Horde Catalytique Pour La Fin - Gestation Sonore (1971)

French free-improvisation at its finest, in the sole release from this quartet.  As per the group name, they envisaged themselves making music for the apocalypse, birthing an elemental new sound as per the album title/track titles. 

In practice, this means plenty of skronking, ill-sounding sax, slippery bass, bits of vibraphone tinkling around like animated skeletons, and atmospheric percussion.  At times the sax player switches to flute, either calming proceedings or enhancing the creepout according to the moment.  All of this comes together most effectively on the 19-minute closing track, the sustained atmosphere working best at length.  By the end of the decade, the sounds of this strange, great record had wafted across the Channel and onto a certain List - and deservedly so. You can definitely hear the influence on early Nurse With Wound.

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pw: sgtg

Ilitch - Periodikmindtrouble (2000 compi of recordings 1974-1978)

Two and half hours of phenomenal organ/guitar drones, ambient sounds and other strangeness, from French artist Thierry Müller and associates.  Originally a photographer and graphic designer, Müller started making music in the early 1970s, sometimes assisted by his brother Patrick on synth and recording engineer Ruth Ellyeri.  Their first album as Ilitch, Periodik Mindtrouble, was released in 1978.

This double-CD collects all the material released on the LP along with outtakes from it and other early recordings.  Taking the CD running order then, the first thing here is the 25-minute title track which originally filled Side 2 of the LP.  Starting with some frantic, stabbing organ improvisation, it settles down after a few minutes and then begins a hypnotic drone that Terry Riley would've been proud of, adding guitar in the final minutes.  This is followed by the three-part, 23-minute Ballades Urbaines, originally planned for the LP but ditched in favour of newer material, in which environmental recordings are paired with near-formless reverbed guitar.  A further 20 minutes of unreleased material from 1974 rounds out Disc 1, with more organ, this time in gloomy dark ambient mode, bookended by guitar experiments.

All of the 1975-78 material on Disc 2 comes under the heading of 'Innerfilmsequences', and it was from this group of recordings that the finalised first side of the LP took shape.  The CD tracks that appeared on the LP are 2-3, 5, 8-10, although the last one there appears to be a 1999 re-recording.  More guitar and synth abounds, along with harmonium, occasional percussion and tape manipulation.  The unreleased material reveals an absolute treasure trove of lengthy drone pieces: To I Dien for organ, synth and tape and Impasse Raga for harmonium and percussion, both 8 minutes; and two stunning 16-17 minute tracks, which are my favourites on Disc 2, Trans Sud Omnibus for organ and synths, and Voyage (Limit Speed Disintegration) for organ, synth, guitar & tapes.  A hugely recommened collection, especially to fans of Heldon/Richard Pinhas.

Disc 1 link
Disc 2 link
pw: sgtg

Richard Pinhas - Iceland (1979)

Third solo album from the founder of Heldon, with less focus on the echo-guitar ferocity that he'd brought to the band in favour of icy electronic washes and sequences.  The title suite builds up with an ominous pulse and samples of eerie, garbled speech, before it's interrupted by the machine rhythms of The Last King of Thule, Pt. 1.  The Iceland suite then concludes sans rhythms, letting the strange voices come to the fore over slightly ill-sounding synth.

After a short signal-burst announces the album's second half, Pinhas brings the guitar to the fore for the second part of' 'Thule'.  Layers of that wonderful contemporaneous-with-Fripp sound build up, then suddenly cut out to let the chugging rhythm play out for the final minute.  There's a 'Short Transition' (yep, that's what it's called) of sped-up rhythm before the closing Greenland ties together all the album's elements in a wonderful 9-minute finale.  With its more melodic focus, the track comes across like a relieved arrival at an outpost destination after enduring the harsh elements.

Added to all the CD editions of Iceland is a bonus track well worthy of inclusion and repeat listens.  If I was to listen blind to the 25-minute Wintermusic, my first thought would be that it was some great lost Fripp & Eno track.  A very enjoyable postscript to a highly recommended album.

