Ochre is Chris Leary, whose previous album, A Midsummer Nice Dream, appeared on Toytronic in 2004. Lemodie is in much the same style, with lush, melodic electronics. This album will leave you wanting more. "111" sets the perfect tone, with delicate strings taking over half-way through. My favorite track is "Infotain Me." Harp glissandos move between speakers over a powerful bassline. Gradually the theme builds and expands (though the last couple of minutes are largely redundant). "Open Top" features disembodied TV samples over Boards of Canada-like analogue synths and vocoder. "Vegas" has hints of funky guitar. It’s a downtempo piece that reminds me of Boulderdash. Leary uses many of the same sounds as other downtempo artists, but his melodies are fresh and the production is all top-notch. I’d love to hear him explore more unusual instrumentation. ~ by Jacob Arnold
Ochre's new offering, Lemodie, could potentially turn out to be one of those standard, well constructed but archetypal electronic ramblings, where high end beats are decorated with strings and synth sounds.
Lemodie just about manages to escape this fatal trap, separating tracks through careful choice of sounds and beats, preventing the album from merging into one big mass of ambience plus clicks and cuts.
Harp and plucked strings echo like ripples in the water through Open Top, spreading and growing as the track goes on, passing on the sounds so it grows into a myriad rippling strings that crack and snap into life, with muted beats and violin melody that splits and reproduces over and over and around the rhythm.
Beneath Fleeting Visions contains complex programming and layered bleeps with an orchestral backdrop. Structured as chorus verse chorus it isn't particularly striking, but is pleasing all the same, much like other tracks such as Sosacharo and Vegas.
Overall Lemodie isn't one to write home about, but all the same it manages to reach a place in between the awesome and the conventional, with programming that at first sounds pretty standard, but turns into something quite different. Most striking is the strings, with the harp bringing out a resonance within the tracks that adds some much needed depth to the layers. ~ by Jennifer Allan
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