Matamore 
Soy Un Caballo : Les heures de raison (B,2007)****
Soy Un Caballo (= “I am a Horse”??) consists of a core duo, with Aurélie Muller (ex-Melon Galia, Raymondo) as the leading vocalist mostly, with her sweet and soft voice, texturing on the background with electric bass, small brushes of organ and some clarinet, and Thomas Van Cottom (ex-Venus, V.O.) who takes care of many of the other fundaments of arrangements, like a warm rhythmical mood with vibraphones or Rhodes or both, which are most often present, like always present somewhere ringing-like warm tones, alternated with soft acoustic picking guitars (especially leading on the earliest tracks), and a few more additional background strummed acoustic and amplified guitars arrangements, and soft and sparsely used percussion, although it is hard to know always who played which part, for the whole band of guest musicians just takes over the approach of accompanying of one of both artists or adds new elements in a very similar way. The music is very much children-friendly (you can see a baby-boy on the lap joining the musical game during some performance captured on video on one of the internet pages linked below). The artwork and video’s are almost children-book friendly, lovely in each detail.
The band has an impressive list of contributors, of which the ‘group sound’, like with multiple vocalists, is thoroughly built up towards the last songs. This features Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (who leads just once, in French, and sings along on some tracks?), Sean O'Hagan (The High Llamas), on guitars, organ, rhythm box (subtly used!, like a laptop-approach), Wurlitzer, voice, banjo, bass, Jesse D.Vernon (Morning Star), on voice, Rhodes, guitars, organ and percussion, Kate Stables (This is the Kit), on vocals, Delphine Bouhy (Adrian Boult, Parrondo), on vocals, Cédric Castus (V.O., Raymondo), on guitars, Boris Gronemberger (V.O., Raymondo, Françoiz Breut), on guitars, percussion, vibraphone, Rhodes, vocals, rhythmbox, and Julien Paschal (Sharko, V.O.) with UK-based Charlie Francis (R.E.M., The High Llamas, Turin Brakes producer) for the recording and mixing.
