Review: Salmo - Salmo EP (2013)

Artist: Salmo
Album: Salmo EP
Year: 2013
Label: Self released

Review: Diego Camargo

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Thoughts: Salmo is a French band formed by the trio Grégory Compagnon (bass and vocals), Kévin Gouthard (drums) and Olivier Guyomar (guitars and vocals) in 2012. Just one year after they got together they released their first EP, Salmo (2013).

Salmo (2013) was recorded in just 2 days (30 and 31 March 2013) and has a beautiful artwork in its jewelcase. Unfortunately, everything on the CD art and booklet is written in French only. I understand almost nothing of French so it’s pretty hard for me to comprehend what’s going on and what’s the band’s proposal, and because of that the booklet becomes a bit useless, pretty but useless.

When it comes to the music that Salmo plays one can say that the band is basically connected to the Jazz Rock and the Jazz Fusion.
The compositions in Salmo (2013) show a well-rehearsed band and that experiment every single time they can. We can see it in tracks like ‘Histoire D'Une Truite’ and its improvised solos.
Another thing we can notice while listening to the EP is that Salmo’s sound is heavily based on Grégory Compagnon’s bass that most of the time acts as a solo instrument (instead of guitar player Olivier Guyomar), meanwhile the drummer Kévin Gouthard holds them pretty well together.

The problem here is that Salmo (2013) is really poor when it comes to the recording and production to a point that the EP has a demo feeling to it, instead of an official release and tracks like ‘Rumeur Sous La Cascade... Nuée De Gammares’ and the following ‘Fraie’ make it very clear.
The open rehearsal mood continues in the next track ‘Le Festin Du Héron’ but with less intensity because of the vocals and because of the feeling I get that this track was really rehearsed not just jammed.
The EP is closed by ‘Norehud Nitsefel’ which is nothing more than the previous track backwards, literally.

Salmo (2013) leaves the feeling that the band just recorded one of its rehearsals and just released it. It works very well as a demo or a presentation EP, however, as an official release… no!

Salmo, the band, needs more rehearsal and a bit more focus on the songwriting. They need to polish the songs a bit more and for sure to worry a bit more about the production and recording. After that we’ll have an interesting album to evaluate. Maybe on the next one guys!

The band was included in our Podcast #34 and you can listen the song 'Le Festin Du Héron' HERE.

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CD/MP3