Odyssey

Artist: Odyssey + Remote Spaces
P: 2010
Ypsilon Project is a well-produced, multilayered album, which contains 'many happy returns' to legendary electronic moods as well as some surprising arrangements and new formal ideas. The journey begins somewhat in the mood of a radio-program á la „Radioactivity“ by Kraftwerk, then the music has something to it which reminds the listener of Double Fantasy, JMJ or Tangerine Dream's film music. Still, the most important ingredience here is a vey specific, atmospheric mood, as if taken out of some electronic dream vault. This 'organic cleanness' one may very well associate with empty cosmic space as well as with familiar earthly landscapes. The journey begins somewhat in the mood of a radio-program á la „Radioactivity“ by Kraftwerk, soon there appear optimistic notes played on a slightly distorted guitar (or conjured up from a synthesizer?), and, after a while, some boiling chord-clouds fade out and the Listener is home alone with a mere ostinato in a slow pace, which marks the beginning of track two. Are we just taking a long walk through a japanese garden-labyrinth, are these slowly falling white spots snowflakes or tiny flowers? This quiet impression definitely has something to it which reminds me of the music presented by Double Fantasy (today: Food 4 Fantasy) on their album „Universal Avenue“; the same organic cleanness, which one may associate with empty cosmic space as well as with familiar earthly landscapes. This piece of music is 12 minutes of a solid lounge-trip into the exotic Unknown. Track three is quite a contrast to its predecessor: you immediately hear neonlights, city lights, vehicle lights and neverending car-loops. Welcome to the most modern city at steelgray dawn or in the navyblue evening... In track four, it sounds like Harald Grosskopf or the Kraftwerk-musicians from the „Tour de France Soundtracks“-era were invited to the session – this is what one should call „aerodynamic music“. We are here just a step away not only from sequential electronica or „jarre'ing“ elpop, but also from modern remixing moods. In the quicksilver-lively fifth track we hear a solo sounding exactly as if it were conceived on PPG Wave 2 – warm regards from JMJ or Double Fantasy (or Paul Nagle's „Lore“)! The most traditional piece is probably track six, where Odyssey vs. Remote Spaces combine Berlin-like sequences and some JMJ-like moods. The Listener may now enjoy digital clouds approaching just a few inches above her head, the clouds change their forms and colours ceaselessly... The next two pieces are fairly long, more complex, more difficult to classify. Various styles intermingle with each other, the arrangements seem to have been taken out of an electronic dream vault. Both compositions could be musical narrations about snowy parks at night – the first short novel is rather nostalgic, the other one rather murky – pay attention to this ingenuous tabla-loop in the background of track eight! As we all know, all good things move toward their end, and there it is – the final track, groovy elpop slightly in the mood of (once more) Double Fantasy or JMJ, but also Marek Bilinski or Tangerine Dream's film music in the eighties. In this track we hear a fresh breeze of ostinato-vocoderian „retro-sounds“.

Artist: Odyssey + We are the Hunters
P: 2013
Old Berlin School style.

Artist: Odyssey
P: 2012

CD1
Out of the darkness, there comes our subway - now we can join the sound-journey through underground labyrinths. At about the second-minute-mark pure environmental sounds turn into a splendid sequential composition containing many Oxygene - and Equinoxe - like sound effects. Pay attention to the spicy and fantastically produced rhythm-line - well, it really could be a piece conceived by Wolfram Spyra...
This enjoyable introduction flows into the aerodynamic ambience of the second track. Those who are in love with sequential electronica will indeed be fond of the static, cloudy chord accompanying the leading synths. Soon a thunderstorm is coming - with the 3rd minute mark the sweeps and washes of strong wind seem to want to blow the speakers! The third track is an ingenious, nostalgic tale one might associate with Electric Light Orchestra's Another Heart Breaks - just listen to these echoes and light traces in an endless electronic tunnel! Here we also get a nice Berlin-fashioned solo. Every now and then, one thought comes to mind: it's pretty hard to name the best track in the whole set, since already the very first notes of each impression are truly magic, deep and dreamy in a very special way. Now we may enjoy the fourth piece; what we are dealing with here are mainly "laser-harp" sequences, the whole piece sounds as if it was played on invisible, hard-to-catch neon zigzags. Truly hypnotic, strong ten minutes.
The next track is somewhat close to the early works of Marek Bilinski. All important ingredients are there: high-places moods, pitch changes, melodic and yet very original tunes joining each other in electronic cascades. After only three minutes of this amazing mood there appear the polyphonic structures of a sequential concerto for a rainy day. The seventh piece covers suddenly the arpeggios of the former track with majestic chords; soon there joins in a groovy rhythm and a nice solo. The eighth track pulses with a bass - almost "motor-bass" - rhythm sequence; now our wagons slide through tunnel-labyrinths at a tremendous speed and the only thing accompanying our journey is the jarring light of spectacularly stereophonic sequencers! The final piece of the first CD once more conjures up some Jean-Michel Jarre-like atmospheres, but the nicely chromatic synth-solo and a swooshy percussion line give some new quality to it. As a whole, this piece also reminds the Listener of a marvellous Time-longplay by the Electric Light Orchestra.

