Music from France

Gong’s fourth album for Virgin Records has been remastered from the original Virgin masters for the very first time by the original producer, Simon Heyworth at Super Audio Mastering and has been expanded with a second disc containing a previously unreleased concert recorded live at the London Marquee in September 1975, plus 3 previously unreleased edits.

Gong’s third album for Virgin Records has been remastered from the original Virgin masters for the very first time by the original producer, Simon Heyworth, and has been expanded with a live concert recorded at Hyde Park in London in June 1974 plus an alternate version of A PHP’s Advice and a rare version of Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Harpist Hélène Breschand performs two challenging works by Eliane Radigue and Kasper T. Toeplitz with results intended for deep listening. The first sees Hélène perform Occam Ocean XVI for acoustic harp, drawing out a rich array of sonorities from a single pitch across its 27 minute duration. The first nine minutes are intensely meditative, with the effect of drawing our eyelids to half mast in the manner of best Eliane Radigue music, before that hypnagogic traction gives way to flurries of pitt…

Double LP version. Includes a bonus track: Philip Glass's "Etude n°5". Inland is Vanessa Wagner's continuation of the exploration of the minimalist composers register to complete the solo continuum of the Statea released in 2016 with the Mexican producer Murcof. Inland highlights a set of pieces, mostly rare or unavailable to date (Moondog, Nico Muhly, William Susman, Bryce Dessner, Gavin Bryars...) and some other well known (Philip Glass, Wim Mertens, Michael Nyman) that Vanessa Wagner performs…

**Edition of 500. 180 gram vinyl** Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Serenata I/Sonatine/Canteyodjaya/Zeitmasze, originally released in 1958. The avant-garde composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was a titan of post-war experimental classical music. Born in the small cheesemaking town of Montrbrison in central France in 1925, Boulez studied at the Paris Conservatoire with the composer and organist Charles Messiaen and received private tuition from pianist Andrée Vaurabourg; after moving…

UK ensemble Apartment House performs two landmark works for the same instrumentation of violin, cello, clarinet and piano: Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1941) and Toronto based composer Linda Catlin Smith's Among the Tarnished Stars (1998). Released by Another Timbre in August 2019, this recording takes a fresh modern approach to the Messiaen, drawing out its experimental character, while revealing the sense of drama and intricate gradations of sonority in Smith's rich and mys…

Richard Pinhas, the founder of '70s legends Heldon, is one of France's best-known experimental musicians and is a key figure in development of rock music fusing with electronic music. Live at Bam Balam is solo guitar and processing as well as drone electronics with the use of a Metatronic Delay system: no re-recording. This brilliant collection of solo improvisations was recorded in Bordeaux (France) on April 16th, 2016 and April 21st, 2018. Limited edition vinyl-only release for the French Reco…

Rough & Wojtyla Featuring Richard Pinhas is Rough & Wojtyla's second album. Richard Pinhas, the founder of '70s legends Heldon is one of France's best known experimental musicians and is a key figure in the fusion of rock with electronic music. Guitar drones are supported by either tribal or jazzy sounding drums and collide with various key instruments and found sound. The influence of musique concrète which prevails on the duo's first LP, can also be felt as the sounds and moods shift abruptly.…

Since its debut on two releases from 2011 and 2012 (the live Hit & Run with Joe Talia and the studio Audience of One), the epic structured improvisational piece ‘Knots’ has formed a staple of Oren Ambarchi’s live performances. Like a jazz musician searching for ever-new ways to play a standard, the guitarist has repeatedly brought the piece to life in a variety of settings ranging from guitar/drums duets to a large ensemble replete with string section, with each iteration bringing with it new va…

**500 copies** This album contains six pieces written by French composer / artist Bruno Duplant, all composed and realized by Dutch pianist / composer Reinier van Houdt. Duplant's scores Lettres (pour Reinier van Houdt) (2017) are three letter-form scores personally addressed to van Houdt containing letter sequences distributed across the page. Trois replis d'incertitude (2018) are also three letter-form scores but with the notion of 'repli' (meaning 'fold' in a Deleuzian postmodern baroque sens…

Slightly damaged copies, reduced price. Few available Full title: A Loss Permitted To Open Its Eyes For But Three Hours And There Glimpsed, Finally In Focus A Mystery That Begs Earnestly, "Ask Me Nothing" Now, Once More The Problem Is Yours Alone. Experimental music pioneer Keiji Haino, one of the most mysterious and influential figures to emerge from the Japanese psychedelic underground, teams up with Charles Hayward, British drummer and founding member of This Heat and Camberwell Now, on a new…

**500 copies** In 1996, Alex Barbier set up a cartoon festival in Fillols, in the Pyrenees Orientales. For ten years on such occasion, he and Pascal Comelade offered a small recital of songs from the popular French repertoire of the 1920-30’s. Once a year, in the village square or in the Foyer de Fillols room, Alex Barbier sang, dressed in a long robe and wore  a wig of circumstance, accompanied on the sober piano by Pascal Comelade, the French sound artist who is probably the most concerned by …

** 300 copies** French musician Bruno Duplant is one of the most talked-about artists on the experimental music scene today. In recent years he's presented many outstanding composed pieces and released a succession of excellent recordings on labels around the world. The abundance and vitality of his work are remarkable. On this album, two compositions by Duplant are performed by Ordinary Affects, led by Boston-based musician/composer Morgan Evans-Weiler. Ordinary Affects is an experimental music…

Souffle Continu Records present the first ever vinyl reissue of Jacques Thollot's Quand Le Son Devient Aigu, Jeter La Girafe À La Mer, originally released in 1971. While he was still just a young adolescent who had perfected his drum technique under the benevolent wing of Kenny Clarke, the Club Saint-Germain liked to present Jacques Thollot as a prodigy capable of holding his own with the famous jazz musicians who came through Paris. It was there that Eric Dolphy immediately noticed him, and fro…

Jac Berrocal, David Fenech, and Vincent Epplay return with Ice Exposure, their second album for Blackest Ever Black. A sequel and companion piece of sorts to 2015's Antigravity, its title couldn't be more apt: sonically it is both colder, and more exposed -- in the sense of rawer, more volatile, more vulnerable -- than its predecessor, capturing the combustible energy and barely suppressed violence of the trio's celebrated live performances with aspects of noir jazz, musique concrète, no wave ar…

Electronic musicians Jean-Benoît Dunckel (of Air fame) and Jonathan Fitoussi have joined forces to release Mirages, a sonic exploration of analogue synthesis, released on The Vinyl Factory. Born inside the studio which Xavier Veilhan built as part of the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, the album was finished in Dunckel’s Paris-based studio, and features synthesisers amassed over several years, including an Arp 2600, PPG Wave, Synthi A, Buchla, Yamaha CS60, Korg MS20. Moving from the minimal to the…

Mysterious French outfit The Dead Mauriacs return to Discrepant in full exotic wind force after their sell-out cassette, Cocktails Pour La Fin Des Temps (2016). Beauté Des Mirages picks up on the same themes of frantic, abstract exotica and concrete cocktails the French act is known for. Running for two, long 18-minute sides full of fake(?) vintage atmospheres and armchair jungle hallucinations, Beauté Des Mirages is an abstract journey into a beautiful (and sometimes scary) world of mirages. Al…

Notes on Other Music is a 112 page A5 perfect bound book published on the occasion of the Fourth Edition Festival for Other Music in Stockholm. The book collects photographs, essays, interviews and conversations relating to the festival programme since its inception in 2016.The book features an extended piece on Eliane Radigue by Kate Molleson who visited the composer at her Paris apartment to discuss her instrumental music ahead of the Swedish premiere of Occam Ocean — her work for orchestra pe…

LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Richard Pinhas's L'Ethique, originally released in 1982. Following the vaguely poppy shapes of 1980's album East West (BB 292CD/LP), his fifth album L'Ethique saw the ex-Heldon guitarist and synth wizard return to bigger and bolder band-like methods. After the release he disappeared from the limelight for nearly a decade and returned in the 1990s. Interviewed by the Electronics & Music Maker magazine in 1982, Pinhas spoke in buoyant terms about the futur…

LP version. Bureau B presents a reissue of Bernard Xolotl's fifth album Last Wave, originally released only on cassette in 1982. This is French electronic music from California. He named himself after the Aztec god of lightning and death; his music is influenced by the Berlin school of electronic music. As a teen, Xolotl (b. 1951) was introduced to electronic music through the works of Musique Concrete composers like Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer, although he found the early recordings of Pi…