GUILLAUME CAZENAVE

The Odd Gallant is a project defying categorizations. It comes straight out of the fertile imagination of Guillaume Cazenave, a Bordeaux-based musician fascinated by artists that go out of the beaten paths by putting forward a borderless, yet structured patchwork of influences. 'AM' is the first chapter of a concept revolving around alphabet (in english version). It is therefore an abbreviated dictionary with words made with the first 13 letters of the alphabet. In this musical exploration of the dictionary, we are very far from the abecedarium that was taught to us on a simple melody line while at school (even if a wink to this abecedarium can be heard in the closing of this first chapter). We are rather submerged in a bunglian syncretism, in which circus music meets pop psychedelia, movie soundtracks and syllabed chant. Sailing with three other mates on his "Drunken Boat", the frenchman makes it pitch on rolling rhythms and tumultuous voices. Creating ambiances rather than showing-off, it's no wonder that very few solos (themselves complaining in their whinings) fill in the musical space, the space being rather left for grandiloquent atmospheres or even a grand-guignol suggested by the theatricality of arrangements and the solemnity of the chant. The latter is often based on singing one ofter the other words starting with the letter of the title, which goes hand in hand with the other side of our crank's music: humour. The influence of Frank Zappa oozes indeed in the amused keyboards, the cartoon xylophone, spastic cadences, furtive horns, or even the off the wall choirs. Moreover, where the magic beam of glockenspiel dazzles us, the gloomlight of the piano unites with the spectral vapors of Hammond and the torments of strings to keep us even more pensive in a strange but fascinating world. While waiting for the second chapter of the dictionary according to The Odd Gallant, i.e. letters N to Z, we can dive in a first chapter with a vocabulary so rich that it will contribute to maintain our musical garden.