CD2
The first track is a majestic tale that is being painted on cold-chord canvas. Not even four minutes have passed and there appear some beats - marking the entrance of the second piece - accompanied with a lively sequential structure, forming an interesting contrast to the quiet chords.
The third composition is probably the most abstract one in the whole set; among endless dreamy clouds we suddenly see fluorescent sea-horses and match-stroke-chains - or perhaps it's only a cognitive illusion?... How long has this journey already taken, where are we at all? As if awoken from a strange dream, we take an entirely astonished look at our surroundings. Because of the truly "arctic" atmosphere of the fourth piece we can easily imagine that we are entering a numb endless tunnel built from ice and snow - this track is an utmost beautiful 3-minute ambient composition.
Our fifth station is a polyphonic arpeggiator construction, now and then flashing about with its blue ounces of electric light. As soon as we enter the sixth piece, our wagons begin to move faster and faster, once more through a creepy snow-ice-tunnel, but now everything's filled up with life, everything is moving, flashing, endless lights are being reflected and distorted... Along with the seventh track the wagons slow down, it seems that we have ceased to move forward at all - or perhaps we have just started a motionless dream? Once more we don't have the slightest idea where we are and how long we have been travelling, and still this hasn't a bit of an uneasy feeling to it!
The eighth track captures us with its fragile crunchy sounds - we are moving through navy-blue pipeline-labyrinths. Thanks to the chilling atmosphere of the ninth piece we may find ourselves in the real world again. With a groovy sequence in the background we begin to recognize faces of all the passengers, there is nothing alien behind the wagon windows, everything sounds earthly again.
We are leaving on the tenth station. The echo of the corridor amplifies the sound of our footsteps, chilly chords are calling to each other somewhere near, the world awakes, even the first rays of the rising sun are already there, chasing us out of the subway tunnel. The staircase of the mid-tempo sequence carry us out back to the ground level. It has been an amazing journey indeed...

