KOENJIHYAKKEI — Nivraym

Yoshida Tatsuya has never made any secret of his love for Zeuhl, and nowhere is this more obvious than on his work with Koenji Hyakkei, which he once said he intended to be the Japanese Magma. This album more than delivers on that promise, and is one of the most exciting and accessible projects he has ever been involved with.

Right from the outset this album will bring a smile to the face of any Zeuhl head - a bubbling bass line, nano second precise cymbal crashes and massed male and female vocals call to mind some of Magma's jazzier excursions, although on the title track there are a couple of diversions into Ruins style mayhem that Christian Vander would never include on a mainstream release. The vocals are in an invented language (not Kobaian, although it sounds similar) which further adds to the occasional feeling that this is an out take from a lost Magma session. This is not simply a rehashing of Magma's finest moments, however - there are enough original touches to let you know that Koenji Hyakkei are a band with their own ideas and agenda. Synthesisiers are used far more extensively than on most Magma releases, while the guitarst occasionally gets to cut loose with some downright dirty rock sounds where Vander (who often leaves guitar out altogether) would favour a cleaner, jazz oriented tone. More than anything else, what sets Koenji Hyakkei apart is their sheer sense of urgency. The longest track on this album, Lussesoggi Zomn, clocks in at just over 10 minutes, but feels like one of Magma's lengthier excursions compressed to about a quarter of its original length. They even manage to include an ever ascending scale ( a neat inversion of the ever descending scale in Kohntarkohsz). There's also a sense of fun (not humour, exactly, but the feeling that the musicians are cracking huge grins at each other as they trade lightspeed licks) that is often absent from the core Zeuhl acts.

This album is recommended to anyone into virtusoic playing and the wilder side of avant prog. The labyrinthine twists and turns, with sudden shifts in tempo and dynamics, will leave you slack jawed with astonishment, while any one of these 9 pieces will leave 2 or 3 fragments of melody reverberating around your skull for days after you've listened to it. This is by no means just for Zeuhl fans - open minded fans of just about any sub genre should find plenty to enjoy on here, between the highly symphonic keyboard sounds, the piledriving rhythms, the jazzy chord patterns and the general atmosphere of a group of highly skilled players doing exactly what they do best and loving every minute of it. Subarashii desu!

ART ZOYD — Symphonie Pour Le Jour Où Brûleront Les Cités

4,5 stars really!

From the late sixties on, a French collective named Art Zoyd developed an original musical mix of avant-garde progressive rock, jazz and modern classical music. The first attempt of violinist Hourbette and bassist Zaboitzeff (the two constant elements in the band) to bring the world in touch with their music was through a single in 1969, but a second single and their first full-length record, entitled Symphonie Pour Le Jour Où Brûleront Les Cités, didn’t appear until 1976; the definitive mix was released in 1980, because the first issue had such poor sound quality. Art Zoyd were part of the RIO (Rock In Opposition) movement - which also included Henry Cow and Univers Zero - but since RIO was in fact only a temporary movement, most people now call their music Chamber Rock or, more generally, Avant-Progressive Rock.

Although on their debut album Art Zoyd already incorporated a lot of original elements in their sound that pointed at future developments, it is clear that they were heavily influenced by fellow Frenchmen Magma. Sometimes the group sounds so much like Magma here that it led some people to refer to Symphonie as a Zeuhl record. I agree that the vocals clearly pay debts to Magma and although Hourbette didn’t invent his own language (like Magma band-leader Christian Vander did), the vocalists don’t sing in any existing language either. It is true that some instrumental sections show Magma influences as well, but the instrumentation is where the comparison will eventually go wrong, for Art Zoyd don’t have a drummer. And that’s one of the things that clearly puts them aside from Zeuhl bands. It is probably the lack of a drummer, and the inclusion of wind and string instruments what landed them the tag ‘Chamber Rock’. But, don’t be fooled; despite the absence of a drumkit, Art Zoyd’s music can be very rhythmical, thanks to Zaboitzeff’s energetic bass playing and the often sharp and staccato string and wind arrangements.

