hallucinante...

once in a rare while, a record will actually live up to the promise of an incredible cover; and this strange little 7" from 1958, contains sounds that are certainly as wonderful as the little painting by jouineau bourduge that adorns its sleeve. the vinyl features the voice of jacques doyen, reading poems by cocteau, poe, villon, and lorca... but the special thing is that the tracks also feature the percussive and resonant sounds of jacques lasry and the lasry-baschet instruments.

each track has a relatively different approach to soundscape and instrumentation. my favorite is the haunting sounds that accompany a reading of lorca's erotic poem"la femme infidele", written in 1937. the melodies resemble a bowed steel drum, somewhat relentless as well as feeling, at times, like little glowing fireflies. the treatment of cocteau's early poem "batterie" is much more percussive, aggressive, and almost carnival like. its 4 minutes of rhythmic tension is slightly trance inducing (particularly if one doesn't speak french). the thing that is so nice about these tracks is that the music is the underbelly so it has little narrative trajectory and remains more of an atmosphere, i only wish there were wordless dub versions on the other side, because i'd love to hear this stuff without doyen's voice...

jacques lasry and the lasry baschet instruments were used on a slew of records; but all i could find on jacques doyen was that he worked on an LP of spoken word experimental music with jac berrocal in the mid 1980's.

click here to listen to "la femme infidele".

click here to listen to "batterie".