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FRANçOIS TUSQUES

François Tusques

Alors Nosferatu Combina Un Plan Ingénieux

    “After ‘Le Nouveau Jazz’ was released in early 1967, I worked for two years with Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and a few other friends on a happening loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Hunting Of The Snark’. There was a strong element of theater to it and we presented it in playhouses, museums, public places, institutions... It never made it to wax and I gave up on the idea soon after when Sunny Murray and Alan Silva showed up in Paris in late 1968. I had meant to upend the conventions of performance with this happening: now I was fully part of a similar revolution, the ‘New Music’, with its very originators.

    “Nevertheless, the ‘Snark’ adventure was never over, and the bands I co-directed still used the musical themes (and methods) we had developed for the project. The headlines for the performances and the name of the band itself were still lifted from ‘fantastique fiction’ works: for instance we performed as the ‘Boojum Consort’ and used the title of the present LP was used several times at festivals. The music enclosed here is heavily indebted to Free Jazz but also retains various elements of the former happening (for instance I also play saw, marimba and organ and stray away from jazz references). My famous Shandar and ‘Dazibao’ albums are partially made up of the same material and were recorded at the same period/momentum which lasted roughly from the Spring of 1969 to late 1971 when I started to distance myself from free music. The final macabre incarnation of this work was the show ‘Who Killed Albert Ayler?’ whose political content stirred controversy. Gérard Terronès considered recording it, he even advertized it, but again nothing materialized.

    “We found these recordings in my basement. The old reels and cassettes were unmarked or the cases (and sadly some of the music) damaged by time, water and rats! To the best of my recollections, and from posters and advertising of the events, the artists who took part in the 1969-1971 concerts who make up this record are Ronnie Beer, Joseph Déjean, Claude Delcloo, Earl Freeman, Beckie Friend, Eddy Gaumont, Beb Guérin, Noel McGhie, Jouck Minor, Barre Phillips, Aldo Romano, Alan Silva, Kenneth Terroade, Jacques Thollot and Bernard Vitet. Who, when, where (American Center quite often), exactly, I can’t say. Some of them are probably not even featured here. But maybe that’s for the best, as we can now focus on the spirit of the times.” - François Tusques

    TRACK LISTING

    Le Fumet Du Jubjub
    La Voûte D’Un Caveau
    Tout Le Pouvoir Au Peuple!

    François Tusques

    Free Jazz

      As Finders Keepers’ disobedient little sister label reaches her 20th (release) anniversary, Cacophonic Records present a record that will not only leave rare record collectors salivating but will open ambitious ears to a truly pioneering album from the seldom celebrated and individualistic micro-genre that is French free jazz.

      Comprising some of the earliest uninhibited performances from key musicians behind records by Serge Gainsbourg, Jef Gilson, Triangle, Don Cherry, Barbara and countless other groundbreaking European jazz records and freakish films, this album captures the birth of an exciting movement that would soon earn its Parisian birthplace as the go-to European spiritual home of improvised and avant-garde music.

      Spearheaded by polymath pianist and composer François Tusques this 1965 French album coined the phrase ‘free jazz’ before the American genre of the same name had fully taken shape and packed its suitcase; laying the foundations (alongside Jef Gilson’s ‘Enfin!’) for a unique satellite brand of jazz that would later provide visiting afro American avant-gardeners with a vibrant Parisian platform. Having recorded a very rare single in celebration of the architect Le Corbusier in late 1964, Tusques was lucky enough to play live with Don Cherry (a key player on Ornette Coleman’s 1961 Free Jazz LP) thus planting a pedigreed seed for this vibrant cultivar.

      With this record we not only hear the unique differences within the Gallic approach to the art form (combining masterful sombre cinematic changes with aerated freeform percussion and erratic reed and brass) but we also get to witness the early lesser savoured secret ingredients that would carry France’s mainstream pop culture into truly uncharted and unrivalled territories throughout the following decades.

      Best known to faithful Finders Keepers fans as the soundtrack composer to the horrortica films of Jean Rollin, Tusques is joined here by sax and flute player Francois Jeanneau, whose electronic jazz album ‘Such A Weird Plane’ would later lead to his own band Triangle gaining recognition as France’s leading French language prog jazz rock act.

      This glimpse into a seldom documented underground of a domestic, revolutionary, uncompromised spiritual art form successfully reveals the other side of abstracted French music which alongside musique concrète, protest pop, symphonic rock and Zeuhl-skool electronic prog created a homegrown, self-contained music industry that went on to influence a universe of Gallic magnetic inspiration.

      Presented here on vinyl for the first time since its original, ultra rare micro press (original copies now fetching upwards of 1000 euros), this Cacophonic release is taken directly from François Tusques’ very own mastertape archive.

      Features two rare original outtakes which did not appear on the original LP.

      Presented in authentic packaging complete with external seams and a facsimile of the original Tusques-penned booklet, which, after 52 years, still evades the most fastidious collectors trying to unite mint copies with this oft estranged pictorial pamphlet.


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