ANDRE FERTIER'S CLIVAGE

This is an Indo-Raga recording by France's own Andre Fertier. Andre plays Grand piano, acoustic guitar, synths and adds vocals. I count 12 individual musicians/vocalists plus an orchestra and a choir. Lots of ethnic sounds with the tablas, santoor, kemonche and other percussions. Man this is such a stew of sounds and the blending of styles. We get sax, flute, bass, cello, violin, drums and oboe besides the ones I've already mentioned. This is almost impossible for me to describe because of the ethnic instruments and not knowing what I'm hearing with so much going on.

The title track is almost 15 minutes long and divided into six parts as they all blend into each other. It gets pretty crazy by the fourth part where it sounds like the sax and orchestration are trading off and even more insane on the next section and ends hard on part six. This needs to be heard to be believed.

"Eudjal" is pretty cool with the flute over all those beats then some orchestration and vocals too. Nice bass as well. Sounds like "Shaft" before 2 minutes. Next we get a three part piece with violin and acoustic guitar starting us off then flute before an ethnic instrument making bass like sounds arrives. The tempo picks up on the next section as violin plays over top. Flute replaces violin as the lead on the last part. It ends in a very ethnic way with "Youssoufia" as deep male vocals join in and atmosphere. Flute and percussions too. Very cool sounding. Is that oboe before 2 minutes? Check out all the sounds here.

Just a great album to listen too, as in a feast for the ears. So impressed.

ANDRE FERTIER'S CLIVAGE remains one of the most celebrated obscurities in the underground Indo-raga and progressive rock scene and is therefore celebrated for their unique East meets West approach that they delivered on their three albums that began with this 1977 debut REGINA ASTRIS and ended with the 1985 "Kassiopee." While the three albums all have distinct identities, they all share a similar amalgamation of Indian raga, jazz, drone and progressive rock workouts. To this day these albums have never seen a second pressing after their initial vinyl releases yet are heralded for being some of the best examples of the Indo-raga jazz fusion scene.

REGINA ASTRIS is divided up into three long tracks clocking in over the ten minute mark and a five minute finale. The general gist of the entire album is a drone-like monotonous rhtymm that is the product of the percussion section of Armand Lemal and Indian tabla playing of Patricio Villaurel which provides the skeletal structure for the jazzy saxophone workouts of Jean Pierre de Barba, the hypnotic bass line of Claude Duhaut and the violin of Mahmoud Tabrizizadeh to play around. This is a sort of a jam session as the track's flow is typically long, rhythmic and trance inducing with the sax and violin adding melodic accoutrements to the mix. ANDRE FERTIER adds the extra touches with acoustic guitars and keyboards but they seem to be subdued under the mix of the ethnic influences that dominate the soundscapes.

REGINA ASTRIS is much jazzier than albums like "Mixtus Orbus" that were more psychedelic and magnanimous in nature. This one has a more down-to-earth feel as it connects directly to the jazz world with the sax contributions as well as the folk world when the violin dominates. As with all CLIVAGE albums, the main gist is for a rhythmic structure to burrow into the listener's consciousness before unfurling the tapestry of melodic sounds that dance around each other. While the track "Moving Waves" is more upbeat with howling saxophone workouts, the title track is more contemplative traditional raga oriented and certainly can remind one of a less caffeinated Shakti at times.

CLIVAGE does an excellent job at arranging the tracks so that each element has a chance to shine thus allowing all four tracks to have their own personalities. However the raga elements whether tamped down or allowed to shine always make their presence known while the sax and violin usually trade off as opposed to battling it out. "Mama Swat" actually starts out bringing chamber rock acts like Univers Zero to mind before it lifts the darkened veil and brings in lighter tones to the mix. MIXTUS ORBUS is a fairly unique sounding album that keeps the listener engaged throughout the entire run and baffles the mind as to why this has never received a proper updated release. If there are any patron saints who are seeking to release long lost gems, then by all means add ANDRE FERTIER'S CLIVAGE's three albums to the list. They are truly well deserved prog classics that more than deserve to be rediscovered.

