Jazz

François Tusques 'Free Jazz' LP


£7.99 £20.99
François Tusques 'Free Jazz' LP
As Finders Keepers’ disobedient little sister label reaches her 20th (release) anniversary, Cacophonic Records present a record that will not only leave rare record collectors salivating but will open ambitious ears to a truly pioneering album from the seldom celebrated and individualistic micro-genre that is French free jazz.

Comprising some of the earliest uninhibited performances from key musicians behind records by Serge Gainsbourg, Jef Gilson, Triangle, Don Cherry, Barbara and countless other groundbreaking European jazz records and freakish films, this album captures the birth of an exciting movement that would soon earn its Parisian birthplace as the go-to European spiritual home of improvised and avant-garde music.

Spearheaded by polymath pianist and composer François Tusques this 1965 French album coined the phrase ‘free jazz’ before the American genre of the same name had fully taken shape and packed its suitcase; laying the foundations (alongside Jef Gilson’s ‘Enfin!’) for a unique satellite brand of jazz that would later provide visiting afro American avant-gardeners with a vibrant Parisian platform. Having recorded a very rare single in celebration of the architect Le Corbusier in late 1964, Tusques was lucky enough to play live with Don Cherry (a key player on Ornette Coleman’s 1961 Free Jazz LP) thus planting a pedigreed seed for this vibrant cultivar.

With this record we not only hear the unique differences within the Gallic approach to the art form (combining masterful sombre cinematic changes with aerated freeform percussion and erratic reed and brass) but we also get to witness the early lesser savoured secret ingredients that would carry France’s mainstream pop culture into truly uncharted and unrivalled territories throughout the following decades.

Best known to faithful Finders Keepers fans as the soundtrack composer to the horrortica films of Jean Rollin, Tusques is joined here by sax and flute player Francois Jeanneau, whose electronic jazz album ‘Such A Weird Plane’ would later lead to his own band Triangle gaining recognition as France’s leading French language prog jazz rock act.

This glimpse into a seldom documented underground of a domestic, revolutionary, uncompromised spiritual art form successfully reveals the other side of abstracted French music which alongside musique concrète, protest pop, symphonic rock and Zeuhl-skool electronic prog created a homegrown, self-contained music industry that went on to influence a universe of Gallic magnetic inspiration.

Presented here on vinyl for the first time since its original, ultra rare micro press (original copies now fetching upwards of 1000 euros), this Cacophonic release is taken directly from François Tusques’ very own mastertape archive.

Features two rare original outtakes which did not appear on the original LP.

Presented in authentic packaging complete with external seams and a facsimile of the original Tusques-penned booklet, which, after 52 years, still evades the most fastidious collectors trying to unite mint copies with this oft estranged pictorial pamphlet.


 



Condition: New

Label: Cacophonic

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