Vision Éternel Officially Coins The Term Melogaze

Alexandre Julien of Vision Éternel has officially coined a new term and genre to describe the band’s music: Melogaze. After years of struggling to describe what kind of music Vision Éternel was making, whenever asked by someone who had not heard the music, Alexandre Julien would explain that it was part ethereal (or ethereal wave), part dark wave, part shoegaze (or shoegazing), part dream pop, part ambient (and sometimes dark ambient), part minimalist, part post-rock, part emo and part indie rock. It’s also heavily cinematic, atmospheric, emotional and mostly instrumental. It’s hard to deny that Vision Éternel’s music has slight elements from each of those genres, but then again, each of those genres could easily be debated, as Vision Éternel clearly does not fit into any one of those categories.

After years of being unhappy being categorized in the aforementioned genres, Alexandre Julien came up with the term “melogaze“. But “melo” is not short for “mellow“. It stands for “melodrama“. That is because Vision Éternel’s concept albums are themed around love, heartbreaks, depression and the long and dreadful phase of moving on. Vision Éternel could be compared to the 1950’s classic melodrama films of Douglas Sirk, a major influence for Alexandre Julien. Incidentally, the etymology of the word “melodrama” is itself a combination of “melos” (Greek for “music“) and “drame” (French for “drama“).

The second part of the term in “melogaze” is more obvious. This was taken from the genre “shoegaze“. While perhaps not the most obvious choice in the list of genres comparable to Vision Éternel, it perfectly symbolizes the introspective and introverted shades of the band. And besides, it sounded better than any of the other combinations that were brainstormed. Vision Éternel is therefore a melodramatic shoegaze band. In short, it’s melogaze.