L'amour Fou (2010)

The full title of Étron Fou Leloublan's second album is Les Trois Fous Perdégagnent (Au Pays Des…), which could translate to "The Three Fools Lose'n'win (In the Land Of…)" - granted, it doesn't make more sense in English than in French. On this opus from 1978, Francis Grand picks up the saxophone where Chris Chanet (aka Eulalie Ruynat) had left it. Despite his inventive growls and screams, he simply cannot tame the devastating rhythm section (and madcap creativity) of Ferdinand Richard and Guigou Chenevier. This album is a studio construction, filled with overdubs and intro/outro collages. The group has gained better knowledge of the possibilities offered by a recording studio, but still operates on a shoestring budget…

In this year of his sixtieth birthday, how good to have this reminder of Fou Ts'ong's lifelong devotion to Chopin. Only in the Polonaise-fantaisie does he do himself less than justice: such idiosyncratically fitful, shape-damaging rubato is bound to sound mannered after re-hearings on disc. Just once or twice I would have preferred a more poised, Lipatti-like continuity in the Barcarolle too, though here there are many seductive things by way of compensation.

Domenico Scarlatti is a great composer disguised as a mediocre one. Part of the disguise is that he’s a formulaic miniaturist. It’s easy to dismiss his sonatas with the airy notion that if you’ve heard a few of them, you’ve heard them all. So pianists usually dispatch them as twee appetizers, played with a wink and a smirk, setting the table for meatier fare. But such dismissal dissolves under the sheer inventiveness of the sonatas. Like the protagonist in Ilse Aichinger’s “The Bound Man,” Scarlatti finds endless possibilities within his self-imposed confines.

Cheval Fou gave a first whinny as a French rock trio around the frontman and a guitarist named Michel Peteau in 1970. Michel had got pretty impressed by European Rock scene, especially the Who, and strove to make a similar impact by playing guitar, that could be crystallized as an incarnation of Heavy/Psych/Krautrock movement by three talented underground musicians in Paris - Jean Max Peteau (guitar, bass), Stephene Rossini (drums), and Michel (guitar, saxophone). Cheval Fou had recorded some material from 1970 until 1975, that had not released in their active days. Fortunately a short-lived French independent label Legend Music compiled their material and released in 1994 (and this compilation has been reissued and rereleased via Psych Up Melodies in 2011)…

Batelages is Etron Fou Leloublan's first LP, recorded in late 1976 for the French label Gratte-Ciel. It has all the flaws of a first album: meager sound quality, overlong songs, a group identity still in its infancy. Despite all that, it remains an interesting record for two main reasons. First, it is the only Etron Fou featuring original singer/saxophonist Chris Chanet (aka Eulalie Ruynat). Second, what this group was playing was completely nuts. Ferdinand Richard's bass work had already reached a virtuosic level, enough for him to lead in two cuts. Guigou Chenevier's mad drumming, neurotic, depressive-compulsive - a cross between Magma's Christian Vander and free improv's original madman, Han Bennink - challenged recording engineer Thierry Magal, who poorly captured his dynamics (with the exception of the drums solo "Sololo Brigida," crisp)…

Considered by many music historians as one of the most important group out of Germany, Faust were certainly ahead of their time. They took their music to unsuspecting heights somewhere in between Can, Velvet Underground, Neu, LA Dusseldorf or Henry Cow but also much farther and can be considered as founding fathers of the Industrial Rock. Having made their debut in 71 in Hamburg, Faust will never stop their groundbreaking and will be always one step ahead of everybody else including the groups above mentioned and are the prime example of Rock In Opposition (RIO) along with Henry Cow. Faust is definitely not for the faint-hearted person and can only be recommended in small doses because it is very dangerous for the sanity of the average proghead.