The Sound of Music: The Dreamy Soundscapes of Melody’s Echo Chamber
Melody’s Echo Chamber uses experimental instrumentals and multilingual lyrics to explore the rabbit hole of her imaginative mind.
The Sound of Music breaks down how every little noise ― that instrument, that sample, that oh-so-significant pause ― makes a song special.
Written by Katie Karp
Photo courtesy of Diane Sagnier
Quite literally, Melody's Echo Chamber is a glimpse into a dream. "I had this dream that my bedroom acoustic had changed into infinite echo mode, and my voice resounded endlessly on the walls… so it became Melody's Echo Chamber," said Melody Prochet when asked for the meaning behind her musical project's name. Through her music, Prochet translates the imaginative sounds from her dreams into echoing soundscapes.
Beyond inspiration from her acoustic dreams, Prochet’s musical background contributes to the composed and psychedelic nature of Melody’s Echo Chamber. Growing up in southern France, the classically-trained musician brought her knowledge in piano, viola, and arpeggio composition with her when she moved to Paris, where she became more experimental with her music. In songs from My Bee's Garden, Prochet's musical project before Melody's Echo Chamber, her distinctive, whispy voice blends with her instrumentals, even as she shifts from a soft, steady drumbeat to wailing synths to develop her ethereal noise.
While Prochet was developing her experimental music in Paris, another bohemian-looking, shaggy-haired musician was experimenting with fresh sounds on the other side of the world. Kevin Parker, the now globally recognized Australian musician, began to develop a heavy fanbase for his musical project, Tame Impala. Tame Impala's performance in France as a part of the 2010 InnerSpeaker European tour left Prochet inspired and curious to learn about the development of Parker's idiosyncratic art. After offering him a demo of her own, Prochet traveled with Tame Impala for the remainder of its tour. Afterwards, Prochet went to Parker's studio in Perth, where Parker’s work as a producer helped the Melody's Echo Chamber project surface as a dreamy reality. Although Prochet continues to carry her soft, psychedelic sound, Parker’s influence on her music can be heard through her use of a wide array of instruments. In particular, she adds the ambient space guitar tones of songs from InnerSpeaker, like “Jeremy’s Storm,” amplifying the experimental nature of her music.
Melody's Echo Chamber released its majestic self-titled debut album in 2012. While Prochet maintains the same dream-inducing feel to her music from My Bee's Garden, the album also exhibits her expansive knowledge of instrumentation and her airy vocals. Additionally, the increase in synthetic sounds and fluidity throughout the album demonstrates Parker's influence on Prochet's music. His contributions, like his notorious prismatic riffs and warped synth tones, further helped Prochet translate her dreams into music, which is evident in the unlikely layering near the end of opening track “I Follow You.” To accompany the album's dreamy instrumentals, her romantic lyrics dive into her subconscious thoughts and feelings about love. She accentuates the album’s poetic lyrics with her alternation between English and French throughout its runtime. Prochet also highlights the dreaminess of her music through her four music videos for the album. Whether it be swinging mid-air at an amusement park, biking through bright sunlight and hallucinations, or swimming through colorful water, her videos convey the fantasy settings, bright color, and free-spirited nature that allow for further exploration into her imaginative mind.
Six years after her debut as Melody’s Echo Chamber, Prochet released Bon Voyage, her second album under the moniker. While her experimental instrumentation creates a softer psychedelic feel in her second album that in her first, Bon Voyage —French for "good journey" — encapsulates her growth over the past few years, both musically and personally. In this album, Prochet adds Swedish into the mix of her multilingual lyrics; In “Desert Horse,” she screams, “I have cried also / Breathing in.” According to Pitchfork, Bon Voyage is also representative of Prochet’s strength and recovery from "a nearly fatal accident that led to a broken vertebra, a brain aneurysm, and an understandably canceled tour." Like her ability to lightly jump from language to language, Prochet’s lyrics span from heartbreak to her near-death experience but flow smoothly as she uses her dreamlike visions to describe each of her feelings and experiences. While living with her head in the clouds in “Cross My Heart” leads to an especially difficult heartbreak because of the long fall, these dreams also allow her to escape her most painful thoughts in “Desert Horse.” Prochet uses her album’s vivid storytelling and bubblegum psychedelic sound to accept that the hardships she endured brought her to who she is now: an imaginative, skilled French musician who has learned to use music to allow herself and others to explore the softest, most surreal places of our minds.