Encyclopedia of French progressive rock, experimental, electronic music, etc. by Steven Freeman & Alan Freeman - Following on the tradition of our other country focused music books: "The Crack In The Cosmic Egg" exploring "Krautrock" and the wider scene from Germany, and the more recently completed "A Fistful Of Spaghetti" covering the amazing Italian "Spaghetti-Rock" scene, this book had been germinating as long as the latter, with the basic structure and discographies largely completed decades ago. Finally publishing "A Fistful Of Spaghetti" gave us the impetus to now work on this book, although what do we call it? All the clichéd nicknames for French people and culture that we love were naturally a "no go". So, no frogs legs or snail puns. To be in the context of our other books, it would have to be an English language title. Putting out a request for ideas on our Facebook groups yielded no useful results, or none better than my first idea "Strands of the Future" taken from the second Pulsar album, but eventually I came up with a snazzy title "Twilight of the Alchemists" a translation of the wonderful "Le Crépuscule Des Alchimistes" that ends side 1 of the Maajun album. Iconic in itself, it also sums-up the spirit of the French scene.
As with our other books, this is the first English language publication that covers all aspects of progressive and experimental music from France, not only dealing with all the important artists of the scene from the 1950 through to the present, but all the lesser ones we deem worthy as well! There have, of course, been other books printed on the subject. The only one to date with English language content was "La Discographie du Rock Français" by Francis Grosse & Bernard Gueffier published in the 1980s, which only covered the prog related scene up to that point, not including any of the electronic, experimental, avant-garde or other aspects of the scene that we also like to cover, and it only had brief reviews of most artists. Over twice as much is now known of the French rock scene from that era. So, that is now quite out of date, and most other books only deal with certain factions of the French scene, and they are all in French! So, in the spirit of our previous books "The Crack In The Cosmic Egg" (German music) and "A Fistful Of Spaghetti" (Italian music) you'll find much more than rock genres, or other prog, folk and synth musics here, and we'll help you delve into the underground, the origins, and associated realms of unclassifiable music..