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.