France's near-revolution of May '68 kicked the country's small but vibrant counter-culture into overdrive and birthed a local underground music scene. The bands it spawned made music with far less rock purity than groups from the UK and US - their influences foregrounded improvisation, disjunction and genre-blending: Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, free jazz and radical politics. The introduction of the synthesiser in the early 1970s added fuel to the fire. This six-track compilation inaugurates a series to accompany Ian Thompson's Synths, Sax & Situationists - the first English-language book to investigate this extraordinary and still largely unknown movement. It focuses on the second wave of bands that emerged in 1972/3, when radicalised psychedelic and jazz influences merged with the future-music possibilities offered by new technology. A much-needed document. Essential listening.
The compilation, soundtrack to the book of the same title features acts such as Nyl, Etron Fou Leloublan, Lard Free, Heldon, Jacques Berrocal / Dominique Coster / Roger Ferlet and Delired Cameleon Family.
