ART ZOYD

Rough first week, huh? Well, hey, in these negative circumstances, how about I channel said negativity for a benefit, rather than a curse.

So, in terms of rock in opposition music, there are plenty of bands out there that are quite the enjoyable treat. From the jazzy Henry Cow, to the chamber infused Univers Zero, RIO has given us a lot of interesting bands and ideas to shape the avant-prog scene. One such band is Art Zoyd. They have a similar chamber style to that of Univers Zero, but I'd say they are considerably less rocking and more chamber when it comes to their musical stylings, which does quite make them a very unique band to listen to. Though, personally I will say that they're one of my more least desired bands to listen to. Whenever I get an itch, they do deliver somewhat, but some of their albums I just do not really like, at all. I do like some of their albums like Phase IV and Le mariage du ciel et de l'enfar, but other times they makes albums like Eyecatcher and Les champ des lames that just make me think?what? I am probably in the minority here, but I don't really get some of their stuff after Häxan. Heck, sometimes I don't get their stuff during what some may call their golden age during the 80s, as Nosferatu does fall in the camp of a pretty mediocre album for me.

Now, this album isn't a complete dud. I have something to praise for this album, namely four particularly tracks: L'agent Reinfeld, Le maître arrive, Rumeurs III, and Sleep No More. They're probably the best, and only real tracks I like here due to them feeling like they actually fully represent the whole of Nosferatu pretty well. A very avant-garde stillness that is both very haunting, as well as being quite enjoyable. They're not my favorite Art Zoyd tracks, but I feel like they hit a right mood for me sometimes. If anything Rumeurs III kinda makes me wish they made more Zeuhl-like music.

However, sad to say, but that is really the only enjoyment I have for this album, as the rest of it just feels like a confusing mess of ideas that just never work well for me. I feel as though they just don't really get Nosferatu as a concept, because the music that is meant to be scary just comes off as unnecessarily corny, or extremely dull.

Some of the more abrasive stuff makes me think they're trying to make weird clown music for no reason, especially with the keyboard tones that I am just not really a big fan of. It sometimes just feels like they're hyperbolically trying to be scary, and it just ends up being goofy. They're like making jumpscares in music form, and it just makes them look embarrassing.

The more quieter moments here are also bad to me but for the opposite reason. They try to be overly pretty or sinister, but they just never really land on that mark because they play too quietly for me too really notice and get a grasp on the music at hand. Like, on Anaphase I and II, both songs that just has no reason to be that quiet.

The worst part is that this could honestly work as a soundtrack in a way for the Nosferatu film, but only because it's a silent film, but even then the music is still either too abrasive or too quiet for me really, well, enjoy it. In fact, I bet it may make the movie worse off. Music can enhance any medium, whether it be books, movies, tv shows, etcetra, but sometimes the music just doesn't go well within a current situation and understanding, and I feel like Nosferatu by Art Zoyd is like that. Its mood music, but in a fashion that is far too within its own gimmicks that it ends up being one of the least favorable pieces of music from a band that I do think people should at least try out.

I don't like making negative reviews, but since I reviewed two other quite well known albums themed around Nosferatu, I figured to review this one as well. This is an Art Zoyd album I suggest you should skip, and if you want something that is both moody and can work far better as a soundtrack to a silent movie, their 1995 album of Faust is way better and more stylistically pleasing I'd say. Sad to say, but this album is quite disappointing.

Best tracks: L'agent Reinfeld, Le maître arrive, Rumeurs III, Sleep No More

Worst tracks: Anaphase, Anaphase II

It was such a pleasure re-visiting "Marathonneree I" and 'Marathonnerre II" over this past month. This was an interdisciplinary performance by the band under the direction of Serge Noyelle. A 12 hour marathon from noon to midnight, and for the first, and I believe only time, ART ZOYD are down to a trio for this. This was done live and in their own studio. Gerard Hourbette, Thierry Zaboitzeff and Patricia Dallio are our musicians and it sure sounds like a much larger band than this. Quite a few samples though are involved, and I was surprised at all of the composed music on here, half expecting a lot of improvisation and repetitive stuff. Not so.

I slightly prefer this to the first record as we get less of that world music vibe on here. And yes they are right in the middle of their electronic phase which will continue after this with classics like "Faust", "Haxan" and "Metroplois". I love both of their periods but tend to prefer their electronic style over the classical chamber style from earlier. So yes this is right up my alley, and while "I" was an hour of music culled from the first six hours of the marathon, "II" of course is an hour taken from the second half of this performance. This is dark with plenty of keys and electronics, with all three playing those, but strings and bass too.

Unlike "I" where it started off with sparse and distant sounds, this one hits the ground running and turns more powerful rather quickly. Intense, and there's so much going on after 2 minutes. "Aka Jour De Pluie" is more of a soundscape with voices and that world music vibe. We get the three part "Anamorphose" worth about 9 1/2 minutes in total starting out surprisingly catchy but ending in a very ART ZOYD manner with power and intensity.

"Porte De Chatillon" has a dark rhythm with nervous strings. A bit of a classical bent to "AZPP" and what sounds like applause to end it. The two longer tracks on here are incredible beginning with the 8 minute "Mariee A La Nuit" where we get a bass line, strings and multiple sounds. So good, this is why I love this band. The other long one is "Le Lac Des Signes" at 10 1/2 minutes. It starts out dark with piano and a female vocal melody. It starts to build a couple of minutes in. It turns surprisingly powerful after 4 1/2 minutes.

I have such a fascination with ART ZOYD, UNIVERS ZERO and THINKING PLAGUE. All three bands have a different way to convey that dark and complex music. Easily a 4 star affair.

ART ZOYD decided to do this 12 hour marathon of live, in-studio music called an "interdisciplinary performance". They began the non-stop playing at noon and ended at midnight in their own studio. They are down to a trio here for the first time, but what a trio. Gerard Hourbette plays viola, keys and percussion, while Thierry Zaboitzeff adds cello, bass, keys, vocals and percussion, and lastly Patricia Dallio on keyboards. The hour of music here is culled from the first half of the performance, while there was a second release called "Marathonnerre II" that was taken from the second half of the event.

This surprised me because I thought there would be a lot of improvs and long soundscapes, and maybe there was some of that, but on this record we get 13 tracks of composed music. And this my friends is a must have if your an ART ZOYD fan in my opinion. They are in their electronic phase still here in the early nineties but they do mix things up some, even having a catchy track or two on here. No it's not perfect, but it is ART ZOYD, and this is quite the performance.

The 6 minute opener "Complainte" is an interesting pick for the opener because it takes a while to get going. Quite sparse early on. Some male vocals after 3 minutes, then it starts to build a minute after that. So good! Hourbette composed "2. Szene" and "1. Szene" and the one I mentioned first is over 9 minutes while the latter is over 12 minutes and both are highlights for me. The atmosphere and suspense, plus those stark keys are so ART ZOYD. Some organ and piano on the latter. Over 20 minutes of bliss for me with those two but they are seperated by six songs, and not back to back, and starting with "2. Szene" with "1. Szene" coming late.

"Barbares" is only a minute long but it's dark with so much going on. "Alleluja" is catchy and out of character for the band. I like "Danse De Mort" for the many samples used and the dark atmosphere. "Firebirds" is another where there seems to be so much going on with the electronics and beats as male vocals arrive. "Fair Fair" might be my favourite, it should have been the closer but is the second last song. The bass is outstanding here. It turns more powerful around 3 1/2 minutes and vocals will arrive late as it winds down. There's a world music vibe on "Konzo Bele" which I'm not big on.

Easily a four star record and while it wasn't what I was expecting, it's also very much ART ZOYD save for a couple of tracks. Fantastic music!

Art Zoyd - Häxan

An atmospheric masterpiece. Very few records have been capable of encapsulating such strong vibe and recognizability without practically any lyrics. Art Zoyd, being more of a collective rather than a band by itself, has been very inconsistent when it comes to their discography. Their records are sometimes either just atmospheric for the sake of being atmospheric, but Häxan, being the imaginary soundtrack of the horror-comedy movie of the same name, manages to perfectly encapsulate the dark ambience of the cinema piece.

This record by itself is incredibly inaccessible, but it's without a doubt a record that must be check out. Five stars, a masterpiece of ambience music.

There is no way to do this absolute monster of a box set justice in a review. Maybe I start by writing that Art Zoyd have developed over time from a RIO band that used mainly acoustic elements including strings and woodwinds into a more electronically oriented experimental avantgarde collective, from a strong orientation toward chamber-like composition in the beginning to more focus on subtle atmospheres and sound design, evolving their signature sound inspired by horror movies and the depths of the psyche while still remaining unmistakably Art Zoyd when it comes to the mysterious dark mood and experimental spirit. A number of members came and went through the years, many with remaining long term association with the band, and later the group became more of a collective with changing line-ups often in parallel doing different projects. Spiritus Rector Gerard Hourbette sadly passed away far too young at 64 in 2018, but it looks like many of the tentacles of Art Zoyd will go on. All this is represented here, so if you want to start your Art Zoyd fandom with a bang, buy this (obviously if you're not rich chances are you're not going to plunge into such a set first even though I may tell you that you won't regret it... maybe some will actually, because AZ are surely not for everyone).

This is 12 CDs, two DVDs, and maybe still additional gimmicks if you order now (I love my Art Zoyd T-Shirt that I got with this) and as far as I know all previously unreleased. There are live versions of quite a bit of Art Zoyd's back catalogue, all of which have quite a bit of additions and variation. Most sound very good although there's the odd outlier in sound quality, but anyway, the fan will have the originals and can still enjoy spotting the differences. In any case having these versions is worthwhile if you want to hear how they changed and developed their material live. I'm even more excited about the several CDs (hard to count as some of this material is scattered all over the place) of yet unreleased high quality music, much for ballet etc., that would have made a valuable complete career in RIO on its own but wasn't deemed apparently to be up to publication standard by the Art Zoyd collective up to 2017 (of course the sad reason may be that despite being an absolutely authoritative and super productive band, there was never enough money in the hand of buyers who could appreciate such off mainstream experimentation enough to buy even more than the several dozens of albums that they had put out anyway). There is the odd foray into unusual territory like more poppy electronic, charming enough to be entertaining and not distracting from the greater scheme of things which here means properly GREAT.

