300 copies. A rare and vital document from two titans of European free improvisation. Insolence captures the incandescent meeting of Evan Parker and Jean-Marc Foussat, recorded live at the Improtech Festival in Uzeste during the summer of 2023. It’s a deeply expressive exchange between saxophone and electronics—refined, volatile, and spiritually resonant. The LP opens with Innocence and Insouciance, two spontaneous dialogues performed live, where Parker’s incisive soprano lines interlace with Foussat’s magnetic swells of Synthi AKS, vocal fragments, and toy interventions. These pieces reveal a rare chemistry: tender yet assertive, cerebral yet fiercely intuitive. In Parker’s words, “a new chapter in the infinite quest for freedom and absolute beauty.”
The second side expands the scope historically and sonically. WIREless for Anthony Wood—a solo tenor piece recorded at the ICA during The Actual Festival in 1981—is Parker’s elegiac homage to the late founder of The Wire magazine. It is followed by SLAUGHT return, an assembly by Foussat constructed from solo VCS3 sessions recorded in 1980, building a sonic bridge across four decades of shared aesthetic language.
Issued on vinyl with mastering, mixing, and editing handled entirely by Jean-Marc Foussat, and lacquer cut by Frédéric Alstadt at Mont Analogue, the album stands as both testament and continuation—a living archive of radical practice. Featuring cover art by Ahmed Nosseir, Insolence affirms improvisation as utopia in motion.