WOEBOT

This festival is weirdly synchronous with my epic french series which I've now blessed with its own category heading.....

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:37 AM | Permalink

OK, lets wrap this thing up. These three bands are certainly the most important Prog rock outfits to have emerged from France. In keeping with that movement they each possesses a gigantic, complete vision. These discs must rank as the groups finest.

If you'd told me a year ago I'd be singing the praises of Ange, I'd have looked at you askance. I blame the fruitcakes at Gnosis, which if you haven't explored it, you'd do as well to. Although Magma and Gong are probably better-known in this country the experts, it seems, are in no doubt that Ange are the greater band. My copy of "Le Cimetière des Arlequins" (1973) is blessed with a super Pop-Art sticker which nicely undercuts the gothic pomp of the cover. The sleeve art on it surpasses that of "Au-delà du Délire" (1974). Excepting these two records, Ange must have had the worst sleeve art of any band ever. See for yourself here; quite the most excruciatingly repulsive designs I've ever seen, as though they were homages to Marillion rendered by a truck-driver from Lyon.

"Le Cimetière..." is churchical garage rock, dominated by what sounds like a liturgical pipe organ. There's a serious seep in timbre between all the instruments, some people describe the mix as "muddy" but it's fearfully evocative; as though it were a live mix of a band droning away in a cavernous crypt, hunched over their instruments fitted-out in cowls (the tonsured The Monks on the "Black Monk Time" cover spring to mind). There's loads of highlights but it's hard to pick them out so fluid are the records symphonic qualities: the excellent cover of Jacques Brel's "Ces Gens Là" stands out, the patterned filigree of "L'Espionne Lesbienne", the majestic k-hole of "Bivoac (Final)", the title track itself is a killer.

Greg Northrup at Gnosis sketches a comparison between Ange and Genesis and Van der Graaf Generator (which I now, after my own proGnosis, take to be a high compliment) but actually there's a clarity and directness to Ange's music which has less to do with turn-on-a-dime musical theatrics and sonic obscurantism. I'm slightly less keen on "Au-delà du Délire", which seems more self-consciously florid and schizophonically heavy, but it's growing on me after repeated listens.

The vertical detail on "Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh" (1973) is quite astonishing and the clarity of the organisation of this volume of sound is stunning. Choirs atop a big band augmented by a rock group with nary a superfluous note and surprisingly quite a nimble lightness-of-touch. It's a masterpiece of propulsive post-Orff-ian big band Jazz (!) which reminds me, not of Ra or The Soft Machine but of righteous 60s choral jazz like Donald Byrd's "A New Perspective" or (most accurately) the ghetto workshop sonix of Eddie Gale's "Ghetto Music". Magma's rock music tag is quite obviously a red herring. This isn't wannabe Jazz in a MC5 do "Starship" fashion, but amazingly, the real McCoy Tyner.

I case you're interested the subtext to Magma's LP the story behind the grooves runs thus:

"One of these people who remembered the essence of the Kobaians' visit was a man named Nebehr Gudahtt, a spiritualist who is the subject of the third Magma album, Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh, recorded in 1973. His message to the people of Earth is that their only salvation from an ultimate and certain doom is through self purification and communion with the divine spirit of the supreme being, the Kreuhn Kohrman. With this album we are introduced to the story of the Theusz Hamtaahk (literal translation: Time of Hatred) concerning the period of time on Earth between the Kobaian visit and the celestial march for enlightenment led by Nebehr Gudahtt which concludes this album. At first Gudahtt's message is rejected, and the people march against him, but as they march they begin to question their very existence and purpose. One by one, they begin to see his truth, slowly reaching enlightenment, and begin to march with him instead of against him."

A typically obscure but nontheless intriguing slice of Vander's convoluted 1970s mythology, a surreal entirely virtual cult.

1974's "Kohntarkosz" is often described as Magma's masterpiece. I used to own a copy of that back-in-the-day and it's good, but trust me, the unmistakably distinct pile-driving "Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh" is the one. Indispensable.

