Salvador Dali ‘Je suis fou de Dali !’

In conjunction with Ubuweb

01 La Folie (:21)
02 Le Génie (:52)
03 Le Cinéma (:57)
04 La Conquête de l’Espace (2:41)
05 L’Hibernation (2:22)
06 Le Sport (5:52)
07 La Jeunesse (6:38)
08 Dieu (1:48)
09 La Méthode Paranoïaque Critique (2:07)
10 L’Amour (:55)
11 Don Juan (4:07)
12 Les Anges (2:28)
13 Le Pet (6:07)
14 La Mort (1:51)
15 La Liberté (2:46)

Total time 41:40
LP released by Sonopresse, France, 1975

A year after the release of his Cathar audiovisual opera-poem Etre Dieu, with music composed by Igor Wakhevitch, Salvador Dali (actually Dalí) released Je Suis Fou de Dali !, a collection of well-chosen excerpts from an interview in French with 3 journalists: François Deguelt, Jean-Pierre Mottier and Simon Wajntrob. If truth be told, half of it is pure wackiness, the other half self-promotion, and the difference is tenuous at times between surrealism and senility. But if we set aside the many scatological jokes, some excerpts are simply mindblowing, genuine audio equivalents of a Dali Surrealist painting. It is also close to some of Dali’s books, like his autobiography ‘La vie secrète de Salvador Dalí’ (1942) or collection of short texts ‘Oui’ (1971).

Usual Dali-esque topics recur here and there: sexual impotence of all great artists ; self-proclaimed Catholicism as a means to shock the avantgarde ; scatology, including a warm eulogy of fartiste Joseph Pujol, after which Dali mentions Benjamin Franklin as a dedicated farter (!) ; Dali’s own death and immortality is addressed during an exhilarating excerpt on Walt Disney’s (mythical) cryogenic freezing after his death in 1966, something Dali wishes for himself as well. Quotations abound from great writers and mystics like Cervantes, Montaigne, Stendhal or San Juan de la Cruz.

Track #6, Le Sport, focuses on Le Tour de France, the famous annual bicycle race. It is for Dali, as for Kraftwerk, an aesthetic epiphany: while he listens in awe to the radio reports from his studio, his mouth wide open and salivating, a little scab forms at the corner of his mouth, which he licks with delight, helping it grow thicker. When he is tired of licking, flies come landing around his mouth and onto the scab. Dali then slowly closes his lips to gently capture a fly between his lips. He’ll only release the insect after delighting in the fly’s efforts to escape.

Gulp!

Raymond Boni ‘Rêve en Couleurs’

01 Chanson pour Indio (7:43)
02 Thème Imaginaire (5:57)
03 Les Clowns (4:35)
04 Tu viens Bastien (1:06)
05 Rêve en Couleurs – side B (19:25)
– Face au Soleil Couchant (0:00 ~5:32)
– Invitation au Rêve (~5:32 ~14:06)
– Rêve en Couleurs (~14:06 ~19:25)

Total time 38:40
LP released by Palm, France, 1976

French guitarist Raymond Boni (b. 1947) is known for his various partnerships with leaders of the European improvisation scene (André Jaume, Claude Bernard, Gérard Marais, Joe McPhee, Terry Day), and released only a handful of solo albums, of which this is the 2nd, after 1971’s L’Oiseau, l’Arbre, le Béton on Futura Records. Raymond Boni famously played his guitar with typical Flamenco technique and gestures, while playing his own take on radical Free Improvisation. Boni plays 2 kinds of guitars on this LP: an acoustic Carbonell model, the brand used by Django Reinhardt and typical from other Gypsy guitar players ; and an electric Jacobacci model, probably a Gimenes from the 1960s (it’s the one shown on the back cover above). He’s heard mostly on electric guitar on side A, using a lot of effect pedals and re-recording. The music is based on virtuoso technique and a quest for unusual sounds. He’s consciously playing like no one else at the time, his strange, angular chords grounded deep in dream and humanity. Side B is a Suite dedicated to Dream (Rêve) with interwoven tracks, alternatively on acoustic and electric guitars. The somnambulist guitar playing on the longest track, Invitation au Rêve, is an apt evocation of dream, a lucid-dream-cum-improvisation on slow mode and a lot of delay+reverb effects. Sounds like sleepwalking guitar playing at times, to this listener.

