Following our first podcast dedicated to the Quebecan freakwave, here comes a second made for and hosted by The Drone, enterely based on taiwanese vinyl and tape material freshly collected in Taipei: expect mandarin disco pop, children songs, easy listening, marimba orchestras or library stock music for bars and night clubs, with a certain amount of cover songs involving western or japanese melodies.
Vintage culture in general being not so offshore in the country, I'd like to especially thank for their adresses, tips and recommendations Yujun Ye, Kishino Yuichi, as well as Sataka Ritsuko and Hideki Yachi.
Detailed tracklist to follow hopefully soon,depending on our translator friend celerity, but we can already briefly mention the presence of the Pi li bu dai shi puppet show's opening theme from the 80's, J.S.Bach adaptation for marimbas by taiwan native orchestrator Wen Loong-Hsing, plus singers Wan Sha-Lang and Yao Su Rong, whose haunted voice for a sensuous beat closes the chapter.
There was a high range of probability for obscure composer Dominique Laurent to be somewhere responsible for some kind of unheeded masterpiece. Following our first detailed post dedicated to this vein of french records "for the physical expression", here comes the missing item, yet the most striking and diversified: blending electronics, organ, bossa or collage elements, it is rich enough so you can even hear a drumtrick that would be popularised 10 years after by something named ... "jungle" ?
Initially created as a soundtrack for the show Abracadabracula by french
Mimes Pinok & Matho, this release from 1983 strangely echoes the recent wave of
interest for some of the Jean Rollin's most psychedelic soundtracks: playing with old-time fantasy clichés, it remains sometimes in a very close way genuinely mentally disturbed.
Partly mellowed with time passing by, Dominique Laurent is still active as a composer and interpreter for various theater, ballet and commercial works. Apart
from the Plume d'Elan 80's TV anthem previously mentionned (also check on your way Les Viratatoums), a few extra infos that appeared online recently lead us to discover how he actually also
composed children song for the holy Garcimore.
Bocquet isn't exactly what you would call hidden treasure now that he already resurfaced on several blogs, mainly with his double Robot bleu / Robot rose. But I already noticed how much some of our followers occasionally don't mind a subsequent post overviewing or summarizing one of their heroes' course. And the comeback of the mighty Henriette Coulouvrat on stage, thanks to the blatant monastical efforts of Musikmekanikcircus, gives me a good opportunity to talk a bit about the one she describes as her favorite composer.
Starting as a decisive member of the french prog band Catharsis, Bocquet's career firstly follows the band's impressive discography. Keyboardist, he brings a highly specific Farfisa touch that made the band's sound distinctive, as you can notice on that b-side packed under a delicate artwork. Following the Catharsis' cessation of activity, he released the Paradia solo LP, followed by Robot rose (including songs from Paradia) and the brand new Robot bleu on the library label RCA media. His perreyesque Marche des canards as well as songs Le flipper amoureux and Le repondeur automatique rightly titillated the label enough to give him a 7" exposure outside of the library field.
Across the 80's, he cumulated commercial works, layering his arpegiators on a massive amount of highly dispensable french tv anthems (X-or, Mask, les Petites canailles) or soundtracks (La Balance). Even a single for Marie Dauphin (Y'en a qui).
Now get ready and spread the word: the syldavesque madame Henriette, for whom Bocquet composed killer hits, is back. And her last month's live appearance in Paris announces more events to come. We all know how much this kind of comeback on stage is risky and rarely works for people with such a fabled profile: this is why we got struck to almost surprisingly shiver and dance on a performance that brilliantly honoured all together the sound (no shitty remixes but pure vintage backing tracks), the voice and the crazyness. We clapped, she laughed. Ha ha ha hi hi.
A german purely synthetic library LP, completely moogish and free of percussions, quite classic and comic, but with a few tracks more inhabited like this one.
Mladen Franko, credited for the B-side, is the one responsible for this Frog Pond, described as an "Excentric Pastorale". He also produced more spacey items like the one you could have a look at here. John Tender (aka Gunter Greffenius), who composed the A-side, is also familiar with library music: founder of that Colorsound german label, he scored other records in the same collection, always paying attention to cover artworks' colorfull power.
A flea market classic from 1978 that should appeal to all the Joël Fajerman's lovers, composed by Dominique Laurent on notes and intentions by french mimes Pinok & Matho.
Les pays de tout en tout can be related to this french moog music's specific wave in the late 70s, at a time when interest in "body expression" was rising and a dedicated record production consequently increasing.
Indeed, the label Unidisc released a whole serie of records intended to constitute a precious ressource for dance teachers or educators. While those composed by Francisco Semprun et Michel Christodoulidès were more based on modern jazz percussions, piano or wind instruments, there's a specific interest Dominique Laurent's production, which developped an electronic approach: tunes are inhabited by a specific use of all the synthesizers' possibilities in order to suggest movements to the bodies with bass bubbles, expressive pitchbends, or heart-breaking textures...
Pinok et Matho released a total of 4 records in company of fellow musicians, with a willing to do both music for pedagogical use as well as sound elements for their shows. Métamorphoses and Espaces dynamiques were composed with Francisco Semprun et Michel Christodoulidès, who were musicians for their dance & mime lessons. Les pays de tout en tout, by Dominique Laurent, is directly related to a piece for children, while Fantasmusic was actually also the soundtrack for one of Pinok & Matho's shows (Abracadabracula).
All these tunes were intricately elaborated al together in studio. The musicians were very familiar with the mime's pedagogical views and stage appearances , therefore had a long experience of improvisation on movement: a theme was announced, improvisation was recorded, then discussed, agreeed or discarded.
Dominique Laurent, today hard to trackdown, was working in his studio dedicated to synthesizers only, and composed scores for various purposes, including TV anthem for french cartoon Plume d'Elan. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- More posts related to the Unidisc collection to come in the future, To be continued.
Unusual 1983 french library LP dedicated to music equipment demonstration, each track being related to a brief depiction and nerdy list of the equipment employed. Although it is strangely supposed to promote ARIA guitars and pedals, it sound actually really synthetic, with an obvious TR-808 drumbox use that is nowhere mentionned...
Composers are not credited anywhere on the cover, but on label only, while we'll never know who was responsible for the artwork.
T.Garcia & C.Judrin - Abigail Baston Expositions. Ambiances. Ballades. Tempo: médium Computer digital et Elecord ARIA AE 100 montée sur cordes nylon combinés avec pédale d'effets ARIA stéréo flanger (FL.10) et delay (AD.10)
R. Gretch & C.Judrin - B4_Embriology Romantisme. Rêves. Tempo: lent Computer digital et guitare électro-acoustique ARIA AE 100 spécialement montée (cordes nylon). Accompagnement guitare ARIA RS850 avec pédale ARIA (AD.10) utilisée en mono.
1977 Library LP by french composer D'Oswald D'Andrea. Side 1 is more original with beauty tune "Green Tune", great title "poursuite Macabre" and nice vocal work on "Suspens". More on D'Oswald D'Andrea here: - Wikipedia - Discogs
If anyone has D'Oswald D'Andrea - "Galaxie" (Moshé-Naïm MN22003), please please please upload !!
