Thursday 6 March 2014

Claude Barthélémy ‎– Jaune et Encore (FRA, 1979, new wav rip available)






I mentioned this record some time back in another post (sadly I don't remember the context, such is my middle-aged cognitive decline) and I pulled it out again to remind myself of how well written it is.  You will hear some really ingenious electric guitar spilling over a crashing background of keyboards flattening out unusual chords, bluesing it out in harder rockier numbers, jazzy acoustic inflections on masterful piano and synthesizer patterns... a good sample is the track Café here:





Notice the wonderful ending, that eschews the tonic (D) for the 6th chord, B flat 7th, giving it that unfinished, suspenseful feeling, like a short story without an ending.  It really amazes me how many worlds of narrative a simple song like this can dictate if you let your imagination go, there is more information in one three-minute track than a novel sometimes if the music is as good as this.  When I compare the two artforms of literature and music, I'm always surprised to see from the sizes of files how much less dense writing is compared to music, an album recorded without loss will occupy about 300 mb, whereas a full novel is a mere 3-10 mb if saved in a pdf format as opposed to word (one can debate whether word has lost some information or not).  And yet reading is also time-dependent just as music is (and unlike visual arts), but the elaboration of its content in terms of ideas and the thought processes inside the mind is also not to be minimized, though something similar occurs when listening to music.  It's hard to really come to grips with this problem, personally, I do prefer music to literature (and the other arts) so I'm biased from the start.

This gentleman was very productive after this record, as you can see from his discog.  I have heard all these albums until 1991 at which time my interest always rapidly falls off a cliff, and I can certainly recommend Forest One and Moderne (which amazingly came out on CD!), after which the compositional quality beings to seriously decline.  But Jaune et Encore is without a doubt his best work, full of the creative crazy energy of youth (he was 23 years old at the time).  Also notice the luminaries that accompany him here, which include Henri Texier, Michel Ripoche (you can instantly detect his original style when you hear the electric violin-- we know him so well, on the track "Helio-police")...


12 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So amazing guitar player, extraordinary exprerimental album from the 80s

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  3. julian i had to delete my post as i made the mistake of calling dreamworlds cd gates to infinity when its gates to eternity and yesterday i spoke with klaus and they are still playing in there home studio in germany but have given up on the big labals as they as we all know are greedy just for the money so i will stay in contact with them and let you know if they release any new recordings thanks as always for your posts and i had my mind on earth and fires gate to infinity cd which i got confused with dreamworlds gates to eternity

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  4. It's OK to make a mistake, although I know, prog fans are obsessive about catching other people making little mistakes lol

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  5. Julian, can I get a new link for jaune et encore? mp3 is fine for me. thank you!

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  6. https://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/ko2xrw

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  7. Hi Julian, would you mind putting the wav for this please, thanks

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  8. wav:
    https://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/7jphrl

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    1. Julian do you have Modern & Forest One available for sharing? I am especially interested in Modern. BTW is Eowyn still in the works?

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  9. sure, I have all the barthelemy albums, I can post them later. As for Eowyn, I am leaving on holidays next week, so can it wait for a few weeks?

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    1. Absolutely that works and enjoy your vacation, well deserved.

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  10. Thanks for this and definetely up for his other pre 90's works too, looking forward to that

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