There are strange ways of inspiration at work here from one Paul Osborne, who operates under the moniker of Project Gemini. Even on his 2022 debut The Children Of Scorpio Osborne picked up strands from some obvious and some not-so-obvious sources. Yet in his new effort, Colours & Light, he goes a step further at bringing those ‘old’ inspiration strands into modern (music) times.
Sure, library music, often used in film scores in the late sixties and early seventies has been a source of inspiration for a number of artists due to its mingling of everything from R&B, and funk to psych rock, folk and everything else.
Yet, here Osborne picks a very specific strand – the one of the European film scene of the time, as well as that used for those psych albums devoted to signs of horoscope as seen through the light of some of the producer wizards of the time, particularly David Axelrod and Frenchman Jean-Claude Vanier. He also throws in touches of Anatolian psych, quite advanced at the time, as well as Eastern music, something done so well then. Even the album cover and the moniker lead a path in that direction.
Still, with every source of inspiration, the key question lies in whether that source is either used or misused and if any combination of such sources has an individual stamp of the artist using them.
Osborne presents not only all the right sources but combines them in a way that has a very individual stamp, not only in the quality of the songwriting but also in the choice and execution from the quite extensive list of collaborators here.
Colours & Light fulfils that dual task Osborne seems to set out for himself – harking back to some previous musical times and making them as modern as they should be.
