One advantage of living in the land of people who eat frogs and snails is that I get exposed to music I otherwise wouldn't have, though I suppose that's true for any country you live in. So, in this very first edition of our loose series called The French Connection I will present one of my adopted countrymen. I this case: Geyster, an artist that even here in his home country is somewhat obscure, apart from a very specific fan base. That fan base? Fans of the smooth sounds of the 1970s and 1980s soft rock, as well as fans of friendly, shiny electro-pop. But really, more fans of the former.
I first became aware of Geyster when I picked up California Groove, a beautifully produced French Warner Brothers box set that presented what (so the booklet told me) some French call "la Calif'", a.k.a. the yacht rock mostly associated with California and L.A. The last CD included some modern flagbearers of that style, including a certain Geyster. Geyster was at first the name for a music project from musical partners Gaël Benyamin and Pernilla Grönlund, but soon became to become the musical alter ego of Mr. Benyamin, one of pop's most eclectic one man bands. And I do mean one man band: He writes, performs, arranges, produces and mixes his own music and plays all instruments a band usually requires: guitar, piano, bass, drums, keyboards - it's all him. His love for 70s and 80s pop means that there are a number of covers of artists such as Hall & Oates ("Kiss On My List"), The Alan Parsons Project ("Eye In The Sky"), Christopher Cross ("Ride Like The Wind") and others. But everything else, apart from the occasional guest vocal or guitar part is him. And he does have a knack for writing a good pop hook, as well as for mimicking the kind of music he likes. There are touches of what is now known as synthwave to the proceedings, rarer some loud rock guitars, but most of it is big, shiny pop. Sometimes a little funky, sometimes even a little jazzy, and always stylish. If you have some appreciation for the yacht rock of the late 1970s/early 1980s, or if you just love pop music, then give this a try.
As the title implies, this is quite the package: 50 tracks (some of them quite short), spread out (if you are still counting in such things as I do) across two CDs of almost full capacity, showing the breadth of his work and covering about fifteen years of Geyster's career, from his first album in 2003 to about 2018. In many ways, it's perfect summer music, so during this cold and grey winter time, at least around these parts, let Geyster bring some sunshine pop in your lives...
50 G's
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