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LP
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FFL 074LP
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Reissue of François Tusques's Dazibao n°2, originally released in 1971. This was of course not the first time that François Tusques was a "headline act". In 1965, he recorded, with other like-minded Frenchmen (François Jeanneau, Michel Portal, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin, and Charles Saudrais), the first album of free jazz in France, named... Free Jazz. In 1967, Tusques again served up Le Nouveau Jazz, in the company of Barney Wilen (and Beb Guérin, Jean-François Jenny-Clark, and Aldo Romano). Three years later, between May and September 1970, the pianist recorded, at his home, Piano Dazibao (FFL 073LP), an album on which he multiplied joyful escapades as a critical iconoclast. The following year Tusques recorded Dazibao N°2, which shows him as an incisive commentator of his times. Following in the footsteps of Don Cherry, who he had met a few years earlier in Paris, Tusques made a plea for "friendship between all the peoples of the world" to the sound of Universalist hymns which transported us from Africa to Asia. But it is really a song to America, evoking the assassination of the activist George Jackson and the mutiny in Attica prison, before covering "Seize the Time" by Elaine Brown -- three years after the release of Dazibao N°2, she became the first (and only) woman to lead the Black Panther Party. The turmoil of Piano Dazibao, was opposed, on Dazibao N°2, by long, labyrinthine tracks with alternating discords and repetitions. Often using prepared piano, Tusques was more percussive (even heady) than ever, exposing a melody with solid hammer strikes or painting an image which radiated peace in spite of the storms. Piano Dazibao and Dazibao N°2 thus form the two sides of one coin, which displays the effigy of François Tusques, an international national monument. Licensed from Futura / Marge. Carefully remastered from the master tapes. 180 gram vinyl.
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LP
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FFL 073LP
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Reissue of François Tusques's Piano Dazibao, originally released in 1970. To avoid the "Quésaco?" on the sleeve of Piano Dazibao, François Tusques explains everything: "A wall mural on which the Red Guard expressed their opinions during the Chinese proletarian cultural revolution. So much for the 'Dazibao', very good; but the piano in all that?" The piano, François Tusques was self-taught and his work was influenced by Jelly Roll Morton and Earl Hines before discovering Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and then... free jazz. In Paris in 1965, Tusques mixed with Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Jean-François Jenny-Clark, Aldo Romano, or Jacques Thollot. He also met Don Cherry and above all recorded, with other like-minded Frenchmen (Portal and Jeanneau alongside Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin, and Charles Saudrais), the first album of free jazz in France, named... Free Jazz. In 1967, Tusques again served up Le Nouveau Jazz, this time in the company of Barney Wilen (and Guérin, Jenny-Clark, Romano). Three years later his thirst for freedom led him to isolation; between May and September 1970, the pianist recorded, at his home, the first of two albums that he would release on Futura Records: Piano Dazibao and Dazibao N°2 (FFL 074LP). Under the influence of Mao and Lewis Carroll, the free spirit roamed and composed seven tracks which are not so much free as libertarian. As an homage to some friends (Don Cherry, Sunny Murray, Archie Shepp, Clifford Thornton but also Colette Magny, Michel Le Bris or the Théâtre du Chêne Noir), the pianist played cascading bouquets of notes, free-form wanderings, blues-ambushed dances, growls, discords, a fatal requiem... A cherished freedom, songs of hope and demands, François Tusques offers the most unrelenting of independent records. Licensed from Futura / Marge. Carefully remastered from the master tapes. 180 gram vinyl.
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2LP
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CACK 027LP
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"In 1967, 1968, and 1969 most of my works were happenings loosely based on Lewis Carroll's The Hunting Of The Snark, a not-so-cryptic poem that, to my mind, gave clues to free the theater in the same way the 'new music' had freed jazz. It never made it to record and I gave up on the idea when I met Sunny Murray and Alan Silva when they arrived in Paris in the summer of '69. Few concert venues would have anything to do with us but we didn't want that kind of connection with the public . . . Galleries, museums, and art/theater/dance festivals, on the other hand, were open to this early multimedia event -- complete with films, masks and early electronic devices (Bernard Vitet, the trumpet player, brought an early portable reverb system to the proceedings). The reels and cassettes we rescued from my basement are rather evasively labeled and the following data is far from precise. The core group was me on piano, Bernard Vitet on trumpet and electronic treatments, Beb Guérin on double bass, Daniel Laloux as MC, Jean Frenay and Jean Vern on saxophones, Michel Kurylo, Annick Astier, Lambert Terbrack, and my then wife Françoise Tusques 'singing' and 'acting', so to say. Jacques Thollot, Aldo Romano, and later Noel McGhie were on drums. I know for sure side A is a studio recording carried out in August 1968 by the comité action musique, an activist group of artists and engineers aiming to reclaim the means of production from the 'record industry'. The line-up is me, Vitet, Guérin, Laloux, Frenay, Vern, Astier, Françoise Tusques, no drums (everyone doubling on percussion), and Michel Portal on bass clarinet and saxophone as guest. Side C is a montage of the surviving bits of the happenings that took place at La Vieille Grille between August 1967-March 1968 (sometimes on a daily basis in '68!), the museum of modern art during the May '68 demonstrations, and the Biennale Of Paris in February 1969. Sides B and D are less theater oriented and may have been recorded either at the American center in October 1968, the international students center in November 1968 (Barre Phillips on bass and Barney Wilen on sax guested on these dates but I'm not able to confirm they are on the tapes), or in the winter and spring of 1969. However, the cassette for side b only read "Snark 1969"... The name of the group (it changed every time it ventured out), the title of the concerts and accordingly the cuts on these LPs were all lifted randomly from Lewis Carroll's poems and novels." --Francois Tusques
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LP
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CACK 026LP
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François Tusques on Alors Nosferatu Combina Un Plan Ingenieux: "After Le Nouveau Jazz was released in early 1967 (CACK 014LP), 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..."
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LP
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CACK 020LP
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2021 restock. Cacophonic present a first time vinyl reissue of a pioneering album of French free jazz, François Tusques's Free Jazz, originally released in 1965. Comprising some of the earliest, uninhibited performances from musicians behind groundbreaking European records and films, Free Jazz 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 pianist and composer François Tusques, this 1965 French album laid the foundations -- alongside Jef Gilson's 1963 album Enfin! (OI 020LP) -- for a unique satellite brand of jazz that would later provide visiting Afro American avant-garde players with a vibrant Parisian platform. With Free Jazz, you not only hear the unique differences within the Gallic approach to the art form (combining masterful somber cinematic changes with aerated free-form percussion and erratic reed and brass), but you also witness the early, lesser savored secret ingredients that would carry France's mainstream pop culture into truly uncharted and unrivalled territories. Best known as the soundtrack composer to the horror-tica films of Jean Rollin, Tusques is joined here by sax and flute player Francois Jeanneau, who later led Triangle, France's leading French language prog-jazz-rock act. Featuring three players from Enfin!, Free Jazz combines the skills of Jeanneau, with clarinet player Michel Portal, and trumpeter Bernard Vitet. In addition to this, Free Jazz also boasts the inclusion of double bass master Bernard "Beb" Guérin, a contributor to Sonny Sharrock's Monkey-Pockie-Boo (1970). It is by no coincidence that this carefully selected ensemble would be enlisted as the backing group for politically driven singer-songwriter Colette Magny (arguably influencing Brigitte Fontaine to adopt The Art Ensemble Of Chicago as her backing band). This album also captures a rare glimpse of percussionist Charles Saudrais in free-form mode after his departure from the Barney Wilen Quartet, resulting in the follow-up record 1970's Le Nouveau Jazz (CACK 014LP) for actor Marcel Mouloudji's privately funded label. This glimpse into a seldom documented underground of a domestic, revolutionary, uncompromised spiritual art-form 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 influenced a universe of Gallic magnetic inspiration. Taken from Tusques's master-tape archive. Features two rare original outtakes which did not appear on the original album; Includes a facsimile of the original Tusques-penned booklet.
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LP
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CACK 008LP
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2014 release. As a central figure of one of Europe's most vibrant inter-communal music movements, François Tusques's involvement as a central figure in the French free jazz scene (alongside Barney Wilen, Jean-François Jenny-Clark, and Jacques Thollot) is as indispensable as it is synonymous. As the first release in a series of long-overdue reissues and vintage archival debuts, Cacophonic presents this presumed lost, previously unreleased studio session from 1967, which sees the cross-pollination of two of France's most exciting counter-culture families, combining the open music of Tusques and the moving image of experimental horror director Jean Rollin. This cinematic debut for both parties commenced in 1967 under the working title La Reine Des Vampires before being distributed and commonly (inaccurately) recognized as "France's first vampire film" under the title Viol Du Vampire. Staying faithful to the project's original title and intention, this dedicated audio release hears the original unedited performance in its original form before Rollin's sound editors got to work with their ruthless tape splicers, dialogue synchronization, and recycling tactics. La Reine Des Vampires features an all-star line-up of Barney Wilen, Jean-François Jenny-Clark, Bernard Guerin, and Eddie Gaumont -- assembled by Tusques in the same months that followed the important manifesto of the avant-garde that embossed the group's name on the French musical map. This advent collides at the exact point where Rollin (as an erotic writer and avant-garde theatre patron) first committed his filmic experiments to feature-length celluloid, proving this previously unheard artifact to be a significant landmark at the start of both a controversial cinematic legacy and a genuinely experimental domestic music career that immediately went on to magnetize the likes of Don Cherry, and Archie Shepp and Sunny Murray in the following year. Remastered from Tusques's very own studio master tapes and including an extra lost bonus track from his personal "work-in-progress" Ferrograph dubs, this LP not only includes the unedited soundtrack source material but compiles a number of high-quality studio demos originally turned down by Rollin in 1967. The approved themes found on the A-side of the record were also rearranged and edited for the soundtrack for Rollin's second feature film, La Vampire Nue (1970), without Tusques's prior consent, providing an extra twist in the tale and instantly giving this first-time release a technical "double soundtrack" status.
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