An intriguing mixture of Indian classical music and jazz fusion, undercut with sinister synthesiser undertones. This one's a little less playful than Mixtus Orbis, nor does enjoy the orchestral backing that album did, so it's a leaner, meaner, somewhat sparser beast. Andre Fertier as bandleader offers up guitar and keyboards, though I have to say I find the keyboard work a bit more impressive, whilst the rest of the band do a credible job of keeping up. "Regina Astris" means "Queen of the Stars", and there's certainly a spacey side to the band's sound here which makes this an intriguing trip. Still, not sure I'm quite so fond of the album's tendency towards sitar for sitar's sake.

Imagine the Mothers of Invention at their most serious and technical - say, as on the King Kong suite on Uncle Meat - and sprinkle on Indian instrumentation and musical traditions to back up the jazz fusion foundations, and you might arrive at something close to the furious workouts captured on Clivage's Mixtus Orbis. Andre Fertier's group share the billing with an orchestra, which lends some classical sweep to the intense playing on offer here. I often find progressive rock incorporating elements of Indian music to be a clumsy, hit and miss affair, but here Fertier seems to hit on a more successful version of the approach John McLaughlin took with Shakti - combining fast-paced Indian music with similarly rapid fusion to create an intriguing mix. Could do without the orchestral embellishments, mind.

I'll jump on the masterpiece bandwagon with this one. It is truly musical ecstasy from beginning to end. This is very much Indo-Raga, but the jazz-fusion element is just as if not more prevalent. But it is also minimalism as it reminds me of Terry Riley, Steve Reich or Philip Glass because it is very drone-oriented and the complexity comes from the sheer number of sounds overlaying each other including haunting female vocals of the sort you would hear on the original 60s Star Trek theme.

It starts out innocently enough with just a piano but then is joined by a violin, then a tabla. Every instrument repeats in loops. As more instruments come in, it allows other ones to go into variations. With nine different instruments on the album you can imagine how rich it becomes. The tension builds and builds into a sonic frenzy. The last track has the same formula but some exotic chanting is included.

Wow. At just over 30 minutes long divided into two longer and two shorter tracks, it goes by way too fast. It seems like it's just getting started and then it's all over leaving you torn between the ecstasy of having heard such beautiful music and the meloncholy of knowing this is so obscure it hasn't seen the light of day on CD and that this was a fleeting moment in time that will never be repeated exactly like this again.

I started listening this album expecting to be introduced to true raga-rock for the first time, and that is what happened. This is probably the least popular sub-genre featured on this website, even less popular than 'various genres', with no album in the top 250. That's a shame, because this album simply belongs in the top 10. Very unique music, it's like a combination of Larks Tongues in Aspic, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Mike Oldfield's Amarok, but more Indian influences and more dreamy atmospheres. In the beginning you feel that the rhythm isn't running smoothly, but as the song just builds up for 15 minutes, you'll understand why. The constantly repeating of the screaming melody is very hypnotizing, and very pleasing. As this happens in the four songs, you just float away in the music, and you'll come back refreshed. It's hard to focus while listening. You just want to close your eyes and sit back to fully enjoy the sound entering your ear. A truly essential album for people who like to hear something totally new, totally out of this world, without the mean edge that avant-prog may have at times. Forget storylines and meaningful lyrics and just float away with Mixtus Orbis and leave this world for 31 minutes. Must-have.

Sonic Cornucopia

I´ve tried writing this review a couple of times before, but each time I chickened out after the 3rd or 4th paragraph. I lost the power of speak, and my fingers went limp like flappy bony sausages hanging down from my wrists with no willpower whatsoever. Trying to describe the music within Mixtus Orbis, is rather like communicating to a monkey what oysters taste of. Futile! This album is beyond classification, and just like some of my most beloved progressive gems - it mixes everything into one big casserole - shakes it up nonchalantly, and bam! Dinner is served!