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See also:
1978 Raymond Boni & Claude Bernard ‘Pot-Pourri Pour Parce Que’ >

Structures Sonores Lasry-Baschet ‘Mister Blues’

01 Mister Blues (4:41)
02 Invention à 2 Voix [JS Bach] (1:29)
03 Menuet [JS Bach] (1:43)
04 Toccata Toccarde (1:50)

Total time 9:40
7” single released by Unidisc, EX45145M, France, 1962

A little rarity from the Baschet Brothers, here joigned by the Lasry family (Yvonne, Jacques and Teddy)  to form the classic Structures Sonores Orchestra circa late 1950s-early 1960s. Everyone plays the Structures Sonores except Teddy (aged 15) who is on clarinet on the delicious title track, an evocation of a New Orleans slow blues number. In 1973, Teddy Lasry was a founding member of French progressive rock band Magma. All tracks composed or arranged by Jacques Lasry. Instruments on this single include several Crystals (glass rods with plastic cushions or metallic cones as resonators) and percussion on tracks #1 and 4. Pictures below from the Structures Sonores book, Soundworld, UK, 1999.

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See also:
Doyen/Lasry ‘Poèmes dits par Jacques Doyen’ >
Bernard & François Baschet CD >

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Out Of Standard !! France 2

01 Denier Du Culte Au carrefour des directions infinies (3:24)
02 Déficit Des Années Antérieures Idée pour 6 guitares (14:00)
03 Moly Assassins d’eau douce (4:14)
04 Die Form Oltre (3:40)
05 Aversion Sonore Entity (3:24)
06 Orient Express Théorèma (3:14)
07 Toupidek Limonade Margot ( 4:24)
08 Société des Timides à la Parade des Oiseaux Sans titre (1:31)
09 Société des Timides à la Parade des Oiseaux Décompte (2:06)

Total time 40:00
Cassette+booklet released by ADN, #CC5, Italy, 1987

Another issue in the Out Of Standard !! series from ADN Tapes (see previous post of Italy 2), this one features French bands from the post-industrial rock scene as well as a few French luminaries who happen to be personal favorites, like DDAA, La STPO and Toupidek Limonade. DDAA contributes an unusual, massive guitar trio, apparently a track from a live performance including the 3 members on guitar, each duetting with a video of prerecorded guitar parts. I’m told this was the live set up of a few performances at the time. Toupidek Limonade starts with sad, detuned piano notes before their usual mysterious guitar parts and Pataphysical vocals (a grotesque love song) take the lead. The track was added to the CD reissue of ‘Il Y A Des Nuits’ cassette, on In Poly Sons. Interestingly, both Die From and La STPO use German language in their tracks. Nice surprise from Orient Express, a band I’m unfamilar with, with a mix of decent new wave, exotic synth loop and cute female vocals. On the other hand, a few contributions do sound like some Dungeons & Dragons soundtrack to me, but this is OK. Scans of the booklet included.

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Doyen/Lasry ‘Poèmes dits par Jacques Doyen’

01 François Villon ‘La Ballade Des Pendus’ (3:20)
02 Edgar Poe ‘Annabel-Lee’ (4:20)
03 Jean Cocteau ‘Batterie’ (2:25)
04 Frederico Garcia-Lorca ‘La Femme Infidèle’ (3:02)
05 Colette ‘Nonoche’ (4:30)
06 Guillaume Apollinaire ‘Gui Chante Pour Lou’ (1:30)
07 Walt Whitman ‘Chant De La Grand’ Route’ (2:20)
08 Pierre Emmanuel ‘Je Sais’ (2:12)
09 Luc Bérimont ‘Un Feu Vivant’ (2:50)
10 Charles Vildrac ‘Visite’ (4:49)
11 René Barjavel ‘Farendol’ (2:42)
12 Paul Eluard ‘Le Dit De La Force De L’amour’ (1:35)
13 Henri-François Rey ‘Le Rachdingue’ (3:31)

