Jean-Claude Petit in The Best of all Possible Worlds from 1980 [strongly recommended!]

What a request!  Not the kind of thing that pops up often, not anymore, after we've scraped the bottom of the prog and fusion barrel, this is the best of all possible worlds of prog fusion, advanced jazz-rock, whatever kind of progressive music you want to call it.  And totally unknown, for myself and for most of you I'm sure, who were never aware of the existence of this thing.

Evidently a soundtrack composer responsible for the music for some pretty famous French films (Manon, Cyrano, etc.), he started off with what looks like standard issue easy listening albums in the 1970s, then in this most musically unpromising year of 1980 he put out an incredible synthesis of progressive funk, fusion, and just plain masterpiece music.  If you follow this blog it's a lot like the German Peter Wolf's Tutti album with the mix of incredibly creative composition on a fusion / orchestral basis (though in actuality there is no orchestra, just keyboards).  Reminds me a bit too of my often mentioned favorite, Arif Nardin's astounding 1974 Journey.  Another similar lost masterpiece would be Michel Colombier's ST 1979 fusion work once posted here.

Database for this album can be located here.  I could sample any of the tracks and likely you'd be blown away, so I'll just start with the first one, Stones of Law, and emphasize that it continues from there in the same unforgettable vein:

Note the really strange oddity of the female chorus shouting out politicalish slogans which shows up on almost every song. (Though in this case the words are from Brit poet William Blake.)

Insane musical sounds though, right?  Note our old fave Ceccarelli plays drums.  And I really love the high energy pulsing to the beats throughout, with no ballad-like track to detract from the high-intensity musical propulsion.

From the verso, it looks like this might have been a ballet?

And what about the title, ironic reference to Voltaire's Candide?

Notes:

A Fauves-Puma Production

Synthetic Program engineered at Beaunougat Studio Paris, France.

Jean-Claude Petit uses the following:

Synthesizers: Prophet 5, Korg 3300 with Korg PS3010, 3020 

Keyboards: Korg MS20, ARP Odyssey, Oberheim Expander Module

Sequencers: ARP Sequencer; Sequential Circuits - model 800

Keyboards: Piano Fender Rhodes, Electric Piano Clavinet Hohner, Grand Piano Steinway, Hammond Organ

I added in the 1975 ST album, which is just easy listening mostly with simple compositions, and cover versions of Un Homme et une Femme and (god forbid!) My Way.  From that one, note the beautiful soundtracky Reve [Dream] which kind of starts off like the famous theme from Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (by Gato Barbieri):

Also, the bio:

French composer, arranger, and conductor, born 14 November 1943 in Vaires-sur-Marne. Worked as a record arranger and TV conductor prior to turning to film composing in the 1980s.

Many many thanks for suggesting this album!

French fusion band TROC with Alex Ligertwood, compleat [?] with FLAC limited time for 1973 ST

 

Discogged here:

Troc was formed in 1972 by André Ceccarelli. Line-up was André Ceccarelli(Drums) – Yannick / Jannick Top (Bass) - Alex Ligertwood (voice) – Henri Giordano (keyboards) – Jacky Giraudo (Guitar)

André Ceccarelli reformed TROC in 2011: Line-up is André Ceccarelli (Drums) – Yannick / Jannick Top (Bass) - Alex Ligertwood (voice) – Eric Legnini (keyboards) – Claude Engel (Guitar)

I posted Ceccarelli here before, I tried to complete his discography in a huge file. Not sure if it's still active back there.  Not only was he brilliant as a drummer, but everything he was involved in turned to gold too.  Notably he was in the other brilliant fusions by Working Progress, Synthesis, Human Egg.  I think but I'm not sure that I posted those in the big compilation file for him on that post. If not, I can put them up by request. All are great.

Also, in the original Troc, it's worth noting that pianist Henry Giordano is the brother of famed library composer Jacky Giordano. I've posted a bunch of the latter's preat progressive music over the years here, most notably in this post.  

