Claude Barthélémy returns by request with Moderne (1983) and Forest One (1981) with Real-Politik from 1986 [unrequested]

His first album was Jaune et Encore, presented in glorious lossless before.  In 1981 he came back with Forest One and two years later, Moderne.  Both are similar to the first, and at the same time, not quite as strong compositionally.  But with its very slight nod towards commerciality, I really love the later opus, check out the highly Robert Wyatt-like track called Late:





I am presuming it was Claude himself doing the honour of singing here (as he wrote the lyrics).  And look at what our friend apps had to say about this record on rateyourmusic:

For third time in a row Barthélémy invites a completely new core to help with the recordings of his third allbum ''Moderne'' (1983, Owl Records), captured in December '82: Bassist Jean Luc Ponthieux (also the boss of Owl Records), drummer Jacques Mahieux, saxophonist Jean-Marc Padovania and Gérard Buquet on trombone and tuba with guest appearances by Philippe Deschepper on guitar and Manuel Denizet, drummer on ''Jaune et encore ''. The interest of Barthélémy has turned over the years to a smooth and gentle Jazz Rock with a few quirky Fusion instrumentals thrown in for good measure. Still he insists on composing tight and consistent material instead of spending his time on long, directionless improvisations and ''Moderne'' shows his good skills both as a composer and guitarist. There a couple of pieces with a Blues background and vocals, rather out of time and place, sounding too soft for an otherwise technical album. This one ends up to be the most guitar-centered work of Barthélémy, you have the feeling that accompanying musicians get out of sight quite often to offer Barthélémy complete space for his guitar ideas. So it left me complaining about a more solid teamwork, but again the style is fairly intricate for an 1983 album.

Really, I've posted so many similar guitar-driven eighties fusion albums from France before, such as Jean-Luc Chevalier of course, Traitement Special, Oz Quartet, Philippe Caillat, Eric Tocanne, etc., etc.  They seemed to have had quite a predilection for this style.

Bonus, the distinctly more disappointing later album called Real-Politik recorded here in sidelong mono mp3 rip.

Eric Tocanne Questions d' Habitude...

Not a lot of information about this stunningly brilliant guitarist.  This record seems to be his only work, and it recalls to me the avant-garde jazz of Claude Barthélémy whom I featured before on this blog.  The latter made a number of similar records but his first, the one I reripped and posted, is definitely his magnum opus.

Here we get tons of tritones, dissonances, minor seconds, diminished chords, etc., etc., all the usual textual apparatus of progressive composition on a funky kind of beat that never lets up on the energy level like my children in their post-Hallowe'en zany mania of candy-driven delinquence & dereliction.  All instrumental.  In particular, the first track features some ascending guitar patterns on a swing walking bass that typify this release:

Claude Barthélémy ‎– Jaune et Encore (FRA, 1979, new wav rip available)

I mentioned this record some time back in another post (sadly I don't remember the context, such is my middle-aged cognitive decline) and I pulled it out again to remind myself of how well written it is.  You will hear some really ingenious electric guitar spilling over a crashing background of keyboards flattening out unusual chords, bluesing it out in harder rockier numbers, jazzy acoustic inflections on masterful piano and synthesizer patterns... a good sample is the track Café here:





Notice the wonderful ending, that eschews the tonic (D) for the 6th chord, B flat 7th, giving it that unfinished, suspenseful feeling, like a short story without an ending.  It really amazes me how many worlds of narrative a simple song like this can dictate if you let your imagination go, there is more information in one three-minute track than a novel sometimes if the music is as good as this.  When I compare the two artforms of literature and music, I'm always surprised to see from the sizes of files how much less dense writing is compared to music, an album recorded without loss will occupy about 300 mb, whereas a full novel is a mere 3-10 mb if saved in a pdf format as opposed to word (one can debate whether word has lost some information or not).  And yet reading is also time-dependent just as music is (and unlike visual arts), but the elaboration of its content in terms of ideas and the thought processes inside the mind is also not to be minimized, though something similar occurs when listening to music.  It's hard to really come to grips with this problem, personally, I do prefer music to literature (and the other arts) so I'm biased from the start.

This gentleman was very productive after this record, as you can see from his discog.  I have heard all these albums until 1991 at which time my interest always rapidly falls off a cliff, and I can certainly recommend Forest One and Moderne (which amazingly came out on CD!), after which the compositional quality beings to seriously decline.  But Jaune et Encore is without a doubt his best work, full of the creative crazy energy of youth (he was 23 years old at the time).  Also notice the luminaries that accompany him here, which include Henri Texier, Michel Ripoche (you can instantly detect his original style when you hear the electric violin-- we know him so well, on the track "Helio-police")...