DIDIER BOCQUET

I can only echo what Guldbamsen has to say about this French Electronic album from 1979. A voyage indeed best heard with headphones on and the lights out. So cool. He does it all himself with synths and electronics and I like the black and white album cover with Didier on it as it sort of represents the melancholy here. All these songs blend into each other and the title really represents what is going on here.

"Interface" has this quiet start as my ears are searching for what's going on but soon slow pulses with interesting sounds over top arrive with spacey synths as well. "Rencontre Psychique" continues with the slow pulses but sequencers and more kick in over top. Not as enjoyable and it almost seems to fade out before 5 minutes as the sound changes slightly to a more melancholic vibe with sequencers.

"Eloignement" has these high pitched sounds that come and go but they stop before 1 1/2 minutes as driving sequencers kick in and more. "Cosmory Theme" continues with the sequencers leading with synths until a change late as we get an experimental ending.

The second half is much better in my opinion beginning with "Prelude" where we hear what sounds like birds chirping but it's not then spacey waves and static-like sounds arrive along with faint percussion-like sounds. The spacey sounds build after a minute. The melancholic synths before 2 minutes sound so good. Just drifting away into the night here.

"Evell Sideral" turns intense rather quickly as the tempo picks up. It settles back around a minute. I like this. Spacey synths over top with sequencers and deep sounding electronics that come and go. Twittering sounds late. "Amorissage" has these slowly pulsing sounds with pinging then this spacey melancholic sound comes in. Some buzzing after 2 minutes but this is drifting and beautifully sad music. "Voyage Terra" has more of those great sounding melancholic synths along with spacey sounds and more. A perfect way to end the album.

A solid 4 stars and this does seem to get better as it goes. One of the better French Electronic albums in my opinion.

Intergalactic jellyfish feel

I have spent many a nights watching the glistening star blanket up among the galaxies listening to electronic music. If the feel is there and the music hits me in the right way - the darkened skies suddenly echo oceans and great big fluid surfaces moving about in whatever bobbing rhythmic sequence - lulling me into a beautiful stark black sea voyage.

YES - come on boy!!! We've heard that crap before!!! - I hear you yelling in the back. I often turn to the sea and watery images, whenever I try relegating electronic pieces of music, and especially the Berlin school of sound conjures up these endless pictures of running water. There's a hidden connection there, and even if I mention it a lot, it still doesn't quite put into focus just how seductive and entrancing the music can be, if it's done right. But hey for the purpose of sounding hip, let's just say that it feels like sparkly lemonade or fresh slushing milk...

Whereas the Germans were the main deliverers of said style of music with acts like Manuel Göttsching, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, - the French had sculpted a sound and a feel completely in accordance with their own temper. You got the scary zeuhlish theatrics from Igor Wakhevitch, the dangerously sharp and edgy Heldon and then the avant garde antics of Phillipe Besombes. Strange to think that a man like Didier Bocquet then sounded far more German than any of his fellow electronic countrymen. Sure, that may well have something to do with his late debut onto the scene back in 1977 with the self-produced album Eclipse - opening up to hypothesis of him being no more than a mere Berlin school copycat, but to these ears there is far more happening for that to be true. This album is more like a refined wine - something that had to sit awhile before it could be bottled.

Cerebral voyage is the name of the thing, and I couldn't imagine a better name, even if I had a thousand years and my thinking cap on. Much like the early krautrockers did - Bocquet focuses on long psychedelic pieces that slowly but carefully open up like sonic apple blossoms. From brilliantly shimmering synthesisers looping infinitely in ever changing patterns to the more menacing outbreaks - this record more than adequately responds to the ripples once uttered by the old German pioneers - and then some! I find this album closely related to the krautrock scene itself actually - mostly because of its ongoing flirtations with loose instant composition, but even more so because of its incessant trippy soundscapes that quite literally scoops you up - throws you in a starfighter and sends you out into the vastness of space. It's a psychedelic journey that keeps reverberating in your head. It does so while you listen to it, but also when you leave the comfort of your home. One day you'll find yourself staring at a puddle of rain experiencing a strange musical deja vu with echoing churning slices of music. This is down to the memorable characteristic of Voyage Cérébral. Now I am not talking about 'melodies' here, no no no - like I said the mood is one of constantly shape-shifting reverberations and psychedelic fuelled synthesisers, - no I am talking about the memorable shifts. The way a deep bellowing sound cycle suddenly intervenes during the first side - coming off like a controlled aircraft carrier foghorn that shakes the very ground with its buzzing yearning calls. Or maybe the cathartic turnover right at the very end will better explain to you the sheer power of this album - the power of music without a program. This is the soundtrack of huge things - love serenades for giants and Cyclops - an electronic kiss from a killer robot a thousand feet tall.

You won't find much in the way of hooks and solos on this outing, but if you wish to venture out beyond the confines of our little blue planet without ever having to leave your favourite rocking chair, then Voyage Cérébral is a safe bet. I feel like an amorous jellyfish listening to this - like one of those neon beams from 2001: A Space Odyssey - I feel like a submarine in warm waters, - utterly comfortable and bizarrely different from my normal self. The constant bombardment of these enchanting electronic cycles that swirl and sway like huge sonic rings, cradles you and at the same time allures you into a false security. You are not a submarine, and you can't fly, - but you do however have the opportunity to dress up with this little beauty.

Didier Bocquet leaves behind the cosmic dreaminess of his previous album in favor of a much more robotic and mechanical flavor on Sequences. Instead of a long voyage of eclectic synth textures that float beautifully like an aurora, this album focuses more on shorter bursts of post-industrial synth textures that sound similar to Kraftwerk albeit a bit more emotionally involved. The strongest Kraftwerk comparisons can be made in "Short Winding", which is a short but strongly mechanically driven powerhouse that features robotic vocalizations, and "Without Apparent Limits (Part 1)", a murky industrialized track that also features a short section of robotic vocalization but mainly gives off an atmosphere similar to that of Resident Evil 0 soundtrack.

Although less pleasantly (or happily) dreamy, Sequences is still plenty as eclectic as its predecessor while maintaining the industrialized atmosphere, which surprises me considering that I previously thought industrial tones to be very limited in versatility. "Garden of Shadows" is indeed a very shadowy and nearly ambient piece that continuously swells and bears down atonally over a consuming groan. In opposition to the supreme darkness of the majority of this album, "Himalayas" is a very beautiful and uplifting, almost symphonic track that really does give off the triumphant feeling of standing atop a mountain and viewing snowy hills below.

The only qualm I have about Sequences is the final track, "Without Apparent Limits (Part 2)", which seems almost randomly put together and features a very tinny keyboard that sounds very cheap, and kind of breaks down the wonderful atmosphere that each previous track has established.

All in all, Sequences is a very pleasing album and a very welcome change in sound in Bocquet's discography. If you're a fan of Berlin school and electronic industrial music of any sort, you'll most likely enjoy this album. This is the Bocquet album that I'd recommend before any others..

Didier Bocquet's very limited debut release shows the talent that would become more obvious on his later albums, but still comes off as sounding amateurish.

Eclipse isn't a bad album, but it does sound very aimless. The opening track, "1984", is very generic and overly repetitive, sounding exactly like the first composition on an unsure artist's debut album. The rhythm is nearly identical to the generic krautrock style 4/4 on Organization's (pre-Kraftwerk) debut album and really doesn't explore the the rhythmic or textural possibilities, rending its 13 minute runtime unjustifiable.

The title track is a similar situation, being overly repetitive but not in a krautrock type of way. This track is much closer to the cosmic cerebral sound on Voyage Cerebral but has very limited development. Essentially, it sounds like someone took a 2 minute selection from any one of Klaus Schulze's lesser tracks and repeated it over and over again for nearly 10 minutes (the first 3 minutes are simple electronic resonances against a droning background).

Though Eclipse isn't a high point in Didier Bocquet's career, it is an honest display of where he came from and what his influences are. Anyone looking for something at all interesting, however, might better look to his later releases.

Didier Bocquet makes electronic music in the traditional Berlin school fashion, using spacey synth effects and driving percussive sequences to create a very interstellar type of atmosphere that is to be expected. Fortunately, this is not simply more of the same when compared to the obvious German artists who created and perfected this style.

Voyage Cerebral frequently seems more diverse in tone and construction than some of the music by Didier Bocquet's more well-known contemporaries. First of all, this album has a great textural dynamism, utilizing density or sparsity masterfully. The music never gets too empty and boring nor does it ever elevate into complete electronic cacophony. Though the main musical elements are very comparable to the Berlin school masters, the way the layers on this album are laid upon each other are done so subtly through its duration create such a steady and practically perfect flow.

As the word voyage in the title may imply, Voyage Cerebral is very much a cerebral voyage with emotional highs that range from imperial bombast to dreary black cosmic gloominess to internally peaceful euphoria.

Voyage cerebral published a few years before corresponds to a high standard of kosmische electronic dreamness. Unfortunately this honest Sequences doesn't reiterate the sensations provided on the previous effort. This is a much more conventional, formalistic, mainstream work divided into short pieces specialised in mysteriously epic, heroic and almost symphonic textural synthscaping sequences. The musical pieces are composed for massive analog synth, electronic repetitive arpeggios, time to time covered by nice, touching piano chords. This album sounds a bit kitschy and cheesy today but it contains some good moments (notably in the haunting, floating tune named nostalgia) and the pieces are well achieved, full of arrengements. I'm sure that these playful, charming almost new agey melodies will ravish fans of late 70's cosmic groovers. A pleasant listening and a real transition for Bocquet who tried to capture an hybrid stylistical approach somewhere between spacey-melodic-symphonic-electronic rock.