Now, there are a lot of albums which are like that. You may get some that blend psych with folk, or Krautrock with fusion - and hooray we say and clap our little hands in amazement. Mixtus Orbis however goes even further and takes this to the extreme. I mean, sweet ford!! Let me just put into perspective, how many different styles that are represented here, and then that doesn´t even begin to describe how it sounds. There´s pounding doomsday pianos, psychedelic effervescent jazz, Indian tablas, yearning violins, great big orchestral sweeps of sound, Zeuhlish thunderings, late 70s blaxploitation soundtrack music and Eastern folk sprinklings - all of this crammed into a tiny album - and it sounds truly magnificent!

The first track is a monster. Gigantic in every way. Take some demonic women chanting sensuously over these chugging bassline riffs, which are magnified a thousand times by a belting raw piano. Then add a great big coating of orchestral music, you know the kind you´ve heard from movies like Shaft (-often used in Motown productions to sweeten the coarseness of the gritty and earth toned beats) - and the basic structures of the song are ready. Every component slips into the others and back again - and so it evolves into this towering monstrosity that demands attention. The track continues to climb on top of itself with its attached Zeuhl motor and reaches some form of plateau, where everyone of the different styles fuse together and suddenly sound like they´ve been joined at the hip for decades. It´s funky, jazzy, psychedelic and disturbingly beautiful - like some giant colossus of blood and gold.

Second one brings in the flute, and takes the listener on a more relaxed venture into these bizarre musical blends. The 70s movie soundtrack is still there, but leans on a decisively more staccato approach with tooting horns and ethereal violins - adding to the centre score that little bit of extra swoosh. Running along the side of this spectacle, we´ve got some serious percussive splashes with bongos maniacally pacing away, taking you into a warped crime movie score back from the days of trumpet trousers and microphone dues.

Third track. This time around we hit the meditative state of the record, and things get quite folky with the violins, and those tablas get all earthy and woody in their textures. It sounds friendly, gracious and altogether accommodating - like had a Bedouin sheep heard opened up his arms to you, after you´d just crossed the mighty planes of the Gobi desert. Water!!! Maybe I´m mad, but when the flute joins in, the music does seem to mimic the flow of a natural stream. The track turns Asiatic with some deep almost menacing strokes of the violins, and had it not been for the genius of those joyously played guitar shimmers - the feel would have been one of fear - instead of what it is: magical and elusive.

At the very end we are flown to the far East, and some weird and abnormal sounding string instruments strum a mantra like raga, that gets spiced up with a mad and furious saxophone. Together with a couple of monks chanting what must be the bass theme here, the music again sounds like no other. Experimental fusion from an Indian bazaar?

I can´t recommend this album enough, and if you guys are looking for music that is progressive and knocks down walls between the different genres, then look no further - because what we have here is something quite special and unique. I´ve certainly never come across anything that sounds even remotely close to Mixtus Orbis. So give it up for the ever changing, multicoloured, mosaic, shape shifting, tunnel burrowing, cross dressing and all encompassing Clivage, that quite possibly will forever change how you look at music.

Soundtrack to Gauguin

I was watching a documentary of one of my favourite painters here the other day, and all the way through it, I had this music sizzling up through the back of my skull. Felt like someone, very small granted, had placed themselves in a diving costume emanating melodic bubbles in my all too troubled cranium. As it turns out, it was in fact this album by Andre Fertiér´s Clivage that had been playing alongside the flashing television screen showing pictures of Paul Gauguin´s Haitian beauties.

Just to be perfectly clear about this, I don´t have a physical copy of this album, and that is largely down to the fact that it is out of print, and to my recollection it has never been released on cd. The thing is though, that outside of YouTube it is next to impossible to listen to this album, unless you were one of the lucky ones that purchased this on vinyl back in the day, and that is a damn shame! I´ve had to base my review of this album - solely from listening on YouTube, and I´ll happily come back to it via the tube again and again if I have to, but I´d rather pay for a copy... It is an album that´s as rare as a politician without a tie - or a vegetarian leopard. What I am trying to say, is that Regina Astris and its descendant should be made available one way or the other - at least through a legal download site - or else this wonderful and highly original music will become extinct and only accessible for a few people in the know. Is that any way to treat music?

