France's near-revolution of May '68 kicked the country's small but vibrant counter-culture into overdrive and birthed a local underground music scene. The bands it spawned made music with far less rock purity than groups from the UK and US - their influences foregrounded improvisation, disjunction and genre-blending: Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, free jazz and radical politics. The introduction of the synthesiser in the early 1970s added fuel to the fire. This six-track compilation inaugurates a series to accompany Ian Thompson's Synths, Sax & Situationists - the first English-language book to investigate this extraordinary and still largely unknown movement. It focuses on the second wave of bands that emerged in 1972/3, when radicalised psychedelic and jazz influences merged with the future-music possibilities offered by new technology. A much-needed document. Essential listening.
The opener is a self-titled track by Nyl - a mysterious, short-lived collective that grew out of the earlier group Cheval Fou, centred around drummer Stéphane Rossini and guitarist Michel Peteau. Their sole album, released on the URUS label in 1976, is a cult object of the highest order. Space rock meets Zeuhl, with connections to Magma through the presence of the mighty Jannick Top on bass. Wild guitar work, wordless vocals and spacy synths - a hypnotic two-chord ride that somehow never lets go. One of those records you hear once and spend years trying to find.
Etron Fou Leloublan - roughly translated: "Crazy Shit, the White Wolf" - deliver a piece with one of the most gloriously absurd titles in the history of recorded music: Face à l'extravagante montée des ascenseurs, nous resterons fidèles à notre calme détermination. Founded in 1973, with their baptism of fire as an opening act for Magma, this trio from Grenoble became one of the five original Rock in Opposition bands alongside Henry Cow, Stormy Six, Univers Zero and Samla Mammas Manna. A frenzied blend of punk energy, free jazz, French music hall and avant-garde mayhem. Ferdinand Richard on bass and vocals, Guigou Chenevier on drums, and a revolving cast of saxophonists - the DNA of European avant-rock runs through their veins. Later albums were produced by Fred Frith. This track is a perfect introduction to their uniquely unhinged universe.
Lard Free contribute Acide Framboise from their remarkable 1973 debut. Alongside Christian Vander (Magma) and Richard Pinhas (Heldon), drummer Gilbert Artman stands as one of the three major figures of the French underground. Lard Free was in a state of constant musical flux - Artman the only constant member throughout the band's existence. On Acide Framboise, deep inner-space ARP 2600 synthesiser globules meet drums and guitar in a piece that sits somewhere between Krautrock, free jazz and early electronic experimentation. The seeds of European techno are being planted here, though nobody knew it at the time. A visionary record.
Heldon are represented with an excerpt from Perspective IV. The project of guitarist and synthesiser pioneer Richard Pinhas - who named the band after Norman Spinrad's science fiction novel The Iron Dream - Heldon were among the most radical electronic projects of the decade. Pinhas fused Robert Fripp-influenced guitar work with Moog and ARP synthesisers to create dense, hypnotic soundscapes that anticipated industrial music and electronic minimalism. Science fiction was not mere aesthetic dressing here - it was part of the grammar of the music itself.
Pièce à Lanam comes from the album Musiq Musik, recorded in 1973 and released on the legendary Futura label. Jac Berrocal - trumpeter, singer, poet, performer, provocateur - is a symbolic figure of the French underground. A man who met his collaborator Roger Ferlet hitchhiking to the Arctic Circle, who recorded Rock'n'Roll Station with the legendary Vince Taylor using a bicycle as a percussion instrument, and whose performances routinely wound up both jazz and rock audiences. Cecil Taylor once told him his set was the only thing at a festival that didn't bore him. Steven Stapleton invited him to play on two Nurse With Wound albums. With Dominique Coster and Roger Ferlet, Berrocal here delivers a piece of free improvisation recorded in a church - tender and violent in equal measure. At the crossroads of free jazz, punk and sound poetry.
The compilation closes with Raganesh by the Delired Chameleon Family - an offshoot of the Clearlight project, led by pianist Cyrille Verdeaux alongside Musica Elettronica Viva member Ivan Coaquette. Originally conceived as the soundtrack to Pierre Clementi's underground film Visa de Censure No. X, recorded in four days at the Pathé Marconi studios in March 1975. Raganesh takes the form of an Indian raga, with tabla and droning ARP 2600 synthesiser weaving through layers of psychedelic keyboard work - a mind-expanding opening that sets the tone for an album that moves freely between cosmic rock, jazz fusion jamming and deep space exploration. The band's name itself is a "franglo" pun - a perfectly French gesture of playful subversion.
Six tracks. Psychedelic, electronic, jazz, experimental. Music accompaniment to the Synths, Sax & Situationists book. A world to discover. The French underground deserves the same attention we give to Krautrock - and this compilation is a fine place to start.
