The last of Jean-Luc Chevalier with Tibet

What can I say?  Similar, by this time, to all the others... a few new tracks...  mostly the old ones... but still great!

Jean-Luc Chevalier back with Saharienne (1987) and Zantic (1988), TIbet to come

I love the cartoonish drawing of Zantic, but what is the fish or animal he is carrying?

Whilst the cover for Saharienne appears more like one of those wonderful Folio French books one finds in Paris' Quartier Latin:

As mentioned before, it's this last record wherein, reunited with Jean Chevalier (from Zig Zag), he repeats, rather faithfully in some places, the old compositions from that era with as little change as we can hope for given the lateness of the decade.  So in a sense we have come full circle with his discography here.  The old exemplar Ballade, reinterpreted in 1987:





Don't tell the artist but I find it slightly amusing that these themes lend themselves to both a Saharan and Tibetan world music style, when initially they started out as zig-zaggy chamber music compositions.

Note that he subsequently, in the CD era, made two more albums, 5 km a Bangui, and Hommage a Jaco.  Both those I can recommend you safely avoid unless you are, like us, an obsessive-compulsive completist.

Chevalier with Renaudin and Eliard ‎in 1985's Un Pied Dans Le Vide [with lossless]

Very much the early 80s progressive fusion trio style that we have heard so many times before, this record is of great interest as it's the only one from him that doesn't seem to recycle the Zig Zag tracks he wrote in the seventies.  All new material, though leaving a little to be desired in terms of the interest factor at least for me, included is a small photocopied booklet with information on the artists and their performances, well worth dipping into as you listen to these angular sounds...  I found the track promisingly (prelistening) called "Concerto Grosso" perhaps the best entry here:





Notice poor Eliard's misspelling inside the hastily made booklet which, nonetheless, is an interesting memo from the times:

Perhaps inevitable, as the poor bassist.

Jean-Luc Chevalier's much smoother 1985 version of Zig Zag... and two years of this blog...

Compare the Ballade on this record with the previous one:





This is all the difference between those glorious progressive heady times of the classical-influenced seventies versus the smoothly slick and monotonous eighties, a descent into record company muzak-speak for the masses, like Orwell's news cliche vocabulary as applied to music...  though the light of brilliance shines through in the compositions themselves, the style in which they are played does not quite do them justice...

Here is one artist who really believed in recycling, all the original compositions from Zig Zag were used in later albums.  In particular the 1987 album Saharienne is almost identical in lineup of tracks as you can compare here with here.  Clearly the songs were thrown into a bag and reassorted randomly, but oddly enough my favourite track, the Hommage a JH II from the last post, was replaced with an inferior and odd Kâkâh Boudha.  Oh well-- these artists... what do they know?

I'll feature a few more of his records-- the less available / nonreissued ones of course-- in the near future, so if you like these, stay tuned.

Vapeur Mauve's ZIG ZAG: Pièces Manquantes [ no download! ]

A superb, almost magical chamber music progressive set most similar to the masterpieces of Jacques Thollot, Cinq Hops, or French Mosaic.  This is, obviously, a reissue from 2014 of unreleased material, entirely composed by Jean-Luc Chevalier, as you can easily see if you compare with the tracklist of his first, ST record (which oddly enough came out almost a decade later due to his involvement with Magma).  That later record and others by him recycled many of these very worthy compositions but I think with a considerable diminution in progressiveness as might be expected from the late year.

The discogs info is sparse, so I found better on the web here.

Pièces Manquantes 1976 is a hitherto unreleased studio album recorded by the ill-fated French group Zig Zag.  The music is composed by guitarist Jean-Luc Chevalier, who soon afterwards became a member of Magma (his Zeuhl name being, of course, Gorgo).  This is not yet another copycat, although the Magma influence (and also perhaps McLaughlin) is apparent. But this band did speak with its own voice. 

Jean-Luc Chevalier : Guitar, compositions.
Claude Le Péron : Bass
Nicolas Carver : Saxophones, clarinet.
Nobby Clarke : Saxophones, flute.
Jean "Popoff" Chevalier : Saxophone, clarinet, percussions.
Philippe Grandvoinet : Piano.
Michelle Sarna : Vocals.
Alain "Antoine" Chagnon : Drums, percussions.

The record co. website is in French and describes at length the illustrious career each player subsequently held, as can be expected.  Out of respect for them, obviously there is no download, but please listen to these astonishing tracks, let your jaw drop, and try to secure a copy of this remarkable piece of progressive brilliance.

First the remarkable Ballade with its whole tone augmented chords and their eerie/dreamy sound made particularly hypnotic by the wordless alto female vocalizing:





Hommage to J. H. II is simply pure French progressive jazz-rock bliss, reminding me especially of the great Transit Express (and door prize to the one who first tells me who is that likely J.H.):





Oh dear-- that miraculously beautiful sound!!

For those who know Chevalier, the track Tibet is actually quite familiar, being the title of a later record:





Incidentally the Jean-Luc Chevalier discography is well worth hearing in its entirety.  But what most amazes me is that this collection of early work, never released, is his BEST effort.  For comparison purposes I'll put up his 85 work soon.

And we must thank from the bottom of our hearts the effort Vapeur Mauve made to resuscitate this beautiful masterwork from oblivion for us, for the patrimony (/ matrimony ?) of humanity.