Artist: Odyssey
P: 2001/ 2009
"Syntharsis 2009" is a special re-edition of Odyssey's debut material, special insofar, as the listener does not only get the original remastered album, but also a bonus CD including previously unreleased session outtakes and a bundle of remixes.
The album is a fresh synthesis of "TD-getting-younger"-sequential electronics (TD in their "Melrose Years" up until now), solid lounge and slightly clubby elpop. This record is fairly groovy - let's pay attention to marvellous bass lines every now and then - and still the best single word to describe the feeling throughout the CD would be "flow": Odyssey's music is very "aerodynamic" and turns out to be a fantastically fluent electronic narration.
There are neither "typically dynamic" nor "typically ambient" tracks to find here, rather all episodes are multi-mood, multi-track and poly-meaningful. Odyssey's music is a "fresh-making" and a breeze-light one; one could easily imagine it as a film soundtrack - and indeed, it's worth mentioning how much in common some pieces here have with Peter Gabriel's "Birdy"-OST (1985): "Rephlexes" and, in the very first place, "Resynthesis".
"Time/Deep", one of the album "hits" remixed on disk #2, could have been a Jean Michel Jarre "Geometry of Love"- or "Printemps de Bourges"- piece on the one hand, while on the other hand we have here a nice piece of quasi Björk-ish mood in the chord-background (pick up some of Björk's "Homogenic" or "Post" single remixes and you'll see what I exactly mean).
As far as associations with JMJ are concerned, they are just welcome in case of "Sunlight" (romantic piano line and nostalgic chords going along nicely with modern programming and various scratchy and crunchy effects). Very interesting are also "Snapshots'" mechanical sequentials and a tasty spectrum of moods in "Terra Eois", where Odyssey is quite successful indeed in deconstructing the artificial frontiers between "traditional" electronica, new-age, club-sounds and lite-ambient. It must be mentioned that Odyssey's "art of sequencing" is on the whole very good and creative, it's not just another variation on TD-patterns, but rather a challenging, daring attitude, something like experiments by Pino & Wildjamin or Beatboys 2000, whereas the artists just mentioned successfully combined sequential and acid, but that's it, and meanwhile Odyssey's style and technique are one step further, so to speak.
Mature, developed, multi-layered arrangements are doubtless one of the finest Odyssey's qualities here - this also has to be put straight. Last but not least, I really do recommend disk-two-remixes, especially the Aphex Glitch Version of "Neurogenesis", perhaps not really in Aphex Twin or Glitch style, but it is certainly pretty fine stuff as if created by such remixers as Bitstream or Kid 606.

Artist: Odyssey
P: 2009
A further multidimensional work by Tomasz Pauszek a.k.a. Odyssey: This album is a convincing mixture of "fine-tuned" sequential electronics, organic ambient music and dynamic electronic rock-pop based on ingenuously programmed percussive patterns.
"Space Overture" leads the Listener immediately into some other world, world filled with a cosmic scent of freshly charged batteries - while "Between Worlds" with its dynamic rhythm-sequences allows the Listener to balance on the edge of the well-known world and some other totally different one, paved with light-blue anti-gravitational stepping stones. One of the most fascinating pieces in the set is doubtless "Silver Q", a very dynamic and still very subtle one, with "hidden" percussion pads, rather thought-of than really present. The most important factor of this composition are floating chords "smeared" in the background and some further washes and sweeps; this impression definitely has something in the mood of Klaus Schulze`s murky numbness in "Silent Running" ("Trancefer", 1981).
The next track, "The Deep", also consists basically in skillful conjuring-up of Schulzean moods and harmonies, this time rather in the mood of "The Beat Planante" ("Inter*face", 1985), whereas smeared chill-out chords are not as important as the title "depth", got into with a little help from percussive marks, vocoder pads and echoing chord waves mixed together in one go.
"Stellar Blue" is a conclusion of a bigger whole, drifting yet further in the direction of frosty abstract ambience, and still perfectly shaped and divided in clear rhythmic phrases.
"Bringing the Light" breaks the journey into the abyss of oblivion and marks a sudden change of mood: there it comes, a shiny ostinato slightly touched by nice phasing of a "Timewind", with a melancholic keyboard melody ? la JMJ`s "Oxygene" or "Les Chants Magnetiques" wrought into it.
"Zenithal" is a further break in telling cosmic stories: we are getting closer to IDM and rhythmic laptop ambience than to typical Berlin-inspired electronica.
"I.O." and "Lunar Sky" are splendid el-pop pieces in two different moods: the first one is very lively, dynamic and groovy, whilst the other one is very relaxing, soothing and almost ethereal: cloudy soundscaped passing slowly across the evening sky.
And then - time for a dessert: two homages to Jean Michel Jarre. "Planet B" definitely has something in common with experiments presented on "Printemps du Bourges", whereas "Oxygeum", as its title already suggests, brings a handful of nostalgic ostinatos and melodies skillfully styled-up to resemble characteristic PPG Wave 2-sounds - well, this is how "Oxygene 14" or "Equinoxe 9" would have sounded like!
Odyssey has prepared 120 minutes of enthralling music, which is jolly hard to be classified insofar as the elements of sequential electronica, el-pop, chill-out and ambient music get melanged in one interesting whole, and what joy, there are almost no pauses between the tracks, so that there is "automatically" more atmosphere and depth, more time to contemplate.
A musical journey definitely worth being taken.