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CD
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TES 058CD
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2005 reissue. Released in 1979 in a limited edition on his own d'Avantage label, Catalogue, with its overt theatricality is every bit as wild as the previous Paralleles. Not really jazz, not rock, having nothing to do with contemporary music either, Catalogue is a kind of sonic postcard which features not the group of the same name but instead numerous Jacques Berrocal associates including Potage (co-founder of the d'Avantage label in 1976), Parle, Ferlet, Pauvros and recording engineer Daniel Deshays, plus many musicians from the French underground collective scene of the 1970s. Not content with manhandling a toy piano on "Tango" (which features mind-blowing accordion from Parle), abusing an arsenal of instruments including saw blades, pistols, shower attachment and even gingerbread, Berrocal pushes his own voice way over the edge on "Incontrolablslaooo" and "Faits Divers," moving from a 60-a-day smoker's cough to a terrifying sequence of gargles and vomits. The grungy free rock of "No More Dirty Bla Blaps," the Portsmouth Sinfonia-like spoof Dixieland of "Rideau," the distressing punk of "Signe Particulier" and all manner of field recordings and cut-ups in Berrocal's Artaudian theater style, combining the excesses of glam and punk cold-wave with a post-1968 Situationist perspective. With the same creative attitude documented through the mythic d'Avantage label (1976-1979), Berrocal later accumulated an extensive archive of unreleased recordings, some of which finally surface now on this new edition. Catalogue represents the most experimental and complex of Berrocal's records, as historical as contemporary modern, classic, and at the same time as fresh and strange as if it had been recorded last week. During the same year Steven Stapleton frequently travelled to Paris to meet Jacques Berrocal to discuss a possible collaboration. In 1980, Berrocal travelled to London with his pocket trumpet and Tibetan oboe and recorded with Stapleton, Heman Patakand John Fothergill on NWW's second album, but that's another story.
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TES 037CD
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2023 restock; originally released in 2001. Jacques Berrocal has been very active since the beginning of the 1970s. No one in France could mix jazz, improvisation, rock'n'roll, punk, no wave, spoken-word and industrial music like him. He also had a central position in the creation of d'Avantage, a collective record label that issued some of the most particular sessions of the mid-late '70s. At the same time he was working on neverending sessions for records that were never issued. Jacques and his band were the apostles of the non-urgency, enjoying recording in unusual situations, with no rules, improvising on undefined structures or using non-musical material mixed with ethnic instrumental solos. In 1976 d'Avantage issued a wonderful record LP titled Parallèles featuring, among others, Bernard Vitet, Roger Ferlet, Pierre Bastien, Michel Potage, Daniel Deshays, with the intervention of Vince Taylor, the dark diamond of rock'n'roll who inspired David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust. Just a couple of years later Berrocal collaborated with Steven Stapleton to create the first Nurse With Wound LP. Parallèles features very different styles; acoustic solo and duo for trombone and cornet as well as a large ensemble 25 minute-long piece dedicated to the Futurist Russolo (again, two years later, Mr. Stapleton dedicated his first NWW record to the same Italian artist). Also of mention are "Post-Card," recorded in a pigsty in 1976, and the legendary "Rock'n'roll Station," a mini-concert for voice (Vince Taylor), double bass (Roger Ferlet) and bicycle (Berrocal). The remastered CD also includes five previously-unreleased tracks that were actually left out of the original record: "Villa Povera Naturale" (1972) is a short piece for pocket trumpet and various concrète elements; "Occupé" by Michel Potage is an excerpt taken from an LP that d'Avantage never issued; "Shorten" and "Lisylis Pavillon" are the first experiments using electronics and "Cryptea IV," taken from the sessions of the early Futura LP. Thirty years later, Jacques Berrocal is still there, where nothing is waiting for him, totally outside the rules, and out of fashion. A digipack CD edition including a folded insert with very nice original photos and scores.
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