In any case, I presume everyone is already long familiar with the OG Troc so I won't post any samples from that one. And if you have never heard it before, prepare to be amazed by the beautiful fusion sound.  Anyways, I was surprised to find out their recent album with the somewhat unoriginal name of Troc 2011 ('recent' I should say, since it's from 15 years ago!) was really worth hearing and impressively original, although of course sticking to the same old fusion style. In fact there isn't even one bad song on the whole CD to be tossed away in disgust. Taking a look at the credits, you can see a whole ton of people composed for this CD, incl. band members Top, Ceccarelli, Ligertwood, Claude Engel, but also saxophonist Michael Brecker (!).  The elaborate piano intro of Another Door (by Ceccarelli) segues into a marvellously complex melody, utterly unusual, in a song about jazz ["Miles will show you Another Door"]:

Amazingly the 2015 work called Crosstalk is also remarkable, following nicely from its predecessor in the same fusionary vein.  A song called Strange Light sounds very, very much like the old and classic Troc, I suppose partly because it's by Ceccarelli and note the surprising appearance of a guitar/bass riff at the start of the bridge, as if out of place from the beginning:

Gotta love the gorgeous electric piano sound too (the artist's name is Mazzariello). Unfortunately this is followed by a rendition of Norwegian Wood, which makes me cry when I spot it on a tracklist and let me say, not out of joy. I mean, I used to love the Beatles and John make no mistake but boy was that a long time ago.

Other compositions are by Alex Ligertwood, Jannick Top (!) and Amaury Filliard, guitarist.

Incidentally with regards to Ligertwood, you may not know he became the singer for Santana in the late 1970s.

Italian fusion trio Virtual Dream by request (1998 Sintesis, 2002 Casuality, 2007 Three Sides of a Coin)

 

A more recent Italian electric guitar-based fusion trio, all instrumental, very similar to others posted here before, such as Ritchie DiCarlo, McGill Manring Stevens, etc.

Consider a track from the 2007, called 33:

Orpheus 1983 [FLAC limited time only]

 

Last in my series of Japanese posts, which did stretch on longer than intended.  Some surprisingly original finds, and some not so remarkable.  

Into the last category I guess you'd have to put this one, which is the same symphonic style as the previous posts but with a harder edge, more electric guitar.  That's because it's a one-off founded by the guitarist of Mr. Sirius, Shigekazu Kamaki (who was also in Kehell from here.)  

Information here.

Nice to see such lovely artwork again.  Again, similar to Pageant, First track:

Requested Albums Part 2: Samurai 1970 and Kappa 1971

 

Wow, what a gorgeous cover painting for the second album, Kappa!  Incredibly beautiful and dramatically colorful with the pink / grey / blue skeletal griffon (?) crucifixion. Note on the verso, the fish-topped plant (?). The cover this time is by this guy, no other credits apart from Samurai.  Sometimes, as I've said so often before, an album is worth finding just for the cover art.  It's the case here.

This appropriately Japanese Samurai is not to be confused with the much more famous British band of course, that one too with an unforgettably beautiful cover painting, and that one too released in the same year of 1971. 

The discogs description this time oddly enough is both useful and accurate:

Samurai was a prog/hard rock band active in the late 60s/early 70s. Not to be confused with the british band Samurai (6) renamed from The Web , this group was started by rockabilly singer/actor Miki Curtis along with fellow Japanese and European musicians, creating a mix of hard rock, psych, prog and Japanese folk. In their time of activity they made two albums...

They went to Europe in late 1967, picking up some European members and thus becoming half-Japanese. In London they recorded in 1970 a single and their debut album, the double-LP Samurai aka Miki Curtis & Samurai, as well as a single only released in Italy (1969). Their 2nd album "Green Tea" (1971) was simply a single-LP repackaging of the debut only released in Japan, to where the band had returned. In 1971, the band released "Kappa". The band played a varied kind of psychedelic progressive rock, occasionally a bit hard-rocking, with jazzy and exotic Asian touches and a 22-minute closing jam. They've been compared by Vernon Joyson to Andwella's Dream and early Traffic. The bassist, Tetsu Yamauchi, later played in Kossoff, Kirke, Tetsu & Rabbit , Free and The Faces, as well as pursuing a brief solo career. Drummer Yujin Harada later played in the last incarnation of Far East Family Band.

And I guess Far East FB is quite similar musically.  The first album from 1970 with the Kabuki maekup cover is straight simple blues rock sung in English, of course.  Green Tea:

From the second album which is slightly more progressive but minimally so-- more psych jammy to my ears, Trauma: