Odyssey

Fans of progressive rock music already have it hard enough as it is. The casual music listener already thinks we’re pretty snobby, a little elitist, kind of neurotic, and well, pretty strange. (Pun intended.) But when a progressive rock enthusiast tells a friend they are listening to the third and final album in a trilogy based on Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke‘s film 2001: A Space Odyssey…

Although billed as a Jean Michel Jarre recording, Odyssey Through 02 is actually a remix project by various artists, each taking a cut or two from his groundbreaking Odyssey album. Perhaps the reason Jarre's name is on it as one of his own is because he had final say over the end result. Here, countryman DJ Cam, Loop Guru, Apollo 440, Hani, Resistance D, the Sunday Club, and Boodjie & Veronica take elements from the classic "Oxygene," and re-create it in three "phases" completely out of sync with the source material and out of context. In other words, track ten is first and done three different times by different artists and "Oxygene 8" is done four times! DJ Cam remixes "Oxygene 7" and it is the only time it appears here; he remains somewhat faithful to the source, though he warps its time/space continuum a bit…

The electric guitar innovator in the 1970s. This box set in ECM’s Old & New Masters Series collects Terje Rypdal’s two-LP Odyssey album – heard on CD, for the first time, in its entirety, including the much-requested and epically-rocking “Rolling Stone” – and “Unfinished Highballs”, a recently unearthed 1976 radio recording that documents the Norwegian guitarist’s work for his Odyssey quartet and the Swedish Radio Jazz Group. The complete Odyssey may address a longstanding demand, but “Unfinished Highballs” will surprise even Rypdal’s most committed fans. It reveals that not only were many of the markers which would come to define his career already in place, but the intrepid guitarist was already searching for ways to include, rather than exclude, in his approach to composition and performance.

Farmhouse Odyssey was formed by five college students in a small farmhouse in the fall of 2012 in Arcata, California. Embracing an improvisational writing style and inspired by the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, the band quickly developed an organic and undeniably original sound. Songs flow freely between moods and styles influenced by progressive rock, psychedelia, jazz, funk, and world music, while always retaining the distinct musical personality of the group. The group deftly executes their complex arrangements with skill and precision, never losing sight of the strong emotional undercurrent of each song…