Somewhat fittingly (it being the last record I'm looking out in this epic French series of mine) Gong are not easily classified as French; 'Bringing it all back Home', innit. Daevid Allen was an ex-pat Australian and the presence of Englishmen Steve Hillage and Tim Blake confuse matters further.

I've always avoided Gong in the past, especially their frivolous "Camembert Electrique" (1971) / "Flying Teapot" (1973) / Angel's Egg (1973) trilogy, but in this topsy-turvy headspace I'm in at the moment, I may find myself prey to relativism and be unable to avoid checking them out again. "You" (1974) however has a fearsome reputation, apparently standing heand and shoulders above the rest of their output. Interestingly it is marked by Allen distancing himself from his own groop, as though the band are left to their own devices. What's there to say? It's full-on space-rock nuanced by Jazz and Funk (again the white French showing their comfort with these forms), nowhere is this svelte over-caste phusion more evident than on the fidgety ohr-worm of "You Never Blow Yr Trip Forever", strafed with doppler-synth and laced with scat-babble. Groovy, baby.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

How it's going to work out is that this will be the eighth of the nine posts in my French series, the last (ninth) episode will be on French Prog Rock. There will also be a little post rounding up stuff that people have emailed me about, largely mentioning music which I have no idea whatsoever about. In all probability these final two posts will come after 15th April because I'm going away on holiday for a couple of weeks to, er, France.

Francois Rabbath has cropped up a few times on this blog before. Rabbath was a Syrian born musician who, at a tender age, discovered Edouard Nanny's tome "Contrabass Method" in a Taylor's shop. Not speaking French or understanding Musical notation he nevertheless used the book to teach himself how to play the Double-Bass. Scrimping and saving he raised the money to travel to Paris, where he planned to join the Conservatory and be taught the instrument by Nanny himself. He must have been devastated to discover that his would-be mentor had died years before. With only three days to master the required pieces he nevertheless qualified to be admitted, though quickly becoming disillusioned by the standard of his fellow pupils and the level of the tuition he dropped out. Rabbath wound up as an accompanist to Jacques Brel, Charles Aznavour, Gilbert Becaud and Michel Legrand.

In the early eighties Rabbath ended up working with an American called Frank Proto, however the period which interests us is the fifties and sixties when he released low-profile gems like the LPs "The Sound of a Bass" and "Bass Ball" on the Phillips label. Francois multi-tracked his wistful jazz-inflected stylings into exquisite tone poems immediately evocative of the Beatnik prose of Kerouac and Ginsberg. Sonically the irresistible comparison to Rabbath's works of this period is World of Echo-era Arthur Russell. It's a parallel made indelible by the similarity of their chosen instruments, the Cello and the Double Bass. I believe one can buy a CD of this era Rabbath, "Multi-Bass" (the sequel to "Bass Ball"), here.

Francois de Roubaix (confused, hang in there), was a self-taught Jazz musician who became enamored with electronic music. De Roubaix drifted into scoring soundtracks, famously providing the score for Jean-Pierre Melville's excellent "Le Samourai" (starring Alain Delon). Francois's real passion however was diving, and it became his ultimate ambition to score music for Jacques Cousteau's documentaries. The contents of this disc (allegedly the best of three volumes) were put together by De Roubaix, presumably at some expense, in a bid to convince Cousteau of his eligibility. These recording pulse with the fillibrations of the underwater life they depict, shoals of flickering static are set against the the ocean-current heave of orchestral strings. It's a romance of the deep which at a specially-convened nerve-racking playback left the veteran oceanographer cold and De Roubaix crushed to the core. There are lots of De Roubaix's recordings available here.