Back to Gauguin and the music! When I think of the Indo-Prog/Raga Rock genre - the images of India and sitars are not far away, and I suspect others here have similar views about it. Well it´s not all curries and Sikhs this music. I on the other hand see the palm trees of Haiti, the forbidden and alluring fruits that entice you into the visual aspects of the human sexuality. Those paths that reek of sweat and bodily fluids, and I often think to myself, how uncanny the female sexual organ resembles a mango cut in half. Fruits have always hold a somewhat seducing and dangerous reference in the bible - going back as far as Adam & Steve. No wonder it´s called the forbidden fruit...

Regina Astris is an eclectic album, and just by listening to the opening track Moving Waves and the way the saxophone is used, it´s obvious that there´s more to this genre than the stereotypic Indian traces. I just adore the fusion like bird twittering of the saxophone on this record. It is like long lingering bebop dressed like a 5 headed deity from the east. That being said, there is an overwhelming amount of hypnotic tablas in play during most of this music, and it sure (as the bear who [&*!#]s in the woods) taints this outing in a mystical Eastern coating. Having played the instrument myself, I can safely say that this guy is no Indian pro - he never approaches the frantic hemispheres of those practitioners of the tablas that play like their arms and fingers are separated from their bodies and attached to some kind of supernatural rhythmic power, - not exactly, no - but he knows what he´s doing and he does it very well. There´s an earthy characteristic forever linked to these drums, and I have always loved them like no other percussive instrument. I feel like I can hear a similar appreciation of the instrument in this guy as well, as he like myself - often experiments with the multitude of sounds the drums have to offer - spanning from deep bouncy rhythmic splashes to the distinctive clear and wooden sounds that you get when you hit the rim.

André Fertier, who is the head honcho here, is guilty of some rather folky guitar textures, and what I think are his greatest sonic attributes to this recording are by far his usage of keys and the at times aggressive plucking of various string instruments. Often appearing like drifting textures - close to that of shoals of glistening fish, if they indeed could sing - the keys are contour less background sculptures that fit in with the rest of the band perfectly. Based on long drones of rhythm filled surfaces, the music is further enhanced and lead by a violin which is very reminiscent of the way we use the thing in European folk music, a bass that is so important to the music - and the way it is performed, that I´d think the feel and otherwise cracking texture of this record, would go down the drain, like flushing down an unsubstantial turd in the toilet - had it been without it. Trees need roots - no matter how much they rely on sunshine, rain and squirrels.

Jumping from rodents to fruits - I´d like to finish off where I started. The tracks almost explode in colours to me, and there is a distinct vibe going on here, that always gets me thinking about those beautiful, saucy, sensuous and exotic fruits that Paul Gauguin painted, when he lived on Haiti. Gauguin had a way with colours and surfaces, that I find very appealing and it still continues to draw me in like a moth to a flame - just like this music. -Much in the same way as he utilized surfaces like palettes on which the red, green, yellow, blue and purple all freely flow - each in their own way - apart from the others, but in unison like those shoals of fish I mentioned earlier, - Regina Astris seems to work in the same manner. Duality connecting the arts... Gauguin was double-edged like that. The ingredients were "separate" in his paintings, but to the naked eye - the unison of the given piece always trumped this disaggregating aspect. Maybe I am out of my mind with this comparison, but given the individual mind-frames we surround our musics with - I find it completely natural to speak about that which paints and flourishes in my head, whenever I listen to this fabulous recording.

Andre Fertier's Clivage, for those who want some eastern oriented music!

I have just reviewed an album by Futuro Antico, and the name of Clivage came to my mind immediately, the music between both projects is not that alike, but in a way i consider both have a similar style in some moments.

