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viewing 1 To 13 of 13 items
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LP
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GONZ 024LP
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After a series of mythic reissues, (Pole, Marie Et Les Garçons, etc.) Gonzaï Records confronts a French production legend: Bernard Estardy. The album Fragments D'une Empreinte Magnétique is a collection of 12 originals, rare and collectable songs, composed and recorded by the producer between 1966 and the year of his passing, 2006. If you don't know him by his real name, you might know him under the nickname: "The Giant". Whether you're aware of it or not you've certainly heard his music, leaving behind him over 1,500 songs, some of which have made history. Bernard Estardy started by playing in Parisian jazz clubs as a young pianist backing great acts such as Bill Coleman or Nancy Sinatra. After becoming an expert on the keys, his next adventure was playing the organ for Nino Ferrer and creating the riffs which are known today as classics. You've guessed it, behind the songs "Mirza" or "Les Cornichons"; it's Bernard. Nino Ferrer being like a volcano, always on the edge about to blow, Estardy co-founded the CBE Studio in 1969 -- one of Paris's legendary studios. There, the most popular songs and albums of the French repertoire were recorded from François Hardy's "Comment Te Dire Adieu" to Manset's "La Mort d'Orion", even Bert Jansch or Lee Hazlewood visited the studio. CBE has been the home of many great acts from Johnny Hallyday to Serge Gainsbourg, and one way or the another, the very man behind the mixing desk is responsible for more than 400 million record sales all over the world. Impressive, right? As a tinkerer of tunes for many others, he forgot to sell his own talent. He secretly recorded two albums and made more than a hundred instrumentals, all of which were kept in storage for years. Until now. His style? A mix of post-jerk, library music and cosmic disco. Fragments D'une Empreinte Magnétique reveals the story of his mysterious life: a collection of originals songs, some of them forgotten, but they all have the The Giant's signature sound.
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LP
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NFS 015LP
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Apart from his career with electronic and indie bands like Centenaire, Egyptology, Karaocake, producer Stéphane Laporte, aka Domotic, now presents his fifth LP, Smallville Tapes. It sounds like the instrumental soundtrack from an imaginary water movie where you could find François de Roubaix and Terry Riley composing tracks for Commandant Cousteau. Stéphane Laporte has been digging the music for the past 15 years. It was not easy, but he succeeded in making his name relevant when people think about experimental stuffs with catchy tunes. For Smallville Tapes, everything began when Stephane was on holiday at La Ciotat, on the French Riviera, trying to make music at his parents' house. Finally, one day he found a four-track recorder that he bought to someone on a supermarket parking, and he saved his demo songs on some old K7. Back to Paris then, he first forgot those songs composed during the summer, but he finally added some electronic organ Philicorda on the tracks, plus some Siel orchestra. Smallville Tapes was born. The fifth album, following previous albums released on Clapping Music, is a masterpiece looking like some French cult albums like The Virgin Suicides by AIR (1999) or Histoire De Melody Nelson by Serge Gainsbourg (1971); whereas Domotic prefers to quote "garage array" by Dylan Shearer or CAN and François de Roubaix as relevant influences. "I wanna thank my parents for not having converting my bedroom in a fitness room," he says. Every song has been composed over there, in La Ciotat, and that's the main purpose of Smallville Tapes. Not so small, actually.
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LP
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NFS 014LP
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Succeeding Bones (2012) and Dur Au Mal (2015), the French band Blackmail present their third LP, Amore Synthétique, the original sound track for a film shot by Marcia Romano and Benoit Sabatier (2016). A love story between a girl and a... possessed synth. The link between the movie Amore Synthétique and Blackmail seems simple. The band, created in 2010 later releasing two rock albums played with analog synths, was inspired by the film Amore Synthétique, dedicating their pieces to the film's antagonist Antonio, the killer synth that mindfucks human's brains. Obviously, Christine (1983) by John Carpenter and all the giallos from the '70s come to mind. The main thing to know is that the trio composed the songs with simple keywords like "violence", "blood", or "assault" in mind. Blackmail had to record the songs from Amore Synthétique in just a month, hence the sensible urgent nature of the whole LP. While the film has been rewarded at Parisian film festivals, the sound track can be listened as a standalone piece. If you pay attention closely, you may hear the synth's voice whispering some "Je t'aime" at night. One more time, the thing is alive.
