Souffle Continu 10th Anniversary
Piano Dazibao
To avoid the “Quésaco?” on the sleeve of Piano Dazibao, François Tusques explains everything: A wall mural on which the Red Guard expressed their opinions during the Chinese proletarian cultural revolution. So much for the “Dazibao”, very good; but the piano in all that? The piano, François Tusques was self-taught and his work was influenced by Jelly Roll Morton and Earl Hines before discovering Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and then… free jazz. In Paris in 1965, Tusques mixed with Michel Portal, …
Blues and News
Licensed from Futura Records. 180 gram vinyl. "I get something out of listening to Coltrane, Shepp, and Coleman; I'm really pleased that young players are trying to change things. If they go back the roots and come up with something new, that's fantastic." This comment was made by saxophonist Hal Singer to Gérard Terronès for the magazine Jazz Hot in 1968. Two years later, Terronès would issue Singer's album Blues and News, on his label Futura Records. Though born in 1919, Hal Singer claims, jus…
Watch Devil Go
* Deluxe reissue, with obi strip + 8 page booklet, 180g vinyl *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 sh…
Snoopy's Time
Comes with obi strip with 12 pages booklet. Limited edition of 700 copies. Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Dharma Trio's Snoopy's Time, originally released in 1970. Dharma as they were simply known, at the time when they were still playing, englobed all the incarnations of the group, trio, quartet (essentially as a live band), and quintet built around the stable core of pianist and bassist Patricio Villarroel and Michel Gladieux. Snoopy's Time is their second album, con…
Hippotigris Zebra Zebra
Deluxe reissue with high definition remastered audio and 12-page booklet on 200gsm art paper including liner notes & rare pictures Limited to 700 copies. Souffle Continu Records present the first vinyl reissue of Cohelmec Ensemble's Hippotigris Zebra Zebra, originally released in 1971. The Cohelmec Ensemble celebrate, above all, the pleasure of collective music-making. A group without a designated leader, they base their approach on reciprocal listening, but also on a dialogue between written an…
Avant Toute
A radical album with uncompromising blasts of atonal electric guitar, free-form sonic explorations and richly layered passages. "Have you ever imagined what a meeting between the Silver Apples and Sonny Sharrock would sound like? In 1974, Jean-Jacques Birgé, one of the first French synthesizer players (ARP 2600) along with Francis Gorgé, virtuoso guitarist, created some unique improvised pop music.The unreleased and flamboyant recordings featured on Avant Toute would be the source for the cult 1…
Abrasive
** Deluxe 180 gram vinyl + extensive booklet ** The axolotl is a species of salamander native to Mexico, living in a state of larva and having the capacity to regenerate damaged organs. This brief introduction doesn't tell us if the axolotl sings. But, for the one that concerns us here: yes, indeed. In Paris, at the end of the 1970s, Etienne Brunet and Marc Dufourd would improvise regularly, inspired by some other saxophone-guitar duos: Claude Bernard-Raymond Boni firstly, then Evan Parker-Derek…
Inter Frequences
Limited edition of 700 copies. Obi strip, reverse printing, 12 page booklet.. Souffle Continu Records present the first ever vinyl reissue of Free Jazz Workshop's Inter Fréquences, originally released in 1973. The Free Jazz Workshop came into being in 1967 but their first album, Inter Fréquences, only appeared in 1973. Unfortunately, there is no recorded trace of the group including the first drummer Pierre Guyon before he was replaced by Christian Rollet in 1970. One of the slogans doing the ro…
Archipel
Deluxe edition. Comes with obi strip with 12 pages booklet. 700 copies. Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Dharma's Archipel, originally released in 1973. "Do your own music!" was Albert Ayler's advice, received loud and clear in France. Cohelmec Ensemble, Workshop de Lyon, and the Dharma Quintet, three groups close in spirit, which would each illustrate, in their own way, a local principle: to get some distance from American free jazz. As far as Dharma is concerned, the c…
End Starting
Deluxe edition. Comes with obi strip with 12 pages booklet. Limited edition of 700 copies. Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Dharma Quintet's End Starting, originally released in 1971. For Gérard Marais, guitarist with Dharma (the quintet), from this third album -- in fact he replaced Gérard Coppéré, one of the two saxophonists present on the first album (FFL 038LP, 1970) -- Albert Ayler's instruction to play your own music was the detonator. This did not fall on deaf ear…
Next
Souffle Continu Records present the first vinyl reissue of Cohelmec Ensemble's Next. The Cohelmec Ensemble celebrate, above all, the pleasure of collective music-making. A group without a designated leader, they base their approach on reciprocal listening and equal responsibilities. This is reflected in their name, created from the first syllables of the founding member's names, which would remain unchanged in spite of the subsequent personnel changes: COH as in Jean Cohen (saxophones), EL as in…
Aurora
LP version. First vinyl reissue. Souffle Continu Records present a reissue Le Théâtre du Chêne Noir's Aurora, originally released in 1971. In 1972, Steve Lacy recorded Solo, one of the gems in his discography, in the Théâtre du Chêne Noir in Avignon. The previous year (which was also the year in which Aurora appeared), the eponymous group of actors led by Gérard Gelas, took up residence in what was a 12th century chapel. The Théâtre du Chêne Noir is therefore not just the name of a space open to…
Madagascar Now - Maintenant 'Zao
** First ever standalone vinyl reissue. Carefully remastered. 4 page booklet with rare and unpublished photos. Heavyweight 180 gr. LP ** While he was working on the repertoire for the new version of his group Malagasy, with young Malagasy musicians he had met in Paris in 1972 (and who can be heard on the album "Malagasy At Newport-Paris"), Jef Gilson realised that two of his new discoveries, in addition to being established polyinstrumentalists (who both had sharpened their skills in the legenda…
Le Composant Compositeur
“Nobody Move!”, so says Philippe Doray and his Asociaux Associés (the Antisocial Associates)! Having dynamited the end of the 70s with two radical albums – Ramasse-Miettes Nucléaires in 1976 & Nouveaux Modes Industriels in 1978, both reissued by Souffle Continu – Doray still hadn’t finished singing. Throughout the next decade he began his Composant compositeur which would document the “second period”, as he calls it, of his Asociaux Associés.
The record includes new schizo-electro songs which ma…
Mr Robinson
Deluxe edition, Comes with obi strip with 12 pages booklet. Limited edition of 700 copies. Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Dharma Quintet's Mr Robinson, originally released in 1970. In an interview with Jazz Magazine in the early 1970s, Dharma, as a collective voice, outlined their method: "we try to reach, within free jazz, the same sort of rhythmic cohesion as in bop, a cohesion based not exactly on tempo, but something which feels like tempo. A kind of underlying pul…
In Fractured SIlence
Have you heard of the Nurse With Wound List? If you are a fan of creative-experimental-unlikely music, certainly. You would therefore be aware that amongst the recommendations that Steven Stapleton slipped into the first album of his group Nurse With Wound, were to be found a few restless frogs: Jef Gilson, Luc Ferrari, Jacques Thollot, Urban Sax, Horde Catalytique and last… but not least Jean-Jacques Birgé and Francis Gorgé. Stapleton admired their album Défense de. The two Frenchmen just had t…
Baroque Jazz Trio + Orientasie/Largo
Souffle Continu Records present a reissue of Baroque Jazz Trio's self-titled album, original released on Saravah in 1970. This CD also includes tracks from the 7" Orientasie/Largo originally released in 1970, and reissued by Souffle Continue Records. Mixing Baroque, free-jazz, and world music, the unique album of the Baroque Jazz Trio (which is in fact 3/5 of the Bach Modern Quintet) is a difficult-to-label sound object which is far from being typical of the psychedelic sounds associated with th…
Marc'h Gouez
CD digipack "Why would I sing in French? I have Breton culture, I speak Breton, I live in Brittany, and the Breton language is the language of this country..." So explained Kristen Noguès, of whom this is the first of the (rare) albums that she recorded Marc'h Gouez, is a fabulous voyage in space on each listening. Noguès learned the Breton language as a child, at the same time as the Celtic harp, -- taking lessons with Denise Mégevand, who would go on to teach others, notably Alan Stivell. At t…