Clivage is just another one of the endless great recommendations of my friend Assaf Vestin, who is simply a connossieur and expert of the progressive rock realm, no matter the sub genre, he has always something accurate to suggest. So i took his suggestion and i couldn't be happier.

Clivage's is the project by a french composer called Andre Fertier, who gathered some of his musicians friends and created 3 (if i'm not wrong) worthy albums that have an outstanding mix of eastern music and a touch of jazz, in a general view, the label of raga-indo prog fits perfectly with this kind of music and despite my lack knowledge of what raga music is, so far this is one of the best albums i have listened of that genre.

The album called Regina Astris features only 4 songs, the first 3 are long ones with an over 10 minutes lenght while the last one is shorter, the total time of the album almost reaches 40 minutes. An instrumental album that will give you an exciting fusion of sounds.

It opens with Moving Waves which is a marvelous opener song, since the first moments it leads you to the eastern sound and the fusion of styles, as i previously said. You will listen to perfect arrangements and a well crafted composition, the nature of the music created is very exciting, while first you are listening to some guitars with a sitar resemblance, then you will be caught by a fabolous saxophone sound which in my experience is not that used in the indo-raga music (i repeat, in my short experience with the genre), that particular flavour is what made me love this song since the very first listen.

The next one is the title-track and opens with a delicate violin sound and a soft atmosphere created by some keyboards that also gives to the song a folkish flavour due to the percussion and the later guitar sound that reminds me to the softest Shakti with Mahavishnu style, by the way, with a one minute difference this si the longest track of the album. The first third of it is very calm and soft, while suddenly it turns into a little bit more challenging one with the splendid violin and some kind of claps along with a delicate bass playing, and in the last third of the song we will listen to a more intense sound with some great percussions and again the exquisite sax sound at the end of it, a song that definitely defines what indo/raga prog is, i believe.

Mama Swat opens with some moment of tension, here and there you will listen to the violin and bass, while the tabla is what predominates here with it's non-stop sound, then until minute 3:30 the flute and keyboards appear and the song begins to make it's progression, while in the beginning you may think it is just floating, then it turns into a solid musical piece where each instrument play an interesting and main role, giving to the song a terific sound.

Anf to end, we have Tabarkha, which is the shortest song and which has a constant rythm where the violin part it's repeated over and over, as well as the other songs this of course has that eastern flavour and indian roots.

An excellent album, for those like me who don't really know the indo/raga prog genre, this is an excellent album to start exploring the realms of this music. 4 stars, highly recommendable!

Enjoy it!

Very interesting! With some little similarities with Clearlight this second Clivage album is an awsome musical experience. Starting with Mixtus Orbis and their impressive six movements, an impressive wall of music which begins with a floating piano/violin intro that slowly turns into a massive confluence of wind and chord instruments leaded by a catchy piano section. Sometimes, the music turns into a chaotic but amazing instrumental trip but keeping harmony and melody and of course, with some great ethnic and almost jazzy sections. 4th, 5th and 6th movements are a fantastic orgy of sound, some jazzy piano and oboe solos with some vocal interventions by Briggitte Toulson.

Eudjal is a kind of intermezzo driven by ethnic percussions, flute and chords. Fatoum Astris is another awsome song formed by three parts: A ethic/classical intro driven by flute and acoustic guitar with a spacy keyboard as background. Second Part is a little bit more faster and violin definetively takes the lead, turning the song into a brilliant piece with middle-Asia musical inffluences. Really beautiful!. Third Part add flute and a good bass solo to this combination and gives more importance to the percussions.

At last, Youssoufia, a cathartic songs which mixes oriental bases with an awsome oboe solo and some mysterious vocals. A great track to end this album. I'm sure that bands like Dead Can Dance heard this album (and specially this song) to make some of their music.

It's very sad to know that the album just has 31 minutes long cos is so beautiful that you really need listen more and more. Really great and withour a doubt, necessary in any prog music collection. Highly recommended!

4.5*