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pw: sgtg

Michel Saugy - Oceanique (1991)

Sub-aquatic electronic mellowness from Swiss-born Saugy, on the French New-Age label Ellebore. First up is the 16-minute gentle drift of Asteria, and it's a very good piece for its era.  This was a couple of years after Jean-Michel Jarre came out with the extended ambience of En Attendent Cousteau''s title track - possibly an inspiration here?

The following three tracks, each 4-5 minutes in length and livened up by drum tracks, don't really feel like they belong here.  I've listened to them once or twice, and they were pleasant enough, but are essentially forgettable 90s library music rather than New Age or ambient.

Not to worry though - the half-hour long Navicula is still to come.  Even more of a becalmed oceanic drift than Asteria, this track more than makes up for the shortcomings of the middle section of the album.  In fact, if you just take the opening and closing tracks together, you've still got a pretty decent 46 minutes of early 90s electronic chillout to enjoy as an album.

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pw: sgtg

Alan Stivell - Symphonie Celtique (Tir Na N-Og) (1980)

Whilst trying to pay attention in French class at school, I noticed a poster on my teacher's wall: a long haired, bearded bloke playing a harp, along with some other (presumably) musicians, and the word "Stivell" at the top in a Celtic-style font.  That image stuck with me, as I thought it could be something I might like if it was an artist/group.

A while later, I did indeed discover Breton harpist, singer, folklorist and composer Alan Stivell (born Alan Cochevelou, 1944), and got hold of an LP of the legendary Olympia concert.  Still don't have the Dublin concert, the source of Mr. Weir's poster, but now I do have this awesome "symphony" of Celtic prog-folk that Stivell wrote and recorded at the end of the 70s, which remains his most ambitious undertaking.

The Celtic Symphony is structured in three 'Circles' on sides 1-3 of the original double-vinyl, with the fourth side being a celebratory suite.  The circles represent the concentric structure of Tir Na N-Og, the island afterlife of Irish mythology also alluded to in one track on a recent post here, and break down into four tracks in each 'Circle'.  Missing from the CD is a minute-long reprise at the end of the Third Circle, but whatever the reason, that's no great loss.  What is here is wonderful.

I'm hearing some similarities to mid/late 70s Popol Vuh, albeit with a much more Celtic flavour, particularly in Ar Geoded Skedus and the stunning nine-minute Divodan.  Elsewhere there's organ drones, orchestrated pieces for strings, obvious spots for Stivell's beautiful harp playing and his vocals in Breton language/French/occasional English.  Intending the Celtic Symphony to be a more internationalist celebration of minority cultures, life, the universe and everything, there's also a reach beyond Stivell's traditional palate to more proto-World music sounds, hence bits of sitar and such.  An ambitious undertaking for sure, and one that pays off in spades.

Alternate cover, closer to original vinyl.  1988 French CD cover at top.

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pw: sgtg

Ghédalia Tazartès - Diasporas (1979)

As promised, here's Ghédalia Tazartès debut album, recorded in 1977 and released in '79, to complete my posting of his first four releases (see tag below for the others).  More will definitely come along in due course as I get hold of them, but for now, here's the record that introduced the world to a truly unique sound collage artist and vocalist.

Diasporas starts of with a 9-minute suite of shorter pieces, and was the perfect curtain-raiser for Tazartès' striking sound, with loop after loop of voice or instrument being introduced, sometimes dominating the stage or providing backing for Tazartès' own singing.  The shorter individual tracks that make up the rest of Diasporas continue on from there, with La Vie Et La Mort... showing off the range of his voice over some ritualistic percussion, and there's occasionally even a straightforward song -  Quasimodo Tango is a nicely odd collaboration with composer Michel Chion.