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LP
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FBK 007LP
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Gonzaï Records present a reissue of George Grünblatt's K-Priss, originally released in 1980. Following the 2016 reissue of Pôle, the 1975 album from Besombes & Rizet (FBK 003LP, 2016), Gonzaï Records goes on with réhabilitation of French weird-but-great bands. Next step is K-Priss by George Grünblatt, co-founder of the cult band Heldon, author of a solo LP inspired by Philip K. Dick, recorded in 1977 then published in 1980. After that, George Grünblatt became a famous psychiatrist for the next 40 years, 'til Gonzaï Records knocked to the door... Recorded on 1977 at Ramses Records studios, the first and very last album from George Grüblatt sounds like an instrumental disco-prog weirdness of 38 minutes, where you can find the best rhythm section of Paris at that time -- bassist Didier Batard from Space Art, Christophe, and Heldon, Michel Ettori from Weidorje, and Jean-Philippe Goude -- reunited around the two founding members of Heldon, Richard Pinhas and George Grünblatt. Since he began music, Grünblatt tried to conciliate his two loves, music and psychiatry, alternating lessons with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Jean François Lyotard and ramshackle recording sessions with Heldon, where he played synths and guitars from the beginning till It's Always Rock'n'Roll (1975). By that time, he decided to record what still remains his only solo album, K-Priss, from the name of an alien hallucinatory drug invented par Philip K. Dick in The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch (1955). Five instrumental tracks, oscillating between futurist free jazz and novo-rock. Mutant Sounds on K-Priss: "It's a kind of Grail. But it's not just a big experimental French record, it's also a big piece of 'French cheese', an incredible record in many ways." Grünblatt signs with K-Priss one of those indescribable pieces that make all the charm of the marginal France of the seventies. After the recording, the freak will be invited into the German forest for a week to play with Klaus Schulze (Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel) but he will finally decide to devote himself entirely to his profession of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until... Gonzaï Records, 40 years later, did find him to reissue this album oh so disturbed. For fans of Cluster & Eno, Bernard Szajner, Jean-Michel Jarre, Zombie Zombie, and instrumental science fiction.
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10"
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NFS 012EP
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EP from French song-writer, Tony Truant (guitarist from French cult punk band Les Dogs). The 10 inch has been recorded with Lil' Band O' Gold, one of the most famous bands from Louisiana.
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2LP
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FBK 006LP
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Most known as the composer of cult-synth track "Rectangle" (1980), Jacno had a long, eventful life. He formed the first French punk band with Elli & Jacno, then produced the '80s French avant-garde (Lio, Etienne Daho, Mathematiques Modernes) and finally started his own solo career, seeming like a perfect crossover between David Bowie (the look), Bryan Ferry (the style) and Serge Gainsbourg (the glamorous way of smoking), both in equal measure. Initially released in Paris in 2006, Tant De Temps is the seventh and last studio album from Jacno, sadly dead three years later. Back from the grave with this double LP collection version, Tant De Temps can be heard as glam covered by a French vampire loving cigarettes, drinks and debauchery (French habits, let's say). With his single manifesto "Le Sport", he quotes Winston Churchill and as The Quietus is saying about that album, "We live in an imperfect world, because in a perfect one, this song would be No.1 for a decade in all of the world's countries." With friends aside (Etienne Daho, Stereo Total or Thomas Dutronc, son of Jacques) as guests, Tant De Temps sounds like the final heritage of dandiest Frenchman of the past twenty years. Now presented again for your pleasure.
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LP
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NFS 008LP
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Having successfully reissued French cult prog album Pole by Besombes and Rizet, Gonzai Records now pursues its exploration of kosmische and repetitive music with the vinyl release of Pointe Du Lac's self-titled album, initially brought out digitally in October of 2014. Pointe Du Lac (Point of the Lake) is a French trip to Kosmische Land oscillating between the German autobahn of Kraftwerk and one of the most romantic Parisian subway stations, which gave its name to the project led by Julien Lheuillier. "When they opened this station approximately three years ago" says Julien, "I said to myself that the name of the station opened an imagination, big deserted spaces. I wanted the music to be the reflection (dreamlike and contrasted) of that vision. We can hear imaginary lakes and subways there, old and brand new synthesizers. The eight tracks of Pointe Du Lac does not represent a kind of hallucinated vision of a route towards the Point of the Lake station, but a station which doesn't exist, or which would be somewhere in the cosmos." Following the lead of the contemporary French avant-garde (Chassol, Bajram Bili, Jonathan Fitoussi) and sometimes sounding like an echo to Air's Virgin Suicides, Pointe du Lac is one of the most beautiful instrumental records recently heard. "The inspiration behind the eight album pieces by Pointe Du Lac might have been inspired by krautrock and other German electronic music, but it has definitely killed the Buddha and succeeded in express feelings with its own musical language." Harald Grosskopf (Wallenstein, Ash Ra Temple, Klaus Schulze) Influences: Neu!, Harmonia, Cluster, Arvo Pärt, Terry Riley, Kraftwerk
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LP
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NFSR 007LP
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Based in the industrial steel mining town of Liege in Belgium, The Loved Drones created a mind-expanding suite of instrumental tracks built on meditative drones. Good Luck Universe!, their second album, takes in krautrock, post-rock, electro and heavy rock, as well as more reflective sitar strewn musical mantras to drift away to. The album was recorded in a now defunct industrial zone behind a high-speed overpass in Liege. It's a ghost town that conflates the psycho-geography of somewhere like Halifax with the deserted streets of Detroit. And "it smells like coffee," according to head honcho Benjamin Schoos, belched out every day by an enormous, ominous chimney hovering over the skyline. Liege is like some surrealist Magritte painting of the senses. Good Luck Universe! is an album as diverse as its influences, and it's also a record that manages the neat trick of telling a story with no words. It's a narrative that over six amazing tracks releases you from the bondage of fear, and allows you to bathe in the deep, luxuriant loving kindness of "Canyons" at the conclusion. Sounds like: Brainticket, Alice Coltrane, Ravi Shankar, Klaus Schulze, CAN, John Carpenter.
