Back with the rare & missing Francois Jeanneau Pandemonium (1988) but limited time only

The music here is all written by the great Jeanneau, the label at the bottom will take you, hopefully, to the other albums on this blog from him.  The keyboardist is Francois Couturier, who has also appeared before in connection with the Prao album posted long ago.  He collaborated a lot with bass player Jean-Paul Celea as you can see from their mostly joint discography.  On the other hand or rather on the other legs the violinist is Dominique Pifarely, who also appeared on Prao, and I posted two from his Levallet Marais Pifarely combo a long time ago (Instants Chavires and Eowyn).  And the occasional female vocals are provided by someone who should be familiar too, Timna Brauer.  Does everyone still remember her wonderful, long-extinct and abandoned album that I (and probably only I) posted here?  Anyways, a long enough artist introduction.  The point is we all know and love Jeanneau and his very intellectual progressive jazz compositions by now.

The music is big band for the most part with hints of fusion, very similar to the Orchestre Nationale stuff I posted, less similar to the earlier Pandemonium from the early eighties, not much like his masterpieces Curieuse Planete and Ephemere.

Note that the famous and brilliant 1940 Tango (it has its own wiki page, not surprisingly) by my favourite Stravinsky is given Timna's wordless vocals on top:

I just love how Strav used the tango rhythm with totally f***ed up harmonies as if to permanently mess with those latin heads and dancers: "what the heck kind of tango is this??"  As others have pointed out before, this is the musical analogy to Picasso's cubist deconstructions.

The last track uses a nifty fusion riff to open up the chart but devolves into a standard Ellington-like jazz scale in C (like Sir Duke, by Stevie), but then moves into post bop territory, the kind of birth of the cool stuff that Miles and Gil Evans did back in the late fifties.  Everything old is new again:

Note that the long track called 09-27 is really good too, it's side-long in length.  Look out for that one.
Overall, a surprisingly strong set of compositions for such a late year, 1988.  But we know the French continued to make great progressive music well into the 80s. Mais chouette, quelle baguette!!

Francois Jeanneau, Terrains Vagues (1983)

Recall this was the next album from him and was missing heretofore, mentioned in the earlier post of his super-formidable (spoken with a French accent and a baguette in the beret) seventies material.  Trickily, it appears under the artist title of Francois Jeanneau Pandemonium.  The compositions are strong, but the overall sound is the typical contemporary jazz we have heard so much of.   I don't think it's as good as the Orchestre Nationale stuff either.  Perhaps the best song is the Hotel one:





Anyways, for completion's sake, here it is.
Speaking of completion, does anyone have the ST title, which oddly came later:
https://www.discogs.com/Fran%C3%A7ois-Jeanneau-Pandemonium/release/6976282
I notice there's an interpretation of Stravinsky's famous Tango in there too.

Francois Jeanneau, 1975-1977 (Une bien curieuse..., Ephemere, Techniques Douces)

François Jeanneau made two beyond brilliant progressive fusion LPs (the first 2, of course) then fell back into the rut of ordinary smooth contemporary jazz.  Have a look at his discography to see what great bands and artists he played with.  Incidentally I've already posted his wonderful, more experimental collaboration with other French luminaries in 1983's Prao.  He plays the sax for the most part, as you can see from the photos.

The title track of the 1975 work:





The album closes out with the surreal synthesizer magic of A l'Ombre Des Forces Obscures - Triton II.  It mystifies me why we don't hear composition like this anymore, on the surface of it, the melody and ostinato pattern below are quite simple, straightforward, easy to understand.  A lot of interest is added by the overall sound, the synthesizer and flute combination, the tone of the bass arpeggio.  Then the last section, dubbed Triton II, uses whole tones to provide that customary 70s intergalactic spacewalk sound.  (Oh that space nostalgia-- when we were promised a moon base by 1999 and intergalactic warp drives by 2100--)





His next album (presumably), is made of one-word titles, and continued in the same progressive ECM jazz/synthesizer flute overlay that worked so well in 1975, witness the title track of Ephemere:





Note the lovely employment on the fusionary chain-gang of a violin quartet just like in David Rose, Michel Ripoche, etc. (we almost exhausted the violin fusion department on these pages).  Like in the previous sample track, the relatively conventional sax plus piano ballad (reminding me a bit of the theme to Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver) is augmented by some very light synth touches and then the string section returns halfway through, as was so artfully done on the well-loved masterpiece Aaltonen - Donner Strings.  Of course, the melody and chords are superbly original in comparison to the relatively simple Bernard Hermann's theme to Taxi Driver.

Sadly the crazy progressiveness flags by the time of 1977's Techniques Douces, with a return to the long improvisations and generic contemporary acoustic jazz style format:





(Title track too.)

