Featured Album: Plat Du Jour - s/t

[Mascodagama]

Those murky vibes of aggression are pretty particular; with the possible exception of someone like VdGG or Gnidrolog,

Maybe a bit Marsupilami, too?

[Trane]

Yup, both Mosaic and Plat Du Jour were part of the 70's French musical insurrection, but sadly this boxset missed both (and a few others)

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/co...ion-in-france/

[Scrotum Scissor]

Maybe a bit Marsupilami, too?

Oh, yes. First album, though - in which they were pretty openhanded as to post-psych sensibilities. "Born to be Free" is gorgeous, "Dorian Deep" probably has some of that outrageous vibe we're talking about - but then again we'd just as might move into the realms of Edgar Broughton Band, Man or Alex Harvey. Bordering on "progressive", certainly, but also so much more and else.

I have a hard time with Marsupilami's second album, I must confess. Nothing really sticks from it; they just keep attempting at something they're not truly mastering. It's interesting, but not too "good" to my ears.

[Mascodagama]

Oh, yes. First album, though - in which they were pretty openhanded as to post-psych sensibilities. "Born to be Free" is gorgeous, "Dorian Deep" probably has some of that outrageous vibe we're talking about - but then again we'd just as might move into the realms of Edgar Broughton Band, Man or Alex Harvey. Bordering on "progressive", certainly, but also so much more and else.

I have a hard time with Marsupilami's second album, I must confess. Nothing really sticks from it; they just keep attempting at something they're not truly mastering. It's interesting, but not too "good" to my ears.

It's true that the second one is not fully achieved. I like it, but then I often like albums where it feels like the band is reaching for something they can't quite grasp.

[Scrotum Scissor]

^Try the drum solo on that Elias Hulk album. It's so incompetent that it's actually innovative. You know, like The Shaggs.

[aith01]

Well, you guys have just given me more homework to do.

Not that I mind though! Those descriptions sound downright intriguing, especially the comparisons to Eskaton and Dun.

[Sputnik]

Listening anew to Plat Du Jour this afternoon, and hot darn - it's even better now than last December. I spun the Artcane before it, and while I enjoy that one, it doesn't state "its own" in anywhere near the manner or extent of the Plat. This really -is- up there with Potemkine, Eskaton, Vortex or Dün, or in certain passages almost taking on the wild originality of someone like Etron Fou or Marcoeur.

Though merely almost.

I'm with you. I like the Artcane too, but Plat Du Jour seem to have more of their own voice, while still fitting seamlessly with the bands you mention. I spun this a couple of months ago after playing it a lot back in December/January, and I was also very pleasantly surprised how it has held up. Got it out for a fresh spin, probably tonight. Really is a unique and interesting album with a lot of influences, but also a strong sense of originality.

Bill

[Mascodagama]

^Try the drum solo on that Elias Hulk album. It's so incompetent that it's actually innovative. You know, like The Shaggs.

I'm not sure I can sit through the whole Elias Hulk just to find the drum solo. Once on Youtube was really enough...

[Scrotum Scissor]

What's truly amazing - historically as well as musically - about records like this one and that Mosaïc (or Etron Fou and Camizole, for that matter), is that it displays how the cultural underground aesthetic of post-68 was very much at play even a decade + later. It goes a long way in explaining how the French punk movement never turned their teeth against the "prog rock (and extension)" phenomenon as they did in Britain at the time (This Heat, Roxy, Bowie exempted) ; the French art-rock community of the 60s/70s was still essentially avant-garde and vitally rebellious. Some of it is surprisingly aggressive and radical in tone too.

I'd say this is the main reason why there's such a vibrant avant-garde progressive scene alive in France even today, with Chromb!, PoiL, Jack Dupon, Aquaserge, Camembert, Sebkha-Chott and the lot. There was never a cultural incentive to -not- be "progressive" in French rock music.

[Mascodagama]

I'd say this is the main reason why there's such a vibrant avant-garde progressive scene alive in France even today, with Chromb!, PoiL, Jack Dupon, Aquaserge, Camembert, Sebkha-Chott and the lot. There was never a cultural incentive to -not- be "progressive" in French rock music.

A very interesting thought which had not occurred to me.

I guess one can also say that in France there is a more fertile connection between the avant-garde and the popular in the cultural sphere generally - cinema and literature as well as music - than is the case in the benighted Anglo-Saxon world. And (it seems to me) less of a preoccupation with drawing artificial boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture.

[Zappathustra]

What's truly amazing - historically as well as musically - about records like this one and that Mosaïc (or Etron Fou and Camizole, for that matter), is that it displays how the cultural underground aesthetic of post-68 was very much at play even a decade + later. It goes a long way in explaining how the French punk movement never turned their teeth against the "prog rock (and extension)" phenomenon as they did in Britain at the time (This Heat, Roxy, Bowie exempted) ; the French art-rock community of the 60s/70s was still essentially avant-garde and vitally rebellious. Some of it is surprisingly aggressive and radical in tone too.

I'd say this is the main reason why there's such a vibrant avant-garde progressive scene alive in France even today, with Chromb!, PoiL, Jack Dupon, Aquaserge, Camembert, Sebkha-Chott and the lot. There was never a cultural incentive to -not- be "progressive" in French rock music.

So true, all of it. There was never a schism in French rock music between the sublime and the earthly, the serious and the mundane, and therefore there was a unity that was never shattered. So in the 80's there was no gap to be bridged, and business continued as usual, with just a few insignificant adjustments.

I've been on a huge French binge the last couple of months of so, and I can say with confidence that this is my favourite place for progressive music of all sorts.