Sean Trane
Latest release (that I know of) from this French “Zeuhl” quartet, and a double disc affair: with one studio album (recorded over three months in early 08 in the Le Triton studio) and a live DVD of a concert, recorded early in that recording period over the adjoining concert hall. The still-unchanged line-up of OS delivers another batch of their dark and sombre instrumental soundscapes, between King Crimson and Magma or even Univers Zero, and on the more modern or lesser-known influences, one could mention Potemkine, Vortex, NeBeLNeST and a few more. Sooooo, you could say that One Shot sounds typically French prog, with some Zeuhl touches, induced by the pounding bass, but also the dark atmospheres of their music.
The DVD disc is made from one night’s concert, where the band was allowed to develop their musical realm, but they chose mostly to feature their in-progress work of the album they were busy with. Indeed only Ewaz Vader (from the album of the same name) and Urm (from Vendredi 13) were familiar to the small public, the rest of their set being from the Dark Shot studio album. As you can guess, the DS tracks are much rawer live than their final studio versions, but they’re already fairly close to their final version. As for EV and Urm, they sounded understandably more at ease with those older numbers. There is also a bonus live footage in the studio version of Blade (from their new album) and a two-part interview that is of relative interest. While all One Shot albums are fairly close sonically (especially with their first album recently remixed and remastered), this means that anyone of them could serve as an introduction to the band’s works since they are all representative of the band’s oeuvre, but if you’re going to chose just one, you might want to choose the present Dark Shot, precisely because you get a visual aperçu performance to complete the aural experience.