The Europamerica collaboration from 1977 was, I also thought, bland (with music mostly written by Frenchman Jef Gilson.)  Subsequently, the 1980 album Akagera was quite disappointing, ditto 1985's Soli Solo Plus.  (And last post's ONJ 1986 comes next after.)  Hopefully the link for Prao is still active, if not, I can reup.  As usual, I give up on artists after the late 80s.  That's because I don't need more disappointment, I get enough of that at home with my family.

But those two masterpieces, they sure gave me, and give me, a lot of joy in the listening.  The endless fantasy worlds of his originality never cease to amaze me, never bore, every time I listen I hear something new and surprising.

Some Orchestre National de Jazz by request, limited time only

This is a French big band which was created in the mid 80s when there was a resurgence of classic acoustic jazz styles.  Note that the inaugural album in 1986 featured and was led by sax player Francois Jeanneau, whose first three albums I will post separately next time.  As it says on discogs, Francois also plays flutes, keyboards and synthesizers.  This explains why there are such brilliant compositions by him on this 2-LP set (rendered down like duck fat from 2 breasts to one CD missing a lot of the meat), as well as on his masterpieces from the mid-70s (come back for those if you like duck).

His fantasy in bop is strikingly non-conventional, the kind of rendition that I would frankly be shocked if I heard in our local city's jazz festival which I've made fun of repeatedly in the past.  And given that its spirited and almost atonal originality might lead to cardiac arrest in some of the older jazz fans who still dig "Body and Soul" or "Sweet Georgia Brown", I'm actually hoping they never play anything like it there, and for the added reason I won't feel I'm missing anything by skipping it for the 24th straight year in a row:





The album is rounded out by some compositions by the immortal Mike Gibbs, Gil Evans, Christian Chevallier (anyone remember that name? for reference see here), etc.  Altogether, a really really enjoyable outing by this very professional band, not afraid of being somewhat progressive in a kinda hackneyed genre (i.e. big band).  Not as progressive altogether as Dauner's United Jazz + Rock, though.

Subsequently they seem to have lost their direction in the absence of conductor Jeanneau, with '87 with Antoine Herve proving disappointing for me.  One track that is not hit delete instantly and moreover is appropriate for those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, is Dans la Neige:





That same progressive spirit that blows in like a 70s ghost with synthesizer and digital strings is completely missing from the remainder of the album.  Yeah, video killed the radio star, and the 80s killed prog.

Finally, in 1988 we have a trip to Africa, a musical trip which I generally avoid due to the incessant percussive monotony, which, presumably, hypnotizes the musicians to the point they never leave the one key or even chord for twenty minutes until the producer presumably says he has to take a bathroom break.  There was one good track on that particular outing.  See if you can find it.

Note that in 1989 a release was made with my old French favourite Claude Barthelemy (I don't have that one).  Two that I did find are with our immortal Robert Wyatt (2009) and Astor Piazzolla (2012), whose compositions I love.  Unfortunately both of those later ones proved quite disappointing, which was a surprise to me.

Levallet, Marais, Pifarely - Instants Chavirés from 1981-- by request

Gerard Marais was the guitarist (and a composer) in Dharma Quintet, whose Mr. Robinson I featured in this space before (recently I reuploaded it too, which see).  The two others are Dominique Pifarely on violin and Didier Levallet on bass.  This trio made two records, the first being herein.

It turns out these guys are very similar to other cerebral French jazz I posted before involving violinists, such as LBC Trio, the Prao album, and Confluence, or their separated musicians such as the wonderful Capon/Escoude work Gousti, although I could not declare with a straight face that it is quite as good to my ears.

Consider the opening track:





Note that some were recorded live.

Prao (1983) feat. Denis Barbier, Mino Cinelu, François Couturier, Patrice Cinelu, François Jeanneau, and Jean-Jacques Cinelu

Following swiftly on the heels of the marvelous LBC Trio opus, more Denis Barbier in an album that recalls the French band Confluence.  Notice the titles are very zeuhl-like, oddly enough though they describe various types of boats, as you can see if you quickly check wikipedia and other online dictionaries: Prao, Sampan, Ketch, and Yawl.  It's crazy what we can accomplish now without even getting out of our chairs to haul out the dictionary, which up until a decade ago was still necessary in these cases, isn't it?  Our coronary arteries must really be thanking us, that we never even have to stand up in the course of a day's writing or work...

Coming up later this week I will return to the progressive rock we love so deeply, with some outrageously outstanding electronic progressive material (and I don't even have a taste for that style!) but I assure you, this is well worth hearing.  As well, one of the rarest and most little-known albums related to a band we all know well and love, Connivence from Canada.  Very undeserving of its utter anonymity and relegation to oblivion.  I will also mention another fantastic find from a friend that is clearly a certified and proven progressive fusion masterpiece, and no yet one knows about it-- and I mean no one...
So stay tuned to our program!