Saturday, March 7, 2009

FERDINAND-EN AVANT, LP, 1984, FRANCE






This second solo outing from Etron Fou Leloublan's Ferdinand Richard finds him fashioning eight stunning assemblages of elegantly enfolded R.I.O. audio origami as a compliment to texts in eight different languages. Richard's nimble bass bobs and parries alongside his sparring partners here (V-Effect/Fish & Roses' Rick Brown, Virgule 4's Christiane Cohade and Skeleton Crew's Tom Cora); his trademarked asymmetrical grooves and thrumming woody tone tempered here by a more spare and delicately hued approach that he'd continue to elaborate on latterly via his Bruniferd and Fred and Ferd projects. Masterful.

Get it via Rapidshare here

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This looks great, thanks!

Anonymous said...

This is Ferdinand's second solo recording, as En Forme, which featured his fellow EFL members, came out in '80 or '81. I have this on both vinyl and CD, but I'll be downloading it to compare the quality. Since the master tapes are lost, the CD was mastered from rather noisy vinyl, and I'm curious to compare its sound with this one.

I think this recording is most closely linked to the later album Arminius, which featured Ferdinand and Vladimir Vaclavek on basses and Takumi Fukushima and Helmut Bieler-Wendt on violins, and was based around texts concerning the Roman defeat in what's now Germany in 9 AD.

gidouille

Anonymous said...

Many thankx for this. Another ultra rare for our collection. Really superb.

Anonymous said...

most closely linked to the later album 'Arminius'? no no, I don't think so... by the time 'Arminius' saw the light - and it took that ill-fated collective project forever - Ferdinand had lost much of his creative powers, I'm sorry... better look for Bruniferd instead, or Dropera...

Anonymous said...

I beg to differ on the idea of Ferdinand losing his creative powers. Arminius is a STUNNINGLY great recording.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this - another minor RIO classic rescued from obscurity!