Guillaume de la Piliere - Psychedeleidoscope - 2000
intro
Guillaume de la Pilière is best known as Versailles' front-man and as part of Mona Lisa. He is actually a very talented musician with plenty of ideas that can go from medieval influences to theatrical French progressive rock. Following the release of "Contes des Sous Bois" (1997), Guillaume presented "Psychedeleidoscope" for Y2K.
review
First of all, there are two things that have to be said about this album: one the one hand, it seems to have a particular sense of humor (great!); on the other hand, I think that this album could not have been given a better name, this is a complete psychedelic kaleidoscope. It can even be noticed right from the beginning with a song called "Thérapie Orientale", full of Indian sitars and psychedelic sounds in a progressive-hippie mood. An interesting theme indeed.
Some of the most interesting things on this album are the rhythm changes on pieces like "Psychedeleidoscopop", which is a blend of 60's psychedelia and 90's energy; the lyrics, a great complement to the music, with a great sense of humor and part of the ambiance itself; nice medieval-like choirs mixed with acoustic music and psychedelic solo singing ("Le Psychodrôme Céleste"); great guitar parts that are followed by flute and organs ("Psychopatum Universalis").
However, there are also some other parts that could be help this album improve its level. For example, there is a song called "Ultime Psychose" which actually sounds like Ange's theme "Les Noces", same theatrical singing and musical parts that sound like it. The song "L'art et la manière" is also a theme that could have been a bit more deeply developed, there were some great pop, prog, rock and jazzy ideas together creating various interesting parts but that needed some more time to be fully expressed. And the last point would be "Psychopatum Universalis", which is a great guitar driven song whose vocals sound more in a Gong-like style.
conclusion
If we talk about the album cover, there is also a particular point: after the great cover that we had with "Contes des Sous Bois", Guillaume presented this time a sober one showing him standing in the clouds holding a bass guitar in his hands. Too sober indeed…
Finally, I can say that the album is fine and so are the musical ideas. Nevertheless, Mr. De la Pilière should take care of those small details in order to create a piece of work that could reflect his entire talent and place him among France's progressive favorites on his own.