Finally, in this micro-celebration of French musical "Auteurs", individual musicians whose work defies easy classification, we have the wonderful Ghedalia Tazartes. I was first hipped to Ghedalia's awesomely original and unsettling work with the "Transports" LP, when the dealer Gwen Jamois sold me an original copy in 1997. It has subsequently been reissued by Italy's New Tone label. There's practically nothing written in English about Tazartes. My colleague Morlu at Fuckulture is planning to reissue Tazartes's 1980s record "Checkpoint Charlie" and he presented me with the opportunity to come and interview Tazartes in Paris for an article he suggested The Wire might want to run. I dropped the ball because I couldn't guarantee they'd be interested, and, to be frank I didn't have the energy to set about convincing them.

In lieu of more information we have to fall back on the remarkable recordings themselves. Key to the proceedings is the character Tazartes presents to us, his is a profoundly Burroughs-ian vision. Like Burroughs's story the talking arsehole, concerning the boundary between matter, flesh and character, Tazartes poses uncomfortable questions about the Western conception of "the human". Distorting his voice into a cretinous rasp, ululating like an animal, wailing like a child, smearing the boundaries between Arabic and French pronunciations and languages he is always engrossing to listen to. In some senses the accompanying electronics, which form the score to his voice, would be of secondary interest were the concrete pile-up of found sound and prehistoric mantra-onics not so equally fascinating. Tazartes adopted the pose of Tibetan Bedroom Buddha decades before the likes of The Aphex Twin and his ilk, and it's a cruel shame that his work isn't more widely admired.

The good news is that much of his oeuvre has been reissued. Although the venerable eggheads at Gnosis rate "Diaspora" (see my vinyl copy above) the most highly, "Une Eclipse Totale de Soleil" is probably his masterpiece. This too is available on CD.

Posted by WOEBOT at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Legendary Record Dealer Gwen "Slip Me an Absinthe" Jamois drops by with a link to a record he's currently enjoying.

See it's not just mildly dysfunctional London media freelancers who get hooked on Gallic Romance, Callender was a Leroy Hutson-era Soul singer who under the influence of LSD recorded "Le Musee de L’impressionisme" with lyrics like this:

“He was a guiding light but did not pretend to be
Lived on loans
Lived by the grace of God and the aid of a friend
Lived, evolved and created new themes of cause and effect
Yes he was a guiding light, for all to see
Monet, Monet, Monet
I'm singin' 'bout Claude Monet
Monet, Monet, Monet
A visionary of Time and Space and the Light
He died in 1926,
He died spiritually a success,
He died leaving behind a legacy of heavenly bliss,
And a son and mistress
Monet, Monet, Monet
I'm singin 'bout Claude Monet
A visionary of Time and Space and the Light”

Little man, little man, born an aristocrat
Little did you know at your time of birth you'd become an Invalid?
Little man, little man, born an aristocrat
Alcohol didn't do you no good,
just a mental breakdown, paralysis, and death
Petit homme, petit homme,
Out, Je chante au sujet de Toulouse-Lautrec
How were you able to paint the world you live in as miraculous as you did?
La Danse de la Gouloue et de Valentine Desosse, La Clownesse
Cha-U-Kao, La Femme au Boa Noir et la Toilette et Femme Tirant Son Bas
In the Paddock at Longchamps by day,
And in the Moulin Rouge by night,
Drinking Absynthe and Cognac and sketching everything in sight"

You couldn't make it up. There's a couple of mp3s you can peruse at popsike.com (follow the earlier link).

Posted by WOEBOT at 06:14 PM | Permalink

I go to thinking the other day that disc for disc more electronic music has emerged from France than Germany. Even ignoring the massive output of the INA-GRM axis (which dwarfs that issued from Stockhausen's axis) this would still be true. While Kraftwerk are synonymous with German music, before the year zero of Acid House there are actually very few purely "electronic" German groups, the classic canon of Krautrock is largely "straight-up" rock music. Even in the NDW-era when German groups were playing electro catch-up, there was a healthy brace of French Electro, albeit at the poppier end. Britain? Don't make me laugh. This supposedly proud nation of techno boffins only ever produced Delia Derbyshire, Basil Kirchin, Trevor Wishart, Dennis Smalley, Miller/Leer/Rental (those three virtually counting as one) and practically no Electro. Cabaret Voltaire only qualified very late in the game and don't say Throbbing Gristle cos they don't count most of the time. (wipes froth from mouth) OK, silly cartoon battle over.

