Music from France

French composer Sylvain Bombled aka Mayerling is back on HITD with ‘Finis Terrae’, marking the project's first album in 8 years. In the winter of 2025, the musician came up with these five pieces while in solitary retreat on the northern coast of Ouessant, the westernmost island of metropolitan France. The rough weather, the awe-inspiring beauty of the surroundings and the majestic grandeur of the natural elements play a pivotal role in each composition, allowing Mayerling to delve into his inne…

Bongo Joe and Sofa Records reissue the 1981 debut by Max Cilla, the Martinican flautist who spent his life restoring the bamboo flute of his island's hillsides to a music that had nearly forgotten it.

One of the most important sound sources in history, a relic of a bygone era. Minamata is an industrial noise avant-garde band formed in France in 1984, with the methyl mercury pollution  incident that occurred in 1953 on the coast of Minamata City, Kumamoto Prefecture, Kyushu Island, Japan, as its theme. In 1985, the band became a trio, and their compositional skills and overall quality improved, resulting in the creation of Methylmercure. During this period, the noise scenes in developed countr…

*2026 stock* This album was recorded in Paris, late 2013, by four members of the Unmapped collective. Since the foundation of Unmapped in 2007, the collective was dedicated mostly to interaction between traditional instruments and computers. They always privileged the concept of “dual-units” (binômes, in French) to establish a tight and equal relationship between these two universes, thus allowing the emergence of hybrid instruments. In Fulgurite, the live computer side of Unmapped is represente…

*2026 stock* Alessio Santini works with sounds and images. After playing guitars in obscure black and doom metal bands during nineties, and working on several electronic music IDM projects, he started a path of research on granular sound processing and audio-video interaction, from fifteen years now. Kenter is an electric guitar + acoustic drums (both heavily manipulated), record. Big, raw, digitally distorted guitars are processed, re-processed, then processed again, leading to massive noise, t…

Tip! *2026 stock* Summer 2016, the artist chose to isolate himself within the very quiet and intriguing Mechanical & Acoustic Research Lab LMA-CNRS’ anechoic room (France) in order to explore his own inner silence, during some deep personal difficult times. During this art residency in the laboratory, Bayle recorded 2 hours of silence in this 17dB room. inside of which sounds don’t reverberate, as they are absorbed by walls’ geometric and repetitive structure. This sonic isolation makes this roo…

Originally issued by Philips in 1973, Le Cimetière des Arlequins is the second LP by Ange, and the record that transformed a young band from Belfort into the defining voice of French progressive music. A gold record in its homeland, it remains one of the great theatrical statements of the European 1970s - a world of discordant organ, Mellotron, and feverish narration that owes as much to the chanson tradition as it does to the symphonic ambitions of its English contemporaries. The album announce…

This is one of the cornerstones of French progressive music. Originally issued in 1975, Émile Jacotey is the fourth LP by Ange, the band from Belfort that stood, by the middle of the decade, as the undisputed leaders of the French rock scene - and it remains among the most singular concept albums the era produced anywhere in Europe. The album's great achievement lies in how it binds together two major cultural currents of 1970s France: the national passion for progressive rock, and what came to …

2026 Repress. Initially produced by Table of the Elements. Eliane Radigue's Adnos trilogy was composed between 1973 and 1980 and is among her finest compositions. Adnos is a deeply meditative work of infinite depth and sensitivity; one of the high points of modern minimal electronic composition. Packaged in a heavy duty 3CD jacket much like the recent Eleh releases and containing extensive archival materials.Eliane Radigue has composed for magnetic tape and electronic media since the late 1950's…

*200 copies limited edition* Two beautiful pieces merging piano, electronics and field recordings. "you had that uncertain landscape / in your mouth / a slightly opaque breath / chewing distances / into the ear of a land still without a name / the morning had settled askew / on the slow stones / and the motionless grasses / everything seemed to be waiting / for something very ancient / that never quite arrived / on my side / i had filled my pocket with silence / and repeated several times / what…

Rare original edition on d'Avantage of the third album from 1980, with some of the most original and unclassifiable experimental music from that time and a big influence on Nurse With Wound. Featuring Jean-François Pauvros, Mahjun and Malicorne's Jean-Pierre Arnoux and Michel Potage among others. NWW list.

Rare original edition on d'Avantage of the third album from 1980, with some of the most original and unclassifiable experimental music from that time and a big influence on Nurse With Wound. Featuring Jean-François Pauvros, Mahjun and Malicorne's Jean-Pierre Arnoux and Michel Potage among others. NWW list.

2000 re-issue on Saravah of the fantastic 1971 experimental avant-chanson album by one of the most original French artists since the 1960's. Masterpiece on the NWW list.

1991 re-issue on Saravah of the excellent 1971 avant-chanson/folk album by two of the most original French artists since the 1960's. NWW list.

Rare original edition on F.L.V.M./Frigico of the eccentric and excellent sole album of experimental art rock inspired by Faust by obscure French underground band released in 1978. NWW list.

1985 German re-issue on Jaro Medien of the mighty 1975 double LP set of live recordings by the most original, powerful, uncompromising, influential French group of the 1970's led by Christian Vander. A must on the NWW list.

1978 re-issue on Tapioca of one of the masterpieces originally on Pôle Records (Besombes/Rizet, Henri Roger, Pataphonie, Mahogany Brain, Verto... all on the NWW list), a beautiful otherworldly album of cosmic electronic folk and pulsing synthesizer soundscapes from 1975.

Very rare original edition on Celluloid of the third album from 1984 by of the most original and unclassifiable musicians of French experimental music, an unsettling masterpiece of musique concrète, sound poetry and experimental folk. NWW list.

1998 EP on Syntactic released in an edition of 100 numbered copies in silk-screened black PVC sleeve with edited versions of tracks from the CD re-issue of the 1980 LP.

Rare 2015 one-sided LP on Holidays Records with a single long 1996 piece by of the most original and unclassifiable musicians of French experimental music, released in an edition of 200 hand-numbered and personalised copies not-for-sale.