O’o
Touche
Infine
2022
O’o (pronounced nasally as ‘oh-oh’) are a French duo featuring Victoria Suter and Mathieu Daubigné. Now based in Barcelona, they make exciting and challenging music that could be described as ‘pop’ but is so much more than that when you drill down and explore it more thoroughly. The duo are named after a small Hawaiian bird, famous for its beautiful song, that became extinct in the 1980s. The music they make is wide-ranging, from songs that are lyrically and melodically similar to French chanson (as in the title track ‘Touche’ and the very atmospheric ‘Moon’) to very accessible electro-pop and ambient music that challenges and pleases.
They draw on many sources and tools to make their music. Mathieu is a guitarist and is something of a creative wizard with synthesisers, samplers and digital applications like ‘Ableton’. The instrument being played is not always obvious; for example, ‘Spin’ was created using Ableton using heavily processed guitar and multiple sounds from Mathieu’s Prophet 8 synth. Victoria’s voice is used as another musical tool and, on this track, in particular, heads off into avant-garde territory, slightly reminiscent of Laurie Anderson. On ‘One’, there’s an ethereal birdsong that’s actually a synth and even Victoria is sometimes surprised by the source of the sounds: “I’ll often say to Mathieu, ‘what’s that? “[and] he’ll reply, ‘that’s your voice!”
It can be all too easy to be seduced by the beautiful ambient sounds and effects and drift away without paying attention to what are quite beautiful, compelling songs. ‘Dorica Castra’ speaks of “…the danger of dangerousness…networks of make-believe…”; these are not throwaway pop lyrics. The listener may need repeated listens to appreciate what is on offer here fully, and that’s no bad thing.
‘Lost’ definitely has a flavour of Kate Bush about it, and I can hear a little Björk in ‘Tohu-Bohu’ (pronounced ‘toe-ee bow-ee), which appears to be a Hebrew word for chaos, and at over five minutes, the title becomes more appropriate as it progresses.
Time and effort spent listening to this album will be rewarded; it is quite unlike anything else you’ll hear this year. Touche is only the second recording from O’o, following on from an earlier EP in 2018, and that would indicate that there is much more to come.
‘Touche’ is out now on InFiné. Stream/Buy/Follow – https://fanlink.to/Oomusic