LA JOURNÉE COMMENCE PAR LE RÊVE – 2027 (Top Songs Top Hits 2027) (2026, Digital, Self-Released) 

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Self-Released

Format: Digital

Release Date: 24 Sep 2026

Back in 2014, Marcelin Willems (Will Z.), Ludo Meyers, and Sammy Goldstein — all connected with the strange cosmic machinery of Cosmic Trip Machine — decided to make a record from the future. Not just a record inspired by the future, but supposedly the 20 most-listened-to songs of 2027, written and recorded thirteen years before that year had even arrived. Their idea was as simple as it was absurd: one-minute songs for a future in which nobody would have the time — or perhaps the patience — to listen to anything longer.

Well, here we are. The future they imagined is suddenly knocking on our door.

Released under the name of Marcelin’s French-language podcast La Journée Commence Par Le Rêve, “2027 (Top Songs Top Hits 2027)” is the strange surviving document of that unfinished experiment. The original recordings were made between October 2014 and April 2015, with Sammy on drums, but the project remained incomplete, and Sammy is no longer here to see its final form. Between late 2025 and June 2026, Marcelin and Ludo returned to the old material, completing it with new arrangements — including some subtle AI-generated touches — before Maxime Wathieu mixed and mastered the whole thing in September 2026.

And this is where the story becomes even more fascinating. The musicians once imagined a machine-dominated future; now machines are actually participating in the making of music. So what happens when a musical prophecy catches up with reality? Is this really what 2027 was supposed to sound like, or are we listening to 2014 imagining 2027 from the strange perspective of 2026?

Whatever the answer, this is certainly not your usual retro-futuristic exercise. It is a time capsule, a musical joke, an unfinished archive brought back to life — and perhaps a little warning from the past, arriving just in time for the future…

And then the clock starts ticking, with twenty tracks squeezed into a crazy little journey where almost nothing stays longer than a minute and a half — from 0:59 to 1:31 — as if the musicians really did know something about our future attention spans! The opening title track “2027” arrives with a windy, almost cinematic beginning, quickly revealing a strange psych-folkie-prog character, before “Gardens” softens the atmosphere with its gentle poppy melody and an ethereal AOR-Prog feeling. “Snakres” takes us somewhere darker, cinematic and proggy, wrapped in a mysterious symphonic veil, while “Moloch” suddenly shifts the scenery towards dub, with a reggae-esque touch, dreamy atmosphere and electronic colouring. “Anger” kicks things up a notch, moving faster and bringing a sharper psych-pop-rock edge, followed by “Have A Dream”, a soft, dreamy little ballad carried by male vocals. Then comes “Parmesan”, where prog and electronics meet under a slightly futuristic theme, complete with robotic vocals that push it firmly into cyber-psych territory. “Bobby” is even harder to classify, a weird psych-a-something creature with a wonderfully creep-a-delic electronic theme, before “Window” opens into something more orchestral, its strings and violin creating an eerie, almost symphonic atmosphere. “Leave The City” slows things down again with a proggy ballad, its vocals surrounded by a distant Pink Floyd echo that seems to float somewhere behind the song. “Happy Doggy” brings in a computerised theme with a curious country flirtation, and that melody immediately made me think of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit In The Sky”, although filtered through this bizarre future-machine aesthetic. “Smog Of Existence” follows with a soft, dusty, electrical ballad, flirting once again with prog, while “Elevation” becomes blurrier and more synthetic, its electronic character carrying a definite 80s computerised touch. “Fele” offers another soft pop-rock moment, nostalgic in feeling and built around a cool, memorable melody, then “Shine Upon Me” continues along the balladesque path, with vocals and a gentle proggy atmosphere. With “Well Done Roger”, however, the whole thing suddenly expands into space: proggy, futuristic, psychedelic and unmistakably Pink Floydish in places. “Mage” strips things down to a piano melody surrounded by weirdness and spacey effects, giving the track a slightly surreal prog character, before “In The Future” delivers exactly what its title promises — a futuristic, electronically flavoured theme with a psychedelic keyboard sound running through it. “Message Into Space” takes the journey even further out, a soft space-a-delic trip with robotic vocals and a proggy ending, while the closing “More Disko” leaves us orbiting somewhere between space rock and future dancefloor, with its strange futuristic space-disco sound. Twenty tiny pieces, twenty flashes of a future imagined thirteen years too early — and somehow, squeezed together, they form a surprisingly colourful little time machine. 

In conclusion… An intriguing little experiment, “2027 (Top Songs Top Hits 2027)” is perhaps more interesting because of the strange story behind it than any attempt to define exactly what kind of music it is. Twenty miniature visions of a future imagined back in 2014, finally arriving in the digital present — and now touched by the very technology they were once predicting. Since there is no vinyl to hunt down here, just press play and discover where this curious musical time capsule takes you… TimeLord Michalis

Tracklist

Links

Digital release only, available on YouTube: