Back to Jean-Charles Capon in Univers Solitude from 1972

Absolutely stunning cover art for a beautiful album title, but from the hand of-- who? anyone in the know please comment.

Requested a long time ago, I guess better late than never in the immortal words of Happy The Man...

I've covered so much of his work before I figured I should try to be more complete about it at least, though there are many collaborative works that don't seem too interesting.  Looking at his discography you can see this was his second work (after the magnificent 1970 Baroque Jazz Trio), and you can tell just from the first listen, with its youthful free jazz passion and dare I say slight insanity.  The re-upped 4 Elements, with its gorgeously thoughtful and melancholy compositions, came 4 years later, in the time of his inimitable band Confluence.  And later, again teamed up with guitarist Escoude, they made the beautiful Gousti record which is my other favourite, partly on account of its accessibility I admit.  You can see he made some library records too in the intervening years.

Here's a pensive and pleasant track called Tout Seul (Cello):

More Capon / Escoude [Confluence] with their Gousti from 1980, by request

This album features more of the gypsy guitarwork of Escoude and less of the avant-garde / free jazz that Capon (and his bandmates in Confluence) seemed so enamoured of.  Yet, straddling that humongous, almost Bering-straits-like 1980 divide between good music and garbage, it is so interesting to hear the changes between the two continents, never the twain shall meet.   Having said that, the Capon track "Astarte" is a dead ringer for a Confluence track, listen and see what I mean:






There are quite a few others that will make you, if they did me, quite nostalgic for the seventies obsession with utter artistic beauty...


With regards to the last track, called Gondwana (really it should be Gondwanaland), I was quite amused on reading recent geology tomes that the supercontinent Pangaea (which united all continents some 250 million years ago, just before the age of the dinosaurs) will be reunited again, some 200 million years from now, when the continents now so clearly widespread on the globe return together again, and that this is a long-scale cycling activity, with a period of about half a billion years-- yet when that occurs no human being will be alive to see it... what will be the dominant lifeform then? insects? birds? some variety of rats' and pigeons' descendants, or the children of cockroaches, possibly become intelligent again?  Unfortunately they will not be able to avail themselves of precious metals, rare earths, iron, or fossil fuels, since humanity will have used those up in the process of its inevitable extinction...
It's so fun to imagine what the earth will see, so many millions of years from now...  One thing I do know: it will no longer bear witness to this music, since even today there are so few who do.

Confluence, from beginning to end, 1976 to 1978

Confluence made three albums in the great French tradition of avant-garde jazz, that is, progressive jazz linked with modern music a la Stravinsky or Schoenberg.  So it's a style I love very deeply, personally.

Capon and Escoude were in the first two, I posted their album Quatre Elements here, the link is new for those who need it.  I also have the 1980 Escoude album, Gousti, which has some gypsy elements (for which he had a predilection) but is still quite enjoyable and progressive.  My personal favourite album is the middle one, with the outrageously beautiful and oh-so-french-sounding Les Quais En Automne (a reference to the quais on the river Seine in Paris?) which was written by none other than Capon, and note the melancholy of the oboe:





Here are some earlier remarks about them from pnf (four years ago!) by permission:

"Here we have the final unavailable French Confluence album (chronologically the first). The second and third albums, Arkham and Chroniques Terrestres, were made available at mutant sounds some time ago. As far as I know this one was not before online, but it's nice to complete the work of this undeservedly unknown band.  "Quietly gorgeous French jazzy prog of a very airy, languid and spacious sort, often focused around the wistful cello work of Jean-Francois Capon, whose devastating outfit Baroque Jazz Trio recently had their one eponymous album reissued. One of France's great undiscovered treasures" is the surprisingly subdued description from mutant sounds of Arkham. I would say that it is actually chamber jazz, with a very well-worked melding of chamber orchestra (a lot of violin, flute, cello, double bass) and jazz. Less rock is in this recipe. Unfortunately one of the jazz elements employed is the long tedious and boring jazz solo. I defy anyone to listen thru the last track without fast-forward. This long "4 voyages" (through the sahara desert no doubt?) drags on quite too long before finishing in a gorgeous flute and violin passage using second notes on top of minor chords for that oh so plaintive effect. It is debatable whether the trip to that last 2 minutes was worth the wait...

These progressive musicians wrote a kind of music that has no rules, they use rock, jazz, and european classical in equal measure to create a whole that is perfectly harmonious and has no borders or styles. In my life I listened to modern classical, even Berg and Schoenberg, to jazz, to rock, and I feel like with this music I have come home, it has everything I have looked for in a lifetime of listening to music, all in one package. I hope you who enjoy this agree.    But when I come to work and on the radio I hear for the ten thousandth time "Signs signs everywhere there's signs" or even "Hotel California" playing it fills me with despair at the human condition.  

On a personal note, I wish I could post more albums but time constraints are again a problem with wife returning to work as a spaceperson (cosmonautova) and two small children which I have a lot of trouble to get rid of.  Surely when they finally go to school I will devote more time to this "weird, weird strange hobby" (my wife's words) of sharing progressive albums from the seventies ("Long before I was born???" as my receptionist always says).  A lot of people suggest to get a nanny but I wouldn't inflict these terrible, abnormal children, on any human being no matter how patient or expensively we pay them."

Well, since that was written, my wife is inside the Russian space station again conducting medical research on how to syringe out earwax blockages in zero gravity, my kids are in school currently driving their teachers crazy, and guess what?  I have all the time in the world to indulge in my "weird, weird hobby" as my wife put it of collecting old and forgotten music everyone finds quite off-putting and kind of useless from "long before I was born?" as the receptionists at work always love to tell me  in order to fill up the entire volume of my basement with vinyl records sure to get destroyed in the next crazy flood that hits our town...  hey, rock on, bros...

Jean-Charles Capon et Christian Escoudé de Confluence (Quatre Voyages, Arkham) présentent Les 4 Éléments en 1976

 

In the first two Confluence albums, Quatre Voyages (1976) and Arkham (1977) which should be well-known to the progressive fan, these two artists played cello and guitar, respectively.  They disappeared the next year by the time of the third album called Chroniques Terrestres.  So I was very excited when I saw this library-like album they made together outside of Confluence though contemporaneous.

Both men were relatively prolific:

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Jean-Charles+Capon

(Notice that Capon was in the Baroque Jazz trio with George Rabol, who in 1970 made a wonderful French fusion album that is strongly recommended.)

The guitarist Christian Escoude has a kind of gypsy style which is not really in evidence on this particular record on the subject of the four elements.

The track I will sample is the most beautiful and most similar to Confluence circa Arkham, L'Air: