Sunday, 18 May 2025

French After Life - Cauchemar, 1975 [Fresh Vinyl Rip]

 




From discogs:

Wide-ranging French rock band from Lyon (1969-1975). 

A good (critical) review from big prog collector apps on rym:

A French band, mainly singing in English with one and only album, released in Spain!
Strange case this After Life group, who's main figure appears to be French underground composer Jean-Pierre Massiera.  After Life employeed several members in a stint of about 5-7 years with Roddy Julienne playing  the acoustic guitar and singing, Ralph Benatar, Bernard Monerri and René Mémé handling the electric ones, Xavier Dubois as the bassist, Hervé Duclos performing on keyboards and Jose Muñoz responsible for the drumming (apparently a Spanish citizen).  The music comes as a definition of inconsistency, it's all over the place with fading Psychedelic Rock as the basic guiding light, leading to several, different styles, some of which sound completely dated.''Cauchemar'' (1975, Discophon) contain some tracks close to Alice, a bit of Theatrical Rock with standard French drama qualities on the singing parts and a sound somewhere between Psych and Progressive Rock.  Other tracks remind me of Strawbs, a mellow Psych/Art Rock with some folky vibes and soft electric guitars and keyboards throughout, but there are also many dull moments of uninteresting Psychedelic/Blues Rock.Musical extensions do not stop here, several tracks visit some light jazzy qualities and the bass work reveals an evident funky approach, similar to compatriots Nemo.  A sought-after release, ''Cauchemar'' is absolutely confusing of a release with many 60's leftovers (strong use of harmonica, psychedelic overtones, guitar/piano-based grooves) and does not actually meet the value of its fame.  Several Massiera-related works out there are much more interesting, this goes mainly for fans of dated Psychedelic Rock.

It's definitely inconsistent but has some nice moments, at least I've always remembered it that way.  Also note that a mono rip has been circulating online forever, so the (good) music did require upgrading.

The first track with its crashing dramatic chords, called Cauchemar (nightmare), sounds quite insistently like the classic French band Ange:




Le secret de la vieille dame recalls so much I've posted here before, like Le Chien des Dunes, Mor - Stations, etc. etc. and I admit I have a weakness for this kind of rambly French songwriting:




Too bad it's so short!  It's a good composition.

Posology reveals the psych side of the things mentioned above, btw that's a great word, referring to dosages of drugs:




Unfortunately the remainder of the album is, as mentioned, surprisingly generic, bland, and simplistic.




Thursday, 15 May 2025

HUR: Hommage a la Musique de Christian Vander, limited time only

 




Info here for this 2 CD set.  Released in 2009 this is a truly stunning compilation of some really unbelievable music, deserving to be placed next to the greatest modern classical music as far as I'm concerned.  Different prog artists contribute and reinterpret these assorted tracks, presumably all Magma originals but I'm not totally sure, which makes it all the more interesting.

From Ain Soph, Cosmos A Fiieh:




From Patrick Gauthier, The Last Seven Minutes:



Wednesday, 14 May 2025

La Somme des Parties, Rerecorded best of Shylock, limited time only

 


I'm going to do a few French posts, because I really love their prog and found a few new things.

Shylock is one of my all time favorite artists with its gorgeous mix of chamber classical with electric guitar front and center headed of course by Frederic Lepee (who 10 years later created the Philharmonie band), and hailing from the beautiful Riviera city of Nice.

This album from 2016 features rerecorded material which showed up for the most part on their 2 (masterpiece) albums released 1976 and 1978, although I think some appeared as bonus tracks on the musea Cd release.  There are 2 tracks that are for sure new for this one, including La Roche Trouee, a demo:



And another is the Dixieme, note that the 4th to 9th appeared on the other albums (eg. the famed composition Ile de Fievre is the 8th):



The interplay of piano and electric guitar is just ethereally lovely, and equally, so rare to hear nowadays.  But then the way the track changes completely into a dissonant Frippian riff, and again changes into the classical opera-like synth chord patterns augmented with strings, halfway through! Hard to believe.





Monday, 12 May 2025

More folk with Tamburlaine from NZ 1971, 1973









1
A New Zealand folk-rock band.

They made these 2 albums with some lovely compositions.

From the 1971 album Say no More, I can't believe how expressively emotional the Rainy City Memoirs are:



And gotta love the surrealistic artwork on their second album.  The best song in my opinion, Sunny Side:




Friday, 9 May 2025

Sower from USA 1977

 





Complete change in direction for one more, with basic folk countryish stuff.

Databased information is here:

US 1970s folk/psyche/rock act, fronted by Charles Maxwell & Kelly Cargo.

With LP info:

Recorded at Val-West studios, Alb, New Mexico, Aug. 2-11, 1977.

Needless to state, an only child from this band. Instrumental called Smile Back: not  Burnt Norton (first and second sides were mistakenly labeled) with just gorgeous guitarwork (for those curious, this is an eruditic T.S. Eliot reference):