LE SON TOMBÉ DU CIEL

Alain Markusfeld's second album, released in 1971, one year after his first studio effort, shows a more progressive direction thanks to the long eponym track. It features two important french musicians: Joël Dugrenot on bass (Clearlight, Delired cameleon family, Zao) and Laurent Thibault (Magma) on electric piano . While the first album was a little amateurish, "Le son tombé du ciel" exhibits greater technical mastery and cleaner production. It has been recorded at the famous Hérouville château.

The almost 10mn instrumental eponym piece is a little spacerock gem. It begins very quietly with discrete and ethereal keyboards, when suddenly Markusfeld's guitar bursts like thunder. And then the piece slowly builds up very progressively in the way of Agitation free "2nd", with a psychedelic eastern-flavoured guitar sound, leading fascinating developments, helped by rhythmic accelerations. The piece ends on a repetitive melodic pattern, typical of Markusfeld's style.

The add of moog and VCS3 synthe on "La durée n'est pas le temps" adds some richness to the sound. The singing is more tranquil and less declamatory, theatrical than on the first album. "Theleme" is a luminous pastoral folk piece while "Eve" is a floating, ethereal piece with Wyatt-like singing while the second half is very experimental.

Although the album suffers from its shortness (27mn!), the music remains original and inspired, with all the early 70's freshness.

Fairly different from Markusfeld's debut album, Le Son Tombé Du Ciel (the sound that fell from the sky) is a great improvement on it also. Indeed, it was recorded at Herouville Studios, by a certain Laurent Thibault (see his entry and also playing piano), very short and sporting a nice stork artwork that fits the music fairly well. With a completely new line- up,

Starting on the lengthy title track, oscillating between a slight jazz-rock mixed with a psych groove that would not disown the Saucerful-era Floyd. A bit repetitive and instrumental, this is the centrepiece of the album and Thibalt's Rhodes contribution is remarkable. The follow-up is reminiscent of Melmoth's Devanture Des Ivresses while Jubal is a hard rock fuzzed-out guitar bravado piece with weird effect filters on Markusfeld's voice.

Flipping the album, after a rocky opening Durée N'Est Pas Le Temps, Theleme is an ethnic jazz-rock improv where the mix is questionable. The closing Eve is the other highlight of the album, with Dugreneau's interesting double bass dominating the first part, while for the second part, he uses his bow and drones over Markusfeld's tense and dense guitar

Markusfeld will then stop releasing albums until the late 70's, where he'll be exploring a full- blown jazz-rock, Desert Noir being a guitar only (and acoustic mainly) album. But in the meantime Markusfeld's first two albums are now quite rare, most likely fetching considerable price, but for this writer, you might as well not bother, as both are unfocused, patchy and not essential. Arguably Le Son is much better than Le Monde, but none will reward you enough for the cash you'd have spent for the vinyls.