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.