band working together with all their hearts on this project. (75/85)

Total Time 43:00

I must admit, the origin story purported by this band/in this album is rather odd--taking over 28 minutes to hatch, grow up, and emerge from his cave home. I'm guessing that this piece of music is meant to only present us with the birth, development, and debutante of the "messiah" monster, not really getting into his mischief and mayhem. Does that mean we should be expecting further installments of the story of the King of the Monsters from this band in the future? Though the song's opening notes seem to indicate an adherence to the heaviness of the original film soundtrack themes, this does not remain so as the song in the second half becomes more like a celebratory homage to early Mike Oldfield and Genesis's "Supper's Ready." Also, the sound engineering (overall mix, drum sound, and compressed feeling of all the instruments' tracks) is what I'd call substandard--as if it was accomplished with less-than top-notch equipment.

B+/four stars; an excellently rendered prog epic that, unfortunately, contains room for improvement. I hope that future projects of this band, should they choose to stay together, might include better engineering and/or mixing facilities (or personnel) while retaining their excellent spirit of adventure and confidence.

Before us is a very strong and original work. It is the second album of the French prog band Audio'm. Six years after their debut, the band presents a concept consisting of one mega track lasting 43 minutes. So, before us is a very complex undertaking that was executed and presented in a very high-quality and original way. Simon Segura (bass, guitar), Marco Fabbri (drums), Dominique "Oiss" Olmo (guitar), Mathieu Havart, Michel Cayuela (keyboards), Gary Haguenauer (guitar) and Emmanuelle Olmo -Cayuela (voice) did all the writing, composing, recording, mixing and mastering. This really magnificent work really exudes the true term "prog rock". Everything is in the service of presenting this genre, from the complexity, the epic proportions of the composition, the lyrics, to the album cover itself. This work really brings the best of both worlds, such as classic prog sounds, as well as a lot of elements that definitely show a modern and original approach. The whole album is full of mood changes, this piece of music is divided into 10 movements and each one has its own special story. Even if it is a complex work, the band shows how to create music that is simply listenable, where the 43 minutes pass very quickly, of course, many repetitions are necessary to understand and fully absorb this album, but listening is never difficult, it even gives great pleasure.

Somewhere in the world of symphonic prog, inspiration lies, but elements of jazz, baroque music, repetitive sequences that exude eclecticism, and even avant-garde moments find their place. A dose of melancholy permeates through certain sequences, of course, the details on the mellotron always somehow hint at that story. Layers and layers of keyboards constantly bring sonic attacks, quality, and accurate rhythmic changes really give an additional feeling of tension, guitars at the top of the task (solos, riffs, and beautiful arpeggios), and vocals are ideal for this album.

Fantastic album that every prog rock fan should hear !

AUDIO'M is somewhat of an obscure albeit contemporary French progressive rock band that comes from the extreme southwestern coastal town of Banyul-sur-Mer which is straddled on the Spanish border and is probably best known for performing at several prog festivals such as the Prog Sud opening for Telescope Road and BARAKA8 as well as at the 2016 Crescendo Festival where they opened for IO Earth. AUDIO'M remains a bit of a mystery as there's not much info out there even in this years of 2020 about them. So far this band has released this one eponymously titled album which came out in 2016.

What gives this band a rather unique edge is the fact that the six tracks that clock in at over 61 minutes of playing time were originally composed for piano and the viola da gamba in traditional classical forms and then expanded to included several other instruments and vocalists. This is a fairly large ensemble with the following nine members: Marco Fabbri (drums), Michel Cayuela (keyboards), Mathieu Havart (keyboards), Simon Segura (bass), Gary Haguenauer (guitar), Dominique Olmo (guitar), Emma Boudeau (viola), Lyse Mathieu (flute), Emannuelle Olmo-Cayuela (vocals).

This is fairly intricate prog with meandering piano led compositions that engage in all the progressive rock complexities with all but one track running over the nine minute mark. All the members are French except for the Italian drummer Marco Fabbri who is fairly well known in his homeland. The music is somewhat of a composite of styles in which the cello, viola and flute generate a classical music underpinning while the rock instrumentation adds a more bombastic heft. The lyrics are exclusively in English although heavily steeped in French philosophies and sounding a bit exotic as this band is clearly from a non-English speaking land graced by the feminine charm of singer Emannuelle Olmo-Cayuela although her vocal style is on the lower register and reminds me of a more refined and tamed Catherine Ribeiro.

The music is quite original as it not only provides the classical blueprints but engages in a veritable roller coaster ride of heavier prog rock workouts as well as some jazzier interludes and even a touch of local Occitan folk. The focus on the harmonic tapestries and complex rhythms gives the entire album a very classic 70s retro prog feel which is exactly what the band was aiming for. The album opens with the near 15 minute "Stolen Love Bite" and wends and winds its way through the album to the near 9 minute closer "Friend-Less-R." The diversity of the musical styles keeps the album quite entertaining with everything from Anglagard heavy prog workouts to more gypsy folk infused segments with symphonic prog bombast. Although performed in English, AUDIO'M never strays far from its French sensual sensibilities and the music evokes the Mediterranean musical scene in nuanced ways even if the band excels at checking off the list of prog characteristics.

Despite nine musicians on board, this album never feels overbloated, overweening or that anyone needs to hog the show. This music is seamlessly blended to create a vast ensemble type of sound where intricate riffs are nurtured by the team of atmospheric construction workers and although the melodic flow of the vocals keeps an accessible underpinning to the music the instrumental workouts can induce in extremely convoluted hairpin turns and check off all the requirements to qualify as difficult listening music. This is actually a really invigorating album as it balances the lush dreamier passages perfectly with the more ambitious angular bursts of energy. This may be one that requires a few spins to understand its logic but in the end i find this to be an engaging and original slice of southern French prog. Hopefully this band will craft a second coming of sort since this debut demonstrates some serious talent.

First of all, I want to thank the administrators of the site for accepting my proposal to introduce Audio'M in their extraordinary Progressive Pantheon.

It's a great pleasure for me to make known this excellent brand new groupwhich appeared on the french scene last year. The musician ship is remarkable, including classical instruments (cello, viola de gamba, flute), the female vocals too, in a range close to Jon Anderson's one. The structures of the long compositions are elaborated, developing different themes.

Most musicians come from the south-West of France except the well-known italian drummer, Marco Fabbri who played in "the Watch" before coming in France. Michel Cayuela and Emma Boudeau formerly played classical and folk themes on piano and viola de gamba in small festivals before being joined by the other musicians. Then their music became richer and definitively progressive. They recorded their first and only record for now in 2016.

The music is far to be in the legacy of 1970's theatrical french group. The influences are not easy to define because this group has its real and strong own identity. It's a dark and modern music, often powerful. A lot of jazz elements will also be found. In some ways, this music can be compared to Syrinx or Sylbat.

The English lyrics make this group capable to enjoy a wide audience. I hope a lot of people will share my big interest for these very original and skilled musicians.