Directly from the start of the album, it’s clear that the band is not trying to ‘ease the listener in’: this is some mindblowing stuff! Wild, pointy passages are alternated by quiet ones and the interplay between the strings and wind instruments is outstanding. The lively piano and bass playing is of exceptional quality as well, and the latter will certainly please Magma fans. Both the rhythms and melodies are compelling and the dissonance sounds very natural overall. At the end of Simulacres (the last part of the title track) the music climaxes, and the album continues in a more light-hearted, even humouristic way with Deux Images De La Cité Imbécile. The vocal gibberish on Les Fourmis reminds me of Can’s Tago Mago, and a few riffs bring Mike Oldfield to mind. Scènes De Carnaval is very quirky as well, and it contains some nice jazzrock/fusion.

In conclusion, Symphonie is an interesting part of Art Zoyd history, but above all it’s a beautiful album that can (and should) be greatly appreciated by both Avant-Prog and Zeuhl fans, while the latter might find later Art Zoyd works - which have no relation to the Zeuhl genre - a bit too “cold”. If you are new to the world of Avant-Prog, you might be better off trying Mariage Du Ciel Et L’Enfer or another eighties album from Art Zoyd’s discography, for those are more typical and represent both the band and the subgenre better. But if you’re already into this kind of music, make sure to get this gem! It is now only available on a double CD set, released in 1987 and accompanied by Art Zoyd’s second and third album and four bonus tracks (including the a-sides of the two singles I mentioned before). All this makes it a worthwhile purchase for all people who like challenging music!

Art Zoyd – Le Jour Ou Brûleront Les Cités (76)

Little did Art Zoyd know that one day this album would become prophetic thirty years later. Hailing from, a small industrial (mining and steel) city in Northern France a stone’s throw from Belgium (Maubeuge is where one of my great-grandfather was born), no doubt these guys lived in those suburbs that they predicted one day from a revolt would burn. One of the most intriguing things is how these future musicians got into such an awesome and experimental avant-garde group as Art Zoyd. Apart from the fact that a lot of Northern France’s industrial cities were voting communist, one of the few positive things that communism ever brought was to make higher culture accessible to everyone including the poor (ESPECIALLY the poor), and this IMHO, might just be their (AZ) case. As was the case for Area, Henry Cow and other ultra avant-garde, Art Zoyd was resolutely left wing, much like all of the RIO-chart signatory groups (of which AZ were not original members but part of the second wave) and have a close link to Belgium’s Univers Zero, their career throughout.

I am writing the preface of this review under a hypothetical probability strictly knowing what the album has to offer in terms of story through the titles of their works (no lyrics since the music is totally instrumental except for wordless vocals), but there seems to be a solid thread or story, even pressing me to declare this album conceptual. The music, clearly inspired from Bartok, Stravinsky, and Henry Cow or Zappa’s “serious music” is screaming, yelling, howling its madness of the riots between Special Brigades and the activists wearing Masks into Masquerade (Simulacre is a sham or an pretentious enactment). This first side is simply stunning and the violence and tension ever present even if there is absolutely no rock element in their music (bar a short passage in Fourmis), but it fits their theme immaculately well.

The second side is an auto-criticism of those suburbs not yet in revolt: two tracks (the third one, Simulacre, still belonging to the first-side theme) depicting the never-ending suffering with an elusive hope of a brighter future (the revolt coming once this hope disappears). Fourmis (ants) is self-explanatory of their plight (with a passage compared to Canada Brass’ Flight Of The Bumblebee), while Carnival (a very important theme even in atheist circles) is one of those breaks were they are allowed to vent off their frustrations by deriding the ones dominating them. As you might expect, the music loses some of its solemnity in this last track to adopt a (relatively) more festive tone.

Clearly the works of violinist Gerard Hourbette, greatly helped by Zabotzieff (of Polish descent like many miners fleeing Poland’s misery in the late XIXth century) on bass and cello, the music is an impressive modern XXth classic, where my buddy JP Soarez soars on the woodwinds.

Dense, impenetrable or not easily accessible, this album (as most of AZ’s works) does not surrender easily to one’s taste buds.  As a matter of fact, this sometimes obtuse (because of its difficult nature) is not easily recommendable unless you are a confirmed fan of this RIO-Zeuhl music current. Hence the four star rating.