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2LP
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FCK 003LP
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Having successfully reissued French cult self-titled LP Marie Et les Garcons (FBK 001LP), Gonzaï Records now strikes back with another French rock UFO, never released on vinyl since its beginnings in 1993: The Married Monk. Twelve years after its first CD release (Ici d'Ailleurs, 2004), here comes critically acclaimed album The Belgian Kick, a French glam-rock goldies record recorded at Yann Tiersen's studio by Jim Waters (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Missing Foundation, etc) with appearances on sax by Etienne Jaumet (Zombie Zombie), but also from Yann Tiersen on viola. Sounding like an impossible meeting between a Mark E. Smith with a cockney-disco accent and Ziggy Stardust lost in Paris, The Belgian Kick includes two incredible covers, "You Only Live Twice" by John Barry and "Observatory Crest" by Captain Beefheart, an improbable sample from Robert Palmer for the overture "Tell Me Gary" and a bunch of songs getting the weirdness of French rock at its best. Never heard before, nor after, The Married Monk are maybe the best hidden French treasure from the past 20 years that you can discover. The Belgian Kick is presented as a double vinyl collector edition. Includes an inside sleeve and download code. Sounds likes: Shannon Wright, Tindersticks, Calexico, Yann Tiersen, Violent Femmes.
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LP
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NFS 007LP
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Formed in 2008 as an improvisational, experimental free jazz collective, Dr(Dr)one comprises Peter Combard (guitar), Guillaume Perret (saxophone), Colin Johnco (electronics), Stan Grimbert (drums), and Eat Gas (guitar). With this four-song LP, the French band combines drone with jazz and uses analog synths, modulators, and droney guitars to create a world where Terry Riley could meet Earth while Miles Davis detoxes with Chet Baker. Free drone.
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LP
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FBK 003LP
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2016 repress. This French psychedelic masterpiece by Philippe Besombes and Jean-Louis Rizet, originally released by Pôle Records in 1975, is a stunning piece of work created with synths of various kinds (VCS 3 AKS, Synthorchestra Farfisa, Mellotron 400, etc.), occasionally backed up by drums and other sounds. Lauded by artists like Julian Cope and Etienne Jaumet (Zombie Zombie) and diggers around the world, Pôle takes the listener on a trip like the gods of psychedelic music intended, from IRCAM's laboratories to German krautrock; from Faust to Cluster & Eno. The original double LP release is reissued here as a single LP (including download code for original album track "Synthi Soit-Il," absent from this LP). Pôle is ideal for a thorough shamanic journey without any new age namby-pamby. After previewing the opening track ("Haute Pression"), listeners might choose to enjoy the album while tripping, rediscovering that dark and fuzzy side of unknown '70s French avant-garde music.
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LP
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NFS 004LP
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What if Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head (2001) met Amon Düül II's Yeti (1970)? That's what a deep listening session of French band San Carol's second album suggests; it's nothing less than a punch in the face for exhausted indie fans bored by too much softness in pop music. Composed as an unexpected blend of FM tunes and krautrock, it's also a contemporary trip into madness, where the listener will discover a few guilty pleasures (the '80s, Bono as a synthpop icon, commercial radio, etc.) resurrected on songs like "Venture," "Le Graal ardent," and "Oxyon 777," three hits bigger than whatever you've been listening to. Sweaty and groovy, Humain Trop Humain is an uninhibited album where you'll also meet Gary Numan, Bobby Gillespie, and James Murphy dancing like David Bowie with Mick Jagger in the unforgettable-but-forgotten '85 version of "Dancing in the Street." Stadium krautrock for dummies.
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LP
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NFS 001LP
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Steeple Remove, founded in 1997, follows its 2008 album Electric Suite with Position Normal, a sound movie that evokes THX 1138 (1971), if George Lucas had swapped his 35mm camera for a Moog. Position Normal is the Rouen, France-based band's fourth album, following a 1997 album on seminal French label Sordide Sentimental (Throbbing Gristle, Joy Division) and two krautrock-oriented albums on 3rd Side Records; Position Normal, in turn, draws its inspiration from post-punk. Three of the album's nine songs can be heard in the first season of Les Revenants (The Returned), the French supernatural drama TV series that won an International Emmy for Best Drama Series in 2013. RIYL Psychic TV, Spacemen 3, The Oscillation, The Soft Moon, Suuns.
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