Jean-Claude Deblais – Le Miroir Du Fantastique

French film music composer Jean-Claude Deblais started his career playing electric guitar with Jean Cohen-Solal’s experimental jazz ensemble on the Captain Tarthopom LP, 1973, and as accompanying guitarist with singer Jean-Roger Caussimon between 1977-79. In the mid-1970s, Deblais started a collaboration with the Patchwork library music label, for which he took part to several collective LPs (including Children/Games, before 1975, and Flutissimo, 1975). In 1983, he released one LP for the British Shepherds Bush Library Music label, titled The Sound Gallery, with Stephane Gremaud and Fabien Chevallier. In the 1980s, Deblais turned to film soundtracks and music for children’s TV programs (see list below).

♫ Entirely focused on sombre, low resonances and cavernous sounds, Le Miroir Du Fantastique (or, In the Mirror of the Surnatural), published 1977, is a suite of atmospheric instrumental tracks intended for fantastic and horror movies. Deblais plays all instruments, including percussion (marimba, wood blocks, gongs), keyboards (piano and inside the piano, electric organ, synthesizer, even Ondes Martenot on #8 L’Esprit Voyage), strings (electric and bass guitars, banjo on #5 Nevroville), as well as flute. On several tracks, the piano is used to create lugubrious bell tolls produced while striking the bass strings repeatedly, a feature recurring often in the form of repeated, piano chords or string ostinatos, with or without synth drones. Like Guglielmo Papararo & Vittorio Montis’ April Orchestra Lp I posted before, also from 1977, Le Miroir Du Fantastique is influenced by Ennio Morricone’s film music of the 1970s, and I suspect this is exactly the brief Deblais received from the Patchwork A&R team.

01 Les Orgues de l’Épouvante (2:46)
02 Vampires (2:34)
03 Miroir du Fantastique (2:42)
04 Trompe des Cavernes (3:30)
05 Nevroville (2:56)
06 Sorcelleries (2:10)
07 Le Golem (2:55)
08 L’Esprit Voyage… (4:46)
09 Appel des Mutants (3:57)
10 Voix de l’Étrange (3:03)
11 Ondine (2:36)

Total time 33:55
LP released by Patchwork, France, 1977

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Jean-Claude Deblais‘ film music (tbc):
1982 Eden
1985 La Bande à Bédé (TV)
1986 Le Bonheur a encore frappé
1986 Flip Bouc (TV)
1987 Dorothée et la Voiture Rouge (TV)
1988 Go Crazy Go Crazy
1996 Chercheurs d’or (TV)
1997 Blake et Mortimer (TV)
2003 Bang bang je t’aime je t’aime

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