Music from France

*In process of stocking* In nineteen movements of varying lengths and moods, Denis Doufour’s monumental piano piece “Avalanche” invites us on a voyage across the infinite variation of the forms taken by snow, and the rich vocabulary established by the Innuits for it since their arrival on Greenland, the continent of ice. At work in this piece is a transposition, inspired by morphologies, of a certain kind of energy onto the relationships between the physical and musical realms. Thanks to his prac…

Cougouyou Music present a limited 7" single Brigitte Fontaine's masterpiece "Lettre À Monsieur Le Chef De Gare De La Tour De Carol", originally released on her legendary album Comme À La Radio in 1969. Fontaine is not an artist from Perpignan/Catalonia, but this beautiful track about the station master of the train station Latour-de-Carol, 1200 meters high in the Pyrenees, is emblematic for this region in the South of France. Nothing is known about concrete music composer monsieuRdurand. Based i…

A pre-lock down project by Laurent Kink Gong Jeanneau, given a new impetus whist home bound in 2020/21. Starting with a detuned Santur (Persian dulcimer) and then expanding the concept and playing techniques to various detuned acoustic guitars, first by raising 2 or 3 strings above the neck whilst hitting them with chinese chopsticks. With the worldwide lock down of 2020 Laurent took this tecnique to its logical conclusion, by banging everything percussive with strings and exploring the various …

Marble, lasagne, lego, moon, liquorice, sap, weightlessness... These are all words and their associated sensations that come to mind when I think of the music of Société Etrange and more precisely to this brand new album mysteriously named "Chance". To tell the truth, it's lucky that this trip exists.The German groove of Can, the ghostly haze of Phew and the industrial elasticity of African Head Charge. All this and more. Société Etrange is an entity, it's a name and a sound. A compact and preci…

* Rare private press CD *  By a beautiful day of end of summer, September 20, 2004, my hosts Maria Bella and Miguel, involved me in a hazardous route in the streets of Madrid. The finality was to record sound elements which could be useful to me in the project “Itinerario del Sonido” to which they had invited me to take part. We thus went on, walking by bus by subway and some times, I recognized the singular places which I had already met several years, perhaps 10 years before and it was like vi…

*300 copies limited edition* »Hilt« is the first collaboration between Rudolf Eb.er and Will Guthrie who, based on their previous musical work, seem very different at first glance. However, it quickly becomes apparent, that the distinct approaches to composition and sound complement each other perfectly and make this album a very special and exciting affair. The closer you listen, the more you will be drawn into it and realize that the rhythmic drumming, the careful arrangements of hiss, crackle…

On Music is Not a Copy Kink Gong turns crystal pop into syrup musak, a skippy glitch digital re-configuration of Chinese popular music, sounding like a broken unrelenting CD player under Beijing’s main underpass. We can’t think of anyone else making music like this, being it destructive or celebratory, dive in, never come back.

The composition of the Duplant / Heraud duo fits perfectly with the centuries-old tradition of music inspired by the night, minimal variations follow one another carrying out a sound flow made of magnetic tapes, analog synthesizers and who knows what else. A stimulus to the listener's synapses, an album that breaks the boundary between reality and dream.

* Digipack CD edition * Ghédalia Tazartès left us in February 2021 when we had just finalized the editing and the cover art of his new album with him. Unfortunately he will never see the finished object. This record is therefore particularly important for us. He opened his archives to us so that we could select unpublished pieces with him and organize them in two long suites. This work took almost two years (finding the pieces among dozens of sometimes very old CD-Rs, checking that these pieces …

* 2022 stock * In 1971, the day after the death of Igor Stravinsky, Jef Gilson and his Unit (Pierre Moret and Jean-Claude Pourtier) made this curious homage to classical music. It is jazz, contemporary and electroacoustic music that the trio interrogate through a wild ‘noise’ session evoking as much John Cage as Pierre Henry, John Coltrane as the Percussions de Strasbourg, the Art Ensemble of Chicago as the Tacet by Jean Guérin. Le Massacre du Printemps, (the Massacre of Spring) is a strange kin…

In 2018 experimental festival Organ Reframed commissioned Éliane Radigue to write her first work for organ, 'Occam Ocean XXV'. Radigue worked closely with organist Frédéric Blondy at the Église Saint Merry in Paris before transferring the piece to Union Chapel for its premiere at Organ Reframed on 13 October 2018. The recording on this compact disc was made at a private session at Union Chapel on 8 January 2020. 'Occam XXV' inaugurates the very special record series of works exclusively commissi…

Jean-Luc André, Sylvie Martineau-Fee and Jean-Philippe Fee started DDAA (Deficit Des Annees Anterieures) in 1977. They are pioneers of the French experimental and indie scene, also connected with Industrial 80s music and audiovisual projects. Approaching music in a completely unique way, and brilliantly produced by their own Illusion Production label (with more 40 published items), DDAA was and is undoubtedly one of the most legendary groups of the French underground for the past 30 years. Thei…

The story is that Vigroux spent most of the time on his tour constructing what would subsequently evolve into Barricades. Working indefatigably on new tracks in the morning and performing them live in the evening - that is basically how this excellent work was assembled. Recording everything in stereo, using only two tracks, Vigroux aimed to incorporate “the rawness of a ‘live’ recording”. Consequently, the sound here became unmistakably pure and expressive, somewhat reminiscent of artists such …

A physical release for ‘Matériaux’, the 2020 EP from French multimedia artist Franck Vigroux. Somewhere between a mini-album and a long EP, Vigroux expresses a range of different moods but in the same simple, musique concrète-influenced manner, driven by texture and harmony at the expense of melody.

Fourth chapter of Éliane Radigue's Occam Ocean: three long pieces for alto saxophone, voice, treble viol, birbyné and bass clarinet, shaped with Bertrand Gauguet, Yannick Guédon and Carol Robinson through oral transmission.

Following the acclaimed 2017 vinyl reissue of the Noir et Blanc album, we’re excited to present a special edition of Zazou Bikaye’s second record, Mr. Manager, which only ever came out on vinyl, in 1985. This edition comprises nine additional tracks, including six previously-unreleased recordings, and three which were only included on limited-edition singles. Stemming from the encounter between Congolese vocalist/composer Bony Bikaye, French musician/producer Hector Zazou and modular synth wizar…

“Univers Parallèles presents us with two around twenty-minute slices of sparse piano wonderings and low-key sound making. It’s a release that shifts between just awakening drowsiness, and very creepy unease, with each track managing to create its own distinctive, and compelling atmosphere. The release appears as a CD/digital download on Slovenia-based Inexhaustible Editions, who are rapidly becoming one of my favourite labels. As they’ve been putting out some of the most worthy and interesting r…

Gatefold sleeve; edition of 600 (numbered). Pascal Comelade has been working for three years to achieve his brand-new album. Not only it features all of his musical obsessions and trademarks, some long-time partners and friends such as Richard Pinhas and members of his former backing band Bel Canto Orquestra but for the very time in 45 years, ladies and gentlemen there is "quite a long piano solo" and a string quartet in the album.

* 180 Gram Audiophile vinyl. Limited edition of 2000 individually numbered copies on Copper coloured vinyl * Magma is one of the most influential bands from France. Their music defies any of the standard and convenient classifications of rock, instead they operate in a realm of their own creation. Their third studio album Mëkanïk Dëstruktïẁ Kömmandöh was originally released in 1973 and showcased in particular the range of singer Klaus Blasquiz and introduced the ground-moving work of bassist Jan…

To write these few lines, we spoke to saxophonist François Jeanneau, an old friend of Jacques Thollot who also played on several of his albums, including the “Watch Devil Go” which interests us here. He told us a story which, according to him, sums up the personality of Thollot. A noted studio had reserved three days for a Thollot recording session. The first morning was devoted to sound checks and putting some order in the score sheets which Jacques would hand out in a somewhat anarchic manner…