ODYSSEE

"Odyssee" is the debut full-length studio album by French progressive rock act Artcane. The album was originally released in May 1977 through the Phillips Label and it´s the band´s sole album release. It´s one of those albums, which has been a collector´s item for years, as it wasn´t until 2014 that Great Barrier Records picked it up for a CD reissue. Artcane is a four-piece consisting of Daniel Locci (drums, percussion), Jack Mlynski (guitars, vocals), Stanislas Belloc (bass, vocals), and Alain Coupel (keyboards, synthesizers, vocals).

Stylistically the material on the album is a relatively heavy type of progressive rock and a King Crimson influence is heard throughout. There´s an Italian influence in there too though, and the album is generally pretty dynamic, with both edgy aggressive rhythms and more mellow spacey moments. "Odyssee" is an almost entirely instrumental release save for "Le Chant D'orphee" and "Nostalgie", which both feature French language vocals. The vocals aren´t much to write home about, but they are great for the variation of the album. The centerpiece of the album is the 16 minutes long "Artcane 1", which is quite the dynamic track, even displaying the band toying with electronic sounds. The real assets here though are the edgy fusion influenced rhythms, the energetic guitars, and the synth work.

The musicianship is obviously strong, but the sound production is a bit thin. Especially the guitars feature a thin fuzzy tone, and the music could certainly have prospered from a more rich and organic sounding guitar tone. So "Odyssee" is an album with both positive and slightly negative features. The songwriting could have been slightly more memorable too so all in all a 3 star (60%) rating isn´t all wrong.