Real Tome 11

It's all in the chord of voices. Right, "chord." The imprint the Roches brought to popular music when they issued their self-titled debut in 1979 was as three voices forming a chord rather than as a lead vocalist with backing. The emotional quality in the grain of that chord has been a trademark for the group, but more than this is the poetic unspeakable notion of how all of everyday life – with its losses, loves, noble aspirations, and petty resentments – exists in the space between those voices, resulting in an authenticity that is utterly seductive in its warmth, quark strangeness, and mysterious charm.

Experimental ethnic fusion outfit based around the duo of Jean-François Gaël, Pierre Buffenoir, initially with Arcane V members: Philippe Gumplowicz and Youval Micenmacher, and others. Sonorhc (Chronos backwards) played a wide-ranging mixture of styles, covering all sorts of ancient and modern cultural elements, medieval, baroque, oriental, you name it, they mixed and matched, fused and collided, making unusual and original concoctions, resulting in three very different albums, and also Jean-François Gaël et Pierre Buffenoir - Portes D'Orient which was essentially Sonorhc although it didn't bear their name.