On the second half of the album, the vocal collages continue to go to fascinatingly weird places: the low drones of La Fin Du Prologue, the rhythmic craziness of Rien Qu'au Soleil, the sweetly melodic Mourir Un Peu with its loop of a child's voice... something for everyone.  Like all the Ghédalia Tazartès albums I've heard so far, every time you dive in there's something different to love.

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 P.S. time to spin that snowy day favourite of mine - this is currently the view from my front window:

For anyone who's ever read Ian Rankin's 'Let It Bleed', that lighted pathway in the distance is Coffin Lane aka Coffin Walk.

Jean-François Pauvros & Gaby Bizien - No Man's Land (1976)

Nicely unhinged one-off collaboration between two lesser-known figures of the French avant-garde, guitarist Pauvros and percussionist Bizien.  Both put in brief appearances with Jac Berrocal, but a few years prior to that they released No Man's Land together.  The fact that practically the first sound you hear on this LP is a tuba being played underwater might tell you all you need to know about an album like this, but there's lots of nice little oddities beside that are worth a listen.

The main mode of operation is generally echoed/speed shifted/otherwise mutated bits of guitar from Pauvros (occasionally bringing Fred Frith to mind) and free percussion from Bizien, as in the opening title track, Barre D'Etel and Dr Livingstone I Presume.  Elsewhere, the more audio-verite free improvs of Plage De Bling sound like a sort of Berrocal/Tazartès hybrid, and Bizien gets to work on some nice melodic percussion on Gloire A L'Aeropostale while Pauvros swishes away in the background.  Wish they'd done another couple of records together to develop this sound, but No Man's Land is a great rewarding listen for its uniqueness.

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Ghédalia Tazartès - Tazartès (1987)

Ghedalia Tazartès' fourth album saw his unique sound becoming more streamlined and accessible - but only relative to the all-over-the-map insanity of his first three (see links below - just realised I still have haven't posted his debut, so will put that right soon).

This 1987 release could still hardly be called commercial, despite a modest update to the sound and more discrete, self-contained tracks. Tazartès' singing is still wonderfully weird, and the little idiosyncracies in the background continue to delight, like the funk rhythm loop that gradually fades in towards the end of opener Merci Stéphane.  The album's lyrics include settings of texts by French surrealists Stéphane Mallarmé and René Daumal, as well as words by Gustave Flaubert and even Jacques Cousteau - an esteemed bunch of French legends indeed, which I reckon is entirely appropriate for someone like Tazartès.

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Previously posted at SGTG: 
Tazartès' Transports
Une Éclipse Totale de Soleil

Jacques Berrocal - Parallèles (1977)

Debut solo album by French avant-gardist and multiple-horn skronker Jac(ques) Berrocal.  This is the one with the original Rock 'N' Roll Station, memorably covered by Nurse With Wound in 1994.  Back in 1976, Berrocal got on his bike (in the studio, to record the sounds of it as an instrument) and left the words to British rock 'n' roll singer Vince Taylor, whose biggest audience had always been in mainland Europe since his 60s peak.  The result, accompanied by a pedaling bass note, was five minutes of surrealist brilliance - 18 years later, Stapleton would even name his album after it.

Elsewhere on Parallèles, there's a sample of the free jazz improvisations on trumpet, trombone, cornet and more that Berrocal and his main collaborators Roger Ferlet and Michel Potage were playing at the time.  One track, Post-Card, adds guitar and a spoken-word part, and was apparently recorded in a pigsty.

Lastly, the side-long Bric-a-Brac (To Russolo) adds some more free-improv acquaintances on cello, bass, piano and several more horns.  Towards the end, that static bassline from Rock 'N' Roll Station comes back in, as do elements of its lyrics, among other things that intrude hilariously into an English-language biographical note of Luigi Russolo.

original LP cover

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Ghédalia Tazartès - Une Éclipse Totale de Soleil (1984)

Third album by French sui generis oddball Ghédalia Tazartès.  Like its predecessor Transports, there's no track titles here - just two album sides of whatever Tazartès felt like pasting together into a mindbending journey into vocal and musical sound warping.  Éclipse Totale's original release confuses me a bit when trying to learn more about it - was it released in 1984 by Celluloid records as discogs says, or was it released in 1979 as the CD reissue and a couple of other websites seem to claim?  I'll take a guess that it was recorded in '79 and released later - any clarity welcome.