Jacques Doyen: voice
Jacques Lasry: Structures Sonores Baschet

Total time 39:40
LP released by Disques Alvarès, ref. C 475, France, ca 1972-75

Poetry reading by legendary raconteur Jacques Doyen, famous for his recordings with Jac Berrocal in the 1980s. Half of the tracks have musical accompaniment by Jacques Lasry, a Baschet brothers collaborator playing some of the Structures Sonores – the Crystal immediately recognizable on tracks #2, 4 and 5. The music reaches sublime heights on the latter, the haunting, hallucinatory ‘Nonoche’, yet Colette’s poem is almost comical, telling the story of an old, battered cat calling for the female ‘Nonoche’, no less old, to meet him in the woods, leaving her little kitty alone. The tone reminds of Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?’[+]. Elsewhere, particularly on the Gothic Edgar Poe poem, Lasry’s insidious, louche tonalities perfectly fit the Decadent, dubious tone of some of these turn of the century poems. 4 of them (Villon, Edgar Poe, Garcia Lorca and Cocteau) already appeared on Doyen+Lasry’s first disc, a 1957 released 7” single – fellow mp3 blogger Airform Archives posted some mp3s. The versions on this LP include new recordings with better sound quality. Another blog, Alice Rabbit, posted a 1966 LP worth checking out. Note: my copy of ‘Poèmes dits par Jacques Doyen’ is almost free of clicks. The noticeable tape hiss comes from the recording technology, not from background LP noise.

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Jacques Doyen’s discography:
1957 w/Jacques Lasry, 7”, Ducretet-Thomson 460 V 316
1966 w/Jacques Lasry ‘Poésie à mi-voix’, LP, Barclay 88006s
1968 Jacques Doyen ‘Récital de poésie’, LP, BAM La Fine Fleur #06
1972 w/Jacques Bertin ‘Claire’, LP, BAM
ca 1972-75 w/Jacques Bertin ‘Chansons et poemes’, LP, Alvares C 470
ca 1972-75 w/Jacques Lasry ‘Contes de la Cinquieme Saison’, LP, Alvares C 472
ca 1972-75 w/Jacques Lasry ‘Poèmes Dits Par Jacques Doyen’, LP, Disques Alvarès C 475
1982 w/Jacques Lasry, LP, Structures Sonores,

Doyen appears on:
1983 Jac Berrocal & Jacques Doyen ‘Sacré !’ (Allen Ginsberg) on ‘Paris Tokyo’ cassette, Tago Mago
1997 Jac Berrocal & Jacques Doyen ‘Sacré !’ (Allen Ginsberg) on ‘Fatal Encounters’ CD, Megaphone Records
2004 Jac Berrocal & Jacques Doyen ‘L’union Libre’ (rec 1985) on ‘Prière’, 10” vinyl, Alga Marghen

Jean-Marc Foussat ‘Abattage’

01 Grillage (1:13)
02 Images & Jalousies (9:26)
03 Ruines (4:17)
04 Petit Paysage (1:33)
05 Petit Paysage (0:09)
06 Hontes, Inquiétude & Quevœjotto (2:40)
07 Abattage (13:49)

Total time 33:00
LP released by Pyjama, France, 1983

Jean-Marc Foussat (b.1955) is a French guitar player, VCS synth player, label founder and recording engineer. He played with a band called Mandragore in the 1970s, as wel as collaborating with Jean-François Pauvros, Jac Berrocal, Roger Turner, Raymond Boni and Claude Parle. In the 1980s he worked as a recording engineer for Incus, Hat Hut, Po Torch, Rec Rec, Celluloid, etc. He founded Potlatch Records along Jacques Oger in 1997.  On ‘Abattage’ (1983), he self released his studio experiments under his own Pyjama imprint. The tracks were apparently recorded between 1975 and 1981 and feature extensive use of field recordings from out of the window (see cover), as well as piano, guitar, VCS III synth and found vocals. The main instrument has to be the recording studio, though, with obsessive care in balance, transitions and dynamic, that is: much definition in the very low sounds and lots of details in the loudest sounds. #3 Ruines is a solo piano (played by Jean-François Ballèvre); #4 Petit Paysage is a street cleaner engine recording; #5 Petit Paysage is someone lighting a cigarette; #6 includes people laughing and coughing, electric guitar; and then monumental #7 starts as a jackhammer+piano duo, before morphing into a fierce VCS solo. Noise art of the highest caliber!