If I start to review any detail of this, my week will be lost and there are unfortunately a few other things that I have to do. Remember, this is two full discographies of fine bands worth of material, despite the fact that AZ have released loads of other stuff that isn't represented here. Pity that probably only the craziest people like me will buy such a set. Not sure whether the world would be a better place otherwise, there are some disturbing psychological and even parapsychological tendencies portrayed in the most scary way in some of AZs music, so maybe I should be happy that far more people love Lennon's Imagine than having ever heard any note by Art Zoyd, but if you're interested in the worrying stuff that goes on underneath, look and listen here!

What a gentle surprise this album was! The high ratings definitely justify for the bizarre sound and ambience that this record features from beginning to end. It's a strange record, most tracks are shapeless and unexpected, entering a new section every certain time that is completely different to the one before it. There's strong use of percussion, droning, singing, opera singing, and lots of buildups. It's also accompanied by a bunch of SFX that can be heard in pretty much the entire album. My favorite track is 'preuves d'Acier, which is a pretty fast paced track that utilizes its eighteen minutes well.

Is this avant-garde though? To be fair I thought it was closer to Post-Rock. Anyways, five stars for me.

An absolute goliath of an album. This record is dark, atmospheric, mysterious... I first listened this album at 5:00PM while doing other things and I thought it had too much filler and very little content. Second time I listened it in the dark at 12:00AM and it was a truly surreal experience. The mastery of atmosphere is unlike no other, you get submerged in an endless space of psychedelic percussion and bizarre sound effects, slowly building up for a moment of beauty were chords strike in. It sounds obscure despite not being very heavy, which perfectly captures the escence of the original movie from 1922.

I really can't divide this record into tracks, I think this is one big piece of music that should be listened from beginning to end. It's very inaccessible but I'm thankful I gave it a second try. Don't be afraid to give this record multiple listens, because it will probably need them. Five Stars, one of the best atmospheric albums I've heard.

- Review #32 -

Widely touted as a masterpiece, Haxan finds French avant-grade band Art Zoyd at its peak, with colossal and astonishingly complex tracks. It is a hard to digest album but this record rewards you with its beauty impregnated all along. The album is divided in five tracks (since the title track was divided in three movements), some of them being just three short minutes long and other clocking at ten times that length. It provides an excellent flow from beginning to end and the quirky sounds and time signatures that avant-grade is very known for.

Without a doubt, a five star record. The best Art Zoyd album. Five Stars. Highly recommended to all Avant-Garde fans and a must-have.

One of my favorite avant-garde albums, Haxan features seven tracks of pure and awesome avant-garde or Avant Rock. The opener is for sure one of my favorite Avant-Garde tracks of all time. It's sometimes energetic and bizarre, sometimes it's atmospheric and obscure, and the instrumentation is flawless although the latter property can be applied to the whole album if you ask me! The rest of the album is great, it's entertaining and overall it's classic Frank Zappa avant-garde. I have only listened this record once but I'll for sure digging this record a lot in the coming months (or even years!). Underrated, which is why it has a high star rating but low rating count, but you should still give it a go!

The Belgian avant gardistes experimenting with 1980s technologies. I hear a lot of the influence of Phillip Glass and Christian Vander here.

1. Epithalame (20:12) weird weave of tribal sounds pulsing like a Phillip Glass soundtrack with C. Vander-like castrati singing in the background. Hypnotic in an African drum-circle, Joni Mitchell "Dreamland" kind of way. (34/40) 2. "Baboon's Blood" (5:35) obviously the band was experimenting with a lot of the new sounds and technologies that the digital, MIDI, and computer world were making available to the art world. The vocals are laughable, the Art of Noise samples and sounds embarrassing, but the strings contributions are okay. (8/10)

3. "A Drum, a Drum" (20:20) what opens as a creepy soundtrack to a horror film turns more musical in the fifth minute--though still scary/creepy (The vocals are just weird. I like the band much more as an instrumental band.) The Middle Eastern-sounding saxophone can get a little grating. Then a drawn out washy coda turns into an almost-Berlin School section reminding me of some of Mike Oldfield's poorer passages. The use of some of the 1980s technologically available innovations only serves to date and mire this music in anachronistic time capsule. I'd love to hear the 21st Century, all-acoustic version the band would do of this today. Overall, I'd say this song is quite a failure. There is nothing exceptional, virtuosic, engaging, or even particularly fresh much less entertaining. (30/40)

Total Time: 46:14

Overall I think this album is a sad testament to the limited and limiting technologies coming available in the 1980s--sounds that have either been vastly improved upon or simply (and with embarrassment) discarded. I'm glad they went back to their unplugged acoustic sound palette.

C-/2.5 stars; a brick of an album that is more historically valuable for the example of how wrong a band's experimentation with latest technologies can go.