Perhaps it's just an apt record to be slightly bamboozled by before even listening to it.  As with all the Tazartès music I've heard, the best thing to do is just sit back and follow where he leads with all the jump-cut sections of each record fusing into something truly unique and memorable.  Éclipse Totale starts with a chugging and hissing mechanical rhythm, then a child singing, then Tazartès singing over bleeping and a female voice, and so on.  The second side also starts rhythmically, with a bit more bounce and musicality, before plunging into some dark, grinding electronics and unsettling screams, and just keeps getting weirder.  I live for albums like this.  Don't miss it.

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Ghédalia Tazartès - Tazartès' Transports (1980)

Second album from Parisian outsider legend Ghédalia Tazartès, whose beautifully strange music I was first introduced to via - you guessed it - the Nurse With Wound list.  Recorded in 1977, and first released in 1980 on clear vinyl with no track titles, Tazartès' Transports on CD is split into 15 tracks with... no track titles.  So, one to just dive headfirst into for sure.

That LP cover isn't the only thing that brings Faust to mind for me - listening to these tracks, with each sudden jump-cut going off at a totally new tangent, is quite a Faust Tapes-esque experience.  The opening moments of the album throw up a couple more German reference points - a pretty Roedelius-like piano incongruously paired with a harsh, Tietchens-ish rhythm - before Tazartès speed-shifted voice replaces the piano, and we're plunged into his wonderfully weird sound world.  Chiming cathedral bells, electronic squiggles, more loops of different voices, a mournful wind instrument emerging from the embers of a noise onslaught - that's just track two.

Listing the many delights of the remaining 13 tracks would be a pointless exercise - just listen, enjoy and discover the many looped elements, found sounds and little snatches of actual music, and on repeat listens, hear something different every time - that's the enduring magic of Tazartès' music for me.  His singing is a constant joy in whatever form it takes - plaintive wailing, throaty droning, or rasping Dada-esque nonsense in one of his comic personae.  Don't miss the spoken word closing track, intoned in English - "All animals have a personality, a personality, a personality... I'm a dancer,  I'm a dancer, moving on a stage, moving on a stage...".  A memorably bizarre ending to a magnificent, absolutely essential record.

alternate CD cover

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Martin Davorin Jagodic - Tempo Furioso (Tolles Wetter) (1975)

Sole album release by Martin Davorin Jagodic (b. 1935, Zagreb), who settled in France in the 1960s.  Having apparently worked at GRM, been involved in installations and performance pieces and composed numerous Cage-esque graphic scores, it's a shame there isn't more recorded evidence of Jagodic's work.  What is available here, though, is 42 minutes of top-notch sound manipulation that more than justified Jagodic's place on the Nurse With Wound list (see last Monday's post).

Starting from a stew of queasy, gently pulsing electronics, it soon becomes clear that the 'Tempo Furioso' title doesn't have anything to do with the pace of the work, and may have just been applied for ironic/comic value.  Adding to the mix are various voice snippets and loops, naturalistic sounds of lapping waves and birds (Jagodic must've been out taping in the 'great weather' of the album's subtitle), and samples of classical and rock music.  An early highlight of the second track is a lengthy sample from a period-drama radio play, surrounded by more agitated electronics, before things settle down again.  A highly recommended sound experience from start to finish.

Update!  Have received the following comment:

A website will be open for Martin Davorin Jagodic in the following month with a lot of new music, graphic scores, videos and more.
If you want to get the link when it will be ready, just send an email to bethson@free.fr.

