Brigitte Fontaine, Areski

condition (record/cover):  NM / NM

Gatefold sleeve. 

The 1973 follow-up to Brigitte Fontaine's 1972 self-titled record is the first album formally co-credited to her and Areski Belkacem. The two had been partners (artistically and personally) since Comme à la Radio (1969); Je Ne Connais Pas Cet Homme is the moment Areski's name moves from the inner sleeve to the front cover. The musical conception is more austere than the previous LP: most pieces are short (a third of the fifteen tracks last under two minutes), and the arrangements lean heavily on Areski's percussion and Fontaine's vocal recitation, with occasional intrusions of strings, accordion, child voices and tape effects.

"Depuis" opens the record with two minutes of pure incantation. "J'ai 26 ans, Madame" is a song spoken by an old woman to her younger self. "La Fille du Curé", "Comment ça va", "Montparnasse" pass like images in a Parisian noir film. Side two opens with "C'est normal" and "Dis-moi", the longest pieces on the record, which give Areski and Fontaine room to build, layer and gradually destabilise. The title track is a sixty-second hallucination that closes the album's interior arc. "Le Silence" ends in barely audible breathing.

The original vintage Saravah pressing on SH 10041, gatefold sleeve, designed and printed under Pierre Barouh's direction. An early record of post-1968 French chanson-avant-garde, the album where Fontaine and Areski stopped looking like collaborators of other people and became a complete creative unit of their own.