I can't produce much information about these records all of which I bought blind in France. The Zanov in a boutique in Paris, the Space Art in Cannes in an open market and the Szajner just last summer in Marseilles. Zanov is a curiously fish-faced character (rolls on floor laughing- now resorting to character judgements on the basis of rear-sleeve portraits in lieu of Google snapshots). This is a superb suite of mesmerising bass-heavy synth mantras with stained-glass window melody lines. Very Belbury Poly.

The Space Art, even though this pleasantly barmy guy reassuringly describes the groop as "...unquestionably the greatest electronic music group that ever existed", is faintly rubbish. But still, it remains one of those records I return to from time to time to check if it has improved (the Zanov was excellent this time round) I always imagined Dominique Perrier had something to do with Space's "Magic Fly", though it appears that hunch is unfounded. I suppose he belongs in the league of French second-string electronic gurus like Serge Ramses and Didier Bocquet all of whom, like Perrier, probably ended up in Jean Michel Jarre's live support synth garrison.

And finally Bernard Szajner! This one is funny cos, as I mentioned elsewhere, while he was taking the mick out of me for my French adventure, Reynolds was mooting what would form the next in the series and postulated that perhaps Bernard Szajner might get the WOEBOT once-over. I have this Szajner record, which came out on a tiny British label Initial, which I didn't know anything about so I did some research on him and voila, there's lots to know. Apparently the best records are Zed's "Vision of Dune" (1979), and "Some Deaths take Forever" (1980), which Carl Craig allegedly described as his favorite electronic record of all time in Time Out, neither of which I own. "Superficial Music" is obviously some Eno-styled experiment created thus: "Superficial Music is compiled from selected tapes previously used as the basis of my recording Visions Of Dune. The tapes in their present form have been replayed in reverse at half speed without any re-recording and are enhanced only through the discriminate use of digital and analog devices." It's pretty groovy in places, segues nicely out of the less low-key strobing grooves of the Zanov.

Posted by WOEBOT at 06:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I just discovered a great break-out of the BYG releases here. As you can see most of the releases are Afro-American Free Jazz, recorded beautifully and respectfully. It might even be the greatest collection of Free Jazz records! There are more sought after labels, like the ridiculously rare Jihad Records and one can't rule out the Free Jazz output of Blue Note, but there's something very vibey about BYG. I have Mu parts 1 and 2, Gracan Moncur's "New Africa", Sonny Sharrock's "Monkey-Pockie-Boo" and The Art Ensemble's "Reese and the Smooth Ones"~ that's probably enough to be getting on with.

However, eight of BYG's releases weren't Jazz, and they're all very interesting records. Michel Puig was an unassuming-looking bloke who I know nothing whatsoever about. "Stigmates", which I found in Bristol when mice were men, is unintentionally silly "whistle-burp" Contemporary music. Other Avant-Garde records BYG released include Terry Riley's "The Germ", recorded in Sweden with schoolchildren (if memory serves) and MEV's allegedly magnificent "Leave the city" which (to quote Forced Exposure): "...features floating, droning free music freakouts of the finest cosmic quality..." Jim Backhouse swears by it and apparently there's a photo on the back of them riding naked on horseback! Ooh la la!

(tears the Puig from the turntable)

This by Brigitte Fontaine may even kick "Comme A La Radio" into touch. Wistful, drugged-out, echoated folk music sporting the most exquisite 'rainy-streets' songs with Areski's North-African instrumental inflections. Love this, and very proud of my Paris-purchased original.