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Régis Renouard Larivière - Futaie / Tchernoziom (2000 compi of works from '96 and '98)

Nice little EP by electroacoustic composer Régis Renouard Larivière (b. 1959, Paris), which appears to be the only release under his name.  One track, Futaie, won an Ars Electronica prize for computer music in 1996, and the other, Tchernoziom, takes one aspect of Futaie and plays around with it, totaling 32 minutes of sound manipulation that are well worth getting immersed in.

The short liner note is a bit on the academic side in a pretentious kind of way - or perhaps its just come out like that in the English translation - but the opening sentence about Futaie is nicely evocative, saying that it "unfolds like a long, slow sentence of which only the punctuation remains".  This describes pretty well the spare, stop-start sound of the first few minutes, which are based around chunky percussion and wind instrument sounds.  These slowly reverberate around in space as the track starts to mutate over its 14 minutes.

Tchernoziom, apparently named after the fertile black soil of the Ukraine, is even more interesting.  It's more rhythmical, in the computer pulses that run through it, and creates a sustained, eerie atmosphere.  If it weren't for the occasional presence of (albeit still heavily treated) acoustic instruments, presumably the source material taken from Futaie, I might think I was listening to latter-day Autechre or something.  A really striking and engrossing alien soundworld that makes me wish there were more releases available by Larivière.

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Hugues Dufourt - Saturne / Surgir (1993 compi, rec. '80 and '85)

As the Cassini spacecraft makes its final descent into Saturn's atmosphere, what better music to celebrate its voyage with?  Well, maybe Holst's Saturn, a classic seven minutes of grand old melancholy in its own right; but I'm going to go for 43 minutes of epic, electronically-inflected orchestral atmospherics courtesy of Dufourt (b. 1943 in Lyon).

One of the co-founders (who included Murail and Grisey) of the French-spectralism-focused Ensemble l’Itinéraire, Dufourt wrote Saturne for them in 1978-9.  It was also the time of the launch of his own Instrumental Research and Sound Synthesis Group (CRISS), which gives a clue to the content of this masterpiece.  Eerie orchestral swells and bell-like percussion are swathed in gaseous synthesiser swishes from the beginning, evoking the descent through Saturn's outer atmosphere to the unknown world below.  The percussion gets periodically more thunderous, there's judicious use of a staccato electric guitar, and the developing synth tones blend in perfectly with the rising and falling orchestral swells.  This sustained atmosphere is wonderfully evocative on headphones in a dark room - highly recommended.

Saturne is supported on this CD by Surgir (1985), a half-hour orchestral work in a similar vein, but without the synthesisers and guitar.  It's worth a listen, but it's the main work that I keep going back to with all its great swirling electronics.

Original LP cover for Saturne, 1980

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Françoise Hardy - s/t (aka La Question) (1971)

From Brazil to France - without entirely leaving Brazil.  Françoise Hardy's eleventh album, again untitled but retrospectively known by the title of one of its best known tracks (as per conventions of the time/genre), was a collaboration with Brazilian musician Tuca, who was living in Paris at the time.  Tuca, real name Valeniza Zagni da Silva, tragically died seven years later at age 34, having released just three albums of her own.  Here, writing all the music for Hardy's album and playing beautifully understated guitar, is perhaps her best known work, which took Hardy's career to a new level of maturity.

La Question in some ways reminds me of my favourite Astrud Gilberto album, I Haven't Got Anything Better To Do - around half an hour long, but managing to cram in a huge emotional weight in its wistful, small-hours ambience and songs about love both unrequited and long gone.  In amongst this, there's also an offbeat oddness in songs like Le Martien (French sophistication apparently dictates that alien abductors come bearing not bodily probes, but engagement rings) and in the breathy, wordless evocations of Pauline Réage's Story Of O.

Arrangements throughout this great record are restrained and always perfectly complementary to the track, right through to the closing reimagining of a song by another Brazilian musician, Taiguara.  La Question is a huge highlight not just in Françoise Hardy's discography, but in adult French pop in general.

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