I have seen yesterday 16/06 'Patrick Forgas Phenomena' in the 'le Triton 'club.Now 'Le Triton' is together with 'The New Morning' my favourite club in Paris. It's seated in 'le Lilas' a parisian suburb, but still with Metro connection. It's a beautiful club, Jazz club style with about 15 tables and a hundred seats, very esthtetic,and it's the home or second home of Zeuhl, Canterbury and assorted.(BTW 'Magma' is playing in november for a week)
The concert took place during the yearly festival 'Les Tritonales' and the band played nearly in the same combination ason their last record, 'Soleil 12', the only newcomer being the brillant violonist Caroline Bugala.
Patrick Forgas: batterie, compositions
Sylvain Ducloux :guitare
Igor Brover :claviers
Kengo Mochizuki :basse
Caroline Bugala :violon
Gabriel Richards :saxophones ténor & soprano
Julien Matrot :trompette
Denis Guivarc'h :saxophone alto
Patrick Forgas has already a long history as a musician, he started in the 60's playing Rock released a couple of solo records influenced by Canterbury, worked for Tv and since the late 90's he has formed again a band ''Patrick Forgas Phenomena', that is also largely Canterbury inspired. I didn't knew him at all, but read an interesting interview on his website and was quite curious to discover a 'new' Canterbury band.
The band hit of directly with a brillant opener, Canterbury inspired Jazz Rock. The band played then a new track, followed by 'Coup de theatre ' a long suite from their last record and an absolute killer track. The band played very tight and the interplay between the musicians is faboulous. The greater part of the music is composed with stunning horn arrangements and the combination of horns,keyboards (mainly a Fender Rhodes sound, BTW Igor Brover should buy a real FR) and violin sharing the main melody work is fantastic. The only musician who has not really found his place is the guitarist, who adds mainly extra chord work and gets a little drowned in the overall picture.Short very good solos mainly by the violin and the horns (often as a chase) and a suberb rhythm work by everybody. The only weak point : a heavy drum set obliges all the other instruments to crank up and in such a small club it gets quite noisy (with a good sound balance so). After the first set I bought the latest record ( a new one is on the way it seams, BTW co- producer Aymeric 'Calyx' Leroy was there too) and another beer.
Maybe, because it was late, after a long day I was less sensible to the second set of equal quality with another long suite that will show up on the new record, with fantastic interplay between the keyboarder, playing a Mike Ratledge inspired minimal pattern, and the rest of the band climaxing into a absolute fantastic groove. As an encore the band played another track from Soleil 12 and waved goodbye.
A great concert!
Edited by Alucard - June 17 2006 at 08:00