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Discography:
1983 Abattage, LP, Pyjama records
1992 Nouvelles, cassette release
2001 Nouvelles, Potlatch CD reissue
2001 Abattage, CD-r reissue

References:
Interview with Foussat in The Sound Projector #12, 2004, UK.
Dominique Grimaud ‘L’underground musical en France’, Le Mot et le Reste publisher, 2008, France

Didier Blanchard & Georges Bloch ‘Le son d’un château d’eau de Le Corbusier’

Didier Blanchard:
01 Composition n°20 – Un  corps sonore (34:44)

Georges Bloch: ‘Fragments Corbuséens Palmés’
02 Vocalise (1:57)
03 Antécédant-conséquent (0:48)
04 Hystérie 1 (2:42)
05 Valse ? (4:45)
06 Interaction 1 (10:23)
07 Hystérie 2 (8:17)
08 Interaction 2 (6:24)
09 Totale (2:09)
10 Tango (2:15)
11 Ganz zum ûberfluss (1:47)

Total time 76:10
CD privately released by ‘Groupe des 5′, France, 1996

Le Corbusier’s relation to music is tangible, if infrequent. He took care of his cousin Louis Soutter, a former professional violinist, inpatient in a Swiss psychiatric hospital for 20 years until his death in 1942. In 1958, he build the Monastery of Sainte Marie de La Tourette complete with a large acoustic conch on the church roof to transmit liturgical chants, “a sonorous machine producing a new style of electronic broadcast”, he said. The same year, assisted by Iannis Xenakis, he famously designed the Philips Pavillon in Brussels, using Edgard Varèse’s Poème Electronique as musical score.

Le Corbusier (1887-1965) build the water tower pictured above in Podensac, near Bordeaux, in 1918, aged 21, when he was still called “Charles Edouard Jeanneret”, his real name. It is said to be his first professional release and of course makes extensive use of concrete (what else?). Back in 1986, it was in a state of dereliction when an association called ‘Groupe des 5′ decided to save the building from collapsing. Part of their plan was to use the disused water tower for cultural events, including these specially comissionned electroacoustic compositions in 1995, whose title translates ‘The sound of a Le Corbusier water tower’. Didier Blanchard (b.1967) is an acoustics engineer interested by architecture’s relation to music. He sat up a microphone inside the water tower to record all the latter’s vibrations. The signal is then fed to a computer for further electronic processing and feedback monitoring, and then send to a large metallic plate whose vibrations produces the music (see picture above). The vibrations are of course re-injected in the process via the microphone. Any sound inside or outside the building (visitors’ voices, steps on the stairs, cars, rain, wind) can activate the resonances. The recording on this CD probably can’t do justice to the sound installation itself, but the feedback sounds are really gorgeous, if a bit monochromatic, close to Harry Bertoia’s steel sculptures recordings, for instance.

‘Fragments Corbuséens Palmés’ is an electroacoustic suite composed by IRCAM associate Georges Bloch (b.1956) for resonating steel plate, voice and readings from Le Corbusier. Mezzo-soprano Sylvie Deguy is slowly climbing the water tower’s stairs while vocalizing and hitting the stairs railing with a stick. The work is a dialog between controlled feedback and singer, making full use of the water tower’s acoustic properties.

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Lionel Marchetti ‘Musique.laclasse.com’

38 tracks (including twelve 10-seconds silent tracks)
To play on shuffle mode.

Total time 66mn
Free CD published by pedagogical network Erasme and Rhône area, France, 2007

Lionel Marchetti is a French electroacoustic music composer (b1967) who started releasing discs in 1993 under the influence of Michel Chion. Since then he released highly original discs like ‘Portrait d’un glacier’(2001), ‘Noord Five Atlantica’ (2006) and my favorite ‘Train de Nuit’ (2002). The Musique.laclasse.com CD is the result of numerous workshops he conducted in schools with children from 12 to 16 years old. The composer helps the kids record source material then process it themselves with effects and montage. This CD is a selection of some of these musique concrète tracks and is meant to be played on shuffle mode with the silent tracks popping up here and there. Some of Marchetti’s own technique springs up here and there but with a fresh and naive take on musique concrète. The Musique.laclasse.com is also a cute website with updated soundfiles.

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