Pierre Courbois En Jasper Van 't Hof in 1981' s missing Perpetuum Mobile

Pierre Courbois En Jasper Van 'T Hof ‎– Perpetuum Mobile

Label: Varajazz ‎– 201
Series:  … And All That Jazz – Volume 1
Country: Netherlands
Released: 1981


Clearly missing from the available works of both Jasper and Pierre Courbois (in Association P.C.), this is a very experimental work with keyboards by Jasper falling all over the place.  Side a is devoted to him and his compositions played on various types of keys with a frenzied and almost random accompaniment by P.C. whilst side b, dedicated to the latter, becomes an exercise in percussive tedium unmatched in my opinion by any experimental work from the progressive era.


The shorter portemanteau-word track Courthof (a3) gives you a clear idea:





Tracklist:

A1 Ban De Bim 8:05
A2 Ecaps 5:41
A3 Courhof 4:22
A4 Latinuoso 4:20
B1 Er Zijn Nog Acht Wachtenden Voor U 22:30

Compiled By, Producer [For Radio] – Aad Bos
Design – Gert Udo
Drums, Cymbal, Gong, Electronics – Pierre Courbois
Engineer [A Side] – Bert Vervoorn
Engineer [B Side] – Jacob Cats
Piano, Electric Piano [Fender Rhodes], Organ [Prepared], Synthesizer [PPG], Computer [PPG Wave] – Jasper Van't Hof
Producer [For Varajazz] – Co de Kloet jr.
Written-By – Van 't Hof (tracks: A1 to A4), Courbois (b1)

Apocalypse's Twilight with Jasper van't Hof from 1980

Words cannot describe the beauty of this music.  I won't even try.
This is cerebral fusionary classical-jazz progressive scaling the highest Himalayan peaks of invention.  How is it possible it's so little known??

The information reveals the presence, in addition to the famous and revered Jasper, of Danish trumpet / flugelhorn player and main composer Allan Botschinsky who was the leader of the supergroup Iron Office.  I'm sorry I was never all that impressed by that outfit.  This album is totally different, somehow everything came together for these guys in the most beautiful way possible, perhaps inspired by the band name and title.   There is a rapturous end of the world atmosphere of profound depth and spirituality that just fills my heart with emotion.  You'll see what I mean.  Consider the eerie track called Down and Down (a Botschinsky composition) with Jasper's trademark synthesizer effects:





The band is rounded out by Bo Stief (bassist and partial composer) and Lennart Gruvstedt on drums.
Wow...


Thanks to my dear friend for discovering this.  Every day I am grateful to these guys for showing me music I never imagined existing that, sometimes, turns out to be beyond my imagination in beauty and expectation.  If it was just me in this extended project discovering or trying to discover unknown LPs there would be perhaps fewer than one every 1-2 weeks, particularly with my self-imposed limited budget in the low hundreds per month, rather than this embarrassment of riches.  Although the number of those undiscovered must be diminishing with every day that passes and the hunt definitely feels to be getting harder compared to the early 2010s, for sure compared to ten years ago, there still remain enough of those lost gems to make this entire enterprise well worth the effort, and the money.  And always I have to apologize for those records which are fantastic but cannot be shared publically... eventually they will all see the light of day, and sounds of air, too.