There were other Rock records on BYG, I've seen a Gong record and recently discovered a heavy blues-based band called Freedom who recorded for the label (crap). WOEBOT regulars may remember me mentioning this Ame Son recording way back when. I should have bought it at the time, but this is a Get Back label reissue and, fuck it, it'll do fine. Really stunning LP. The geezers at Gnosis remark on its similarity to Can, and they're not mistaken. The drumming, though it pedals backwards, and doesn't rocket off into the stratosphere, is the split of Jaki Liebezeit. The sound is identical to that of "Father Cannot Yell"-era Can, that raw garagey psychlike squall. Your notice Can's name dropped so often, it's a real shock to hear something which does actually bear some resemblance to them. I suspect it may be a case of both Ame Son's honed chops and, duck all you Jazzophobe Rock-crits, a strong Jazz influence. That's a much-ignored factor to Can's sound. People forget Liebezeit was an alumni of Alex Von Schlippenbach's Global Unity Free Jazz Big Band. Elliptically wasn't Mitch Mitchell an Elvin Jones groupie? That Ame Son, who have a Gong connection via Bananamoon, have such a righteous connection to Jazz (being on BYG'n'all) well it stacks up.

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

All the man and the likkle pickney dem know about "L'Histoire de Melody Nelson". Weirdly the default Movabletype username is "Melody" and the default password is, you guessed it. What you mean you don't know it! My my, even David Holmes is hip to that record. Amusingly in France it's accorded something like the stature of Lloyd Weber's "Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat", the schoolkids knew and loved it. That's something special for a record so sparse and powerful, so undeniably funky. This is probably Gainsbourg's other great long-playing achievement, crewed with the same gang of UK Library music hotshots (the Alans: Hawkshaw and Parker) and like Melody Nelson recorded in the UK.

Taughter and more presciently Nouvelle-Vague than MN's loping grooves which have been sampled by hundred of dudes wielding Akais, including Massive Attack, "L'Homme A Tete de Chou" (1976), the man with the Cauliflower Head (named after a sculpure Serge owned), is a song suite centred around a mythical "chick", Marilou. The instrumentation sunk relatively deep in the sound-scape, Gainsbourg's own erotic rasp riding roughshod on top, spouting poetry "cool". Highlights include the fantastic "Lunatic Asylum" with its jew's harp loop, tympani and aboriginal precussion. Simon was remarking recently of the ignored pre-genealogy of reggae interfusion present in things like Eric Clapton's cover-version of "I Shot The Sherriff" and the Eagles' cod-Reggae of "Hotel California", well add to that selection: Gainsbourg's "Aux Armes et Caetera" recorded in Jamaica in 1978 with Marley's Wailers and the i-Threes, notable for Gainsbourg's Reggae cover-version of "La Marseillaise". What was it he said to a shocked Whitney Houston on that talk show before millions of viewers? "I want to ferk you"? Burning money years before the KLF.

And this, which I posted last year at Dissensus (excuse the repetition). Jean-Claude Vannier orchestrated "Melody Nelson" and then went on to make this impossibly barmy piece, truly a one-off, too bizarre to be either a Progressive Rock record, a Jazz record or a Library record. Vannier here most appropriately viewed (perhaps) as a Gallic David Axelrod, with a Bollywood string quartet in tow, "L'Enfant Assasin des Mouches" comprised in part of off-cuts from the Melody Nelson sessions. I bought a copy of this from a dealer a few years back for an absolutely exorbitant sum. In fairness in those days we were certain a reissue would never materialise, but now thanks to Finders Keepers it's available on vinyl and CD once more. Don't pass it up.

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:02 PM | Permalink

A conveniently French intermission. DJ Gilles LeGuen, who you may remember from this old post emailed me to say that tomorrow night (Jeudi) he's DJ-ing for the first live re-union of veteran French Synth-Waver Charles de Goal and his original band at La Fleche d'Or, Paris.

I think it must have slipped his mind that the mysterious de Goal first established contact with Gilles, googling his own name, finding WOEBOT and that post and mistaking me for the mastermind behind Gilles's compilations. Sacre blue!

Posted by WOEBOT at 04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So what's this unfolding French thing of mine all about? It ought to be clear that the Avant-Yob/Lumpen axis of music is weaker than it's been at any time since since 1997, that time before Speed Garage had mutated into 2-Step, just as Jungle had stopped delivering the goods. That year I remember listening to Mouse on Mars's "Autoditacker" and a whole raft of obscure Avant-Garde classical music.

While there was plenty of music last year that spoke of the full ripening of many genres (especially Grime) there was precious little that pointed the way forward. One of the aspects of music generated by the collective, rather than the individual, is that when the full range of inherent possibilities are exhausted by design there's no space available for innovation. The collective centres upon a unity of aim; people breaking away aren't seen as innovators to be followed, but deserters. At times like these I always feel the time is right for the more erratic impulse of Bohemian culture to pick up the slack.

However, Bohemian culture is hardly in fine fettle either! Don't get me wrong, I'm not like Mark claiming that the modernist impulse in popular culture has died, there will be new music but it may take a year to rear its head again. So why do I think the posthumous exhumation of old records is going to help? These past weeks (months...) WOEBOT has looked like UNCUT for the freaks! I believe there's a distinction between Mainstream Retro culture and inquisitively rooting around the past. I wonder why those with a Marxist bent so valorise the Modern in the light of Marx accusing Capitalist production of the‘murder of the dead’. Maybe it's alright to listen to old records as though they were new ones, but not alright to make old records pretending they were new?

I always think certain old music throws up new potentialities, and in the leanest times, checking them out is like going back to to school. If we are looking at a time when Bohemian music could make some cultural power-moves, then it's worth re-examining those junctures in the past in the UK when Bohemian music has really mattered. One of the factors that has always signified the visionary expansiveness of British culture has been when we've made the psychological leap past our wretched island mentality. It's that chimerical mixture of humility and loftiness which is often signaled by, not just the easy adoption of of our internal factors (like the absorption of Reggae through the presence of the Afro-Caribbean community) but the gentle reaching beyond our own immediate borders. (shuffles nervously).

What French/British currents are there in music? Stereolab for one. Nurse with Wound's love affair with Jac Berrocal and Luc Ferrari. Weekend. Francophile Robert Wyatt and his "Machine Molle" (Matching Mole). Recommended records and Etron Fou Leloublan. Richard Pinhas's proximity to Fripp and Eno. It's all happening in a small rarified zone that you couldn't quite label but you can feel instinctively the delineation of.

Just the usual ragged selection of records, because, as it ought to be very clear I've not been producing anything in the way of a comprehensive or authoritative breakout. I'm not a huge fan of Library records generally, but these three are quite fun. I'd refer the reader to Johnny Trunk's lovely "The Music Library" for more on the subject. France, like Italy, Germany and the UK was big for Library labels. I've never figured out why so little of this stuff comes from the USA. Probably something to do with union regulations or some other occult music industry sheaningans.

Metamorphoses is off the Uni Disc label. Quotes from Trunk: "Paris-based label specialising in ballet and avant-garde dance music." Not a Library record in the purest sense then but a gorgeously ambient collection of pellucid analogue 'tronics originally designed for the interpretative Dance massive. Thanks to Sacha the Flasher, le grand fromage, for sorting me out with this.

There are lots of highly regarded French Library labels, Telemusic, Sonimage, Neuilly, Freesound; but L'Illustration Musicale seem to have a particularly high cachet. Anyway I notice people tend to sigh when I tell them I paid 50 pence for this in a second hand store in Glasgow. It's not bad.

Finally this absurdly baroque almost Zappa-esque Disco record. It'd be sample-able if it wasn't so ridiculously restless. I bought this from man like Gwen Jamois (another Froggy Strange Attractor), who thought it was probably a demonstration record of some kind for the completely unheard-of Lancios. Kind of like a showreel and calling card rolled into one. Fascinatingly awful.

Posted by WOEBOT at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Celluloid records have a quite mixed rep. There are, I would contend, three degrees of attitude to the label depending on how hip the critic is, each peeling back another layer in appreciation and understanding. The Celluloid neophyte believes that their supposedly hallowed, and oft-repackaged collection of 5 Old Skool "Lightning Swords of Death" (Futura 2000, The Smurf, Fab Five Freddy, Phase II and Grandmaster D.ST) qualifies the label for reverence, this person might even believe Laswell to be some kind of genius, might be delighted by the mid-period Last Poets botch up "Oh My People", the clumsy Fourth-world fumblings of Mandingo and Material's ham-fisted Punk-Funk.

The next tier of appreciation is occupied by those who contend that, yes as Laswell himself admits to David Toop of the Hip-Hop connection in Rappattack: "It came about as an obligation to a label to produce really quickly five rap records." That three of the tracks were quite brazen cash-ins on a trend. Laswell was the New York-based gopher for one Jean Karakos, who had in a previous incarnation been Jean Georgakarakos, one third of the Bisceglia/Young/Georgakarakos partnership that was behind the legendary French Free-Jazz imprint BYG. In a sense Celluloid was like a bucket-shop version of BYG, like that mighty label their existence centered on repackaging foreign music, though this time without the principled and presumably costly nurturing with which the likes of Archie Shepp had been treated. A nurturing which resulted in oddities like former Cecil Taylor percussionist Andrew Cyrille's solo LP, a solo free percussion LP, ye gods! Rather Celluloid would to keep the catalogue numbers cycling, as Genesis P'Orridge reportedly complains to this day, by adopting tactics such as bootlegging Throbbing Gristle's first two LPs. It should come as no surprise to know that Karakos was the financial brains behind BYG, and that when left unrestrained..... However, that may be being unfair to him, surely his interest in Jalal Nuriddin and The Last Poets (Celluloid did a very handy reissue of their early Douglas-era masterpiece "This is Madness") and his prescient grasp of Hip-Hop came from his background in Free-Jazz?

The third and final tier of the appreciation of Celluloid records, that Elysian fields of hipsterdom in which we frolic here at WOEBOT, believe that Celluloid's strongest and most interesting releases were not the works of foreign artists repackaged, but their domestic releases. In a sense this post will closely parallel my forthcoming one on the BYG label, which focuses on three strictly French records on that label, not the admittedly wonderful works of Gracan Moncur and Don Cherry.

Mathmatiques Modernes consisted of Edwige Belmore and Claude Arto. Production on the awesome staccato-funk of "Disco-Rough" with it's one finger synth riffs (like a brazenly gay, playful version of the DAF of "Die Kleinen Und Die Bosen") came courtesy of Jacno, formerly guitarist with French Punk hopefuls "The Stinky Toys". Jacno, who is allegedly something of a cult figure, went on to partner in 80s stalwarts "Elli et Jacno". I have heard other stuff by him, "Rectangle" which also came out on Celluloid, and sadly it's rubbish.

As for Nini Raviolette, well I know next to nothing about her! This fascinating slice of stripped-to-the-bone Electro-Pop is practically a one-track distillation of everything that is wonderful about the Laetitia Sadler-led Franco-pop stylings of Stereolab. Coming on like a austere bleepier version of their masterpiece "Music for The Amorphous Body Study Center" it should be more widely known. Tigersushi claim of this record that: "Her songwriter is none other than Alain Burosse the man behind landmark cyberpunk TV shows ‘Haute Tension’ & ‘L’Oeil du Cyclone’, but really I'm sure that means as little to them as it does to me.

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Lard Free are to Heldon as Laurel is to Hardy. Gilbert Artman played in Heldon and Richard Pinhas plays on Lard Free's excellent second album "I'm Around About Midnight" (1975), both bands get accused of being too "cold" which will hardly going to turn-off fans of Acid and Techno, even if it means Worzel Gummidge-like* Prog fans are a little shy of them.

The above is actually Lard Free's eponymous debut, repackaged by RCA France's library label April Orchestra. That pretty much sets the tone, it must show a diminishing commercial horizon when groups sell their back catalogue for music for TV. "Lard Free" is populated by refreshingly minimal, synth vistas. The bleeps on "Tatkooz a Roulette" resonate like submarine sonar, the plangent loped moog riff of "12 ou 14 Juillet que je sais d'elle", strongly reminiscent of Carl Craig's "Neurotic Behaviour (Beatless mix)" is interrupted only by a cool plain sax-line. There are other exquisite touches of jazz, and many commentators have noticed the record's debt to the modal Miles, while "Warionbaril" and 'Pale Violence Under A Reverbe" are cut from the same cloth as "Bitches Brew" and even "Pangea".

However Lard Free's masterpiece must be their third album, again nameless, fans have taken to calling it "Spirale Malax" after the awesome title track. A seventeen minute long maximalist raga of ARPs, EMSs, splashing backward rotating drum-machines and stellar axe work segue into brow-furrowed tomtoms and a jet trail of pulsating echoes. It's at once grotesque and surreal (echoing the Philip Guston-like painting on its cover), like an ugly jabbering Cluster (circa II). Side B, the "Synthetic Seasons" suite made me flash on PIL's "Metal Box (the one record I now regret omitting from my dandy 100), something about its unremitting starkness, the tower-block drums and perhaps (via Griel Marcus's "Lipstick Traces") the ghost of 1968. Both records have been reissued by Spalax where, as you can see for yourself, they're keeping great company.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Like a lot of music that has been made in France over the last forty years, Heldon have either been dismissed out-of-hand or cautiously acknowledged. I suppose Tangerine Dream are their closest counterparts, and yet Froese and the Tangs are heaped with accolades.

Richard Pinhas is an incredibly interesting character. At the barricades in 1968 as a fervent Trotskyite, possessing a PhD in philosophy from the Sorbonne, a close friend of Gilles Deleuze (who appears on the Electronic Guerilla LP), Pinhas (a white man..) used to sport an amazing gravity defying Afro, one wonders why his back catalogue doesn't inspire more interest. I mean, he even ropes Phillip K. Dick in to contribute to his 1977 Tranzition LP!

"Electronic Guerilla" was Heldon's first LP, was issued on the cult label Cobra (who also put out Sun Ra's "Cosmos") and is dedicated to Robert Wyatt, with whom Richard apparently came very close to releasing a collaborative LP with. It's a muthafucka with powerfully grungey post-MC5 riffing head-to-head with crystal-sharp electronic mantras, sounding like some kind of lost archetype for the revolutionary counter-culture. Maniacally scrubbed-clean in stark contrast with the hairier end of Krautrock with which it shares aesthetic aims (Amon Duul II always sound sound muddy to these ears) and miles more militant than the politically-disengaged Fripp and Eno (who Pinhas worshipped), I'd highly reccommend you pick up Cunieform's reissue of this chicken.

Pinhas actually disowned this "Allez Teia" their second LP along with "It's Always Rock 'N' Roll", their third, claiming they should never have been released. "Allez Teia" came highly recommended to me from none other than esteemed friend-of-WOEBOT the gallic supremo Seb Morlu on the basis of its superbly trippy Mellotron work. I'm totally sold on the cover, always dig that fighting-with-police-in-the-streets kind of attitude, but slightly less impressed by the record which seems derivative of Fripp's stuff (a freely acknowledged debt). However its great slabs of throbbing synth noise are kind of lovely, and yes, bracingly proto-Industrial.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)