JEAN MARC FOUSSAT-ABATTAGE, LP, 1983, FRANCE

Popcorn bursts of pointillist plucks and gristly electroacoustic splatter set the stage on this first solo outing by this somewhat obscure French electronic musician, guitarist and improvisor. His recording career would pick up again decades later, with recent outings for both Leo and Ayler records alongside the likes of Noel Akchote and Roger Turner, but this would be his sole document under his own banner for some 18 years, Foussat having been principally engaged as an engineer during this time for a broad swath of Europe's free improv culture and it's evident in his own music's prickly keen attention to detail and sharp attack.

With its initial salvo of air raid sirens, coughing and tap dancing you know you're in for something edgy and peculiar with this one. And indeed, it's not long before the aforementioned plucks rush to the fore and then coagulate into dense Agencement-like thickets before being sent tumbling down the nearest stairwell. Foussat generates a lot of compelling tension here between slurries of free music gabbiness and concise electroacoustic vivisections  while still somehow finding room for ruminative piano doodling, Eraserhead ambience and Barbara Streisand's bellowing pipes across the A side, while the flip finds him initially ferreting away at his guitar to substantially more musical ends, but alas, it's a honeytrap, as Foussat whips it all up into a frothy Futurist lather of buzzing bandsaws and stuttering power drills.

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