PASSING ALONG A SMALL MESSAGE FROM BLOG FOUNDER JIM MUTANTSOUNDS

I was just in touch with Mutant Sounds blog founder Jim for the first time in ages regarding the new Rapidshare changes and he's asked me to pass along word that there's a reason for his extended absence from Mutant, as he's undergone dramatic surgery and has been the recuperating at length from his ordeal this last year. Here's hoping this is all behind him now and that he'll be able to contribute to Mutant again at some point in the future, but until then, feel free to offer him a small shout out and wish him a speedy recovery in the comment field.

LINKS FOR HUGUES O., RAOUL DUGUAY, MARCUS AND NEO MUSEUM NOW FIXED

ANDRE JAUME & MICHEL REDOLFI-HARDSCORE, LP, 1980, FRANCE

Much more known for his aquatic electroacoustic environments including albums for that genre's landmark Ina/GRM imprint, it seems Michel Redolfi's association with the largely free music-focused imprint Hat Hut which issued his first album had the knock-on effect of bringing him together with both sax and clarinet improvisor Jaume (whose CV includes recordings with Joe Mcphee, Raymond Boni and Charlie Mariano) and the passel of improvisors more readily associated with the label during the early 80's, including guitarist Marc Montera and second keyboardist Jacques Diennet, who'd later join forces again for Diennet's 1987 Hat Hut-issued LP boxset Mante, though Hardscore itself wasn't actually issued on that label.

Jaume's compositions comprise side A, Redolfi's side B, though both appear throughout. The Jaume-penned outing on side A is splendid: a rambunctious and splutteringly digestive cartoonish sound clash akin to that deployed by the Un Drame Musical Instantane/GRRR crew that pits Jaume's bass clarinet and tenor sax against playfully gurgling atmospheres from Redolfi which are then cross-hatched and perforated by the fits and spits emitted from guitarist Jean-Marc Montera, second keyboardist Jacques Diennet and vocalist Frank Royon Le Mee. Redolfi's two B-side compositions are things of confounding beauty, stepping away from his understood identity far more than the surges of Michel Waisvisz-like free synth splatter that be brings to bear on Jaume behalf on the A Side. On Naissance Et Agonie De Ma Lampe De Chevet, Redolfi sticks to a background scrim of droning coloration while Frank Royon Le Mee and Jaume use clarinets, sax, delicate acoustic guitar and and vocals of bird-like delicacy and sensitivity  to evoke a ritualistic summoning on the spirits, while the title track teases a candy floss of atonal synthetic unguent around Jaume's moist emissions 'til they both explode in a polyphonically saturated and tonally ripe burst of synthetically smeared sax love.

HUGUES 0.-ANTILOPE 1, LP, 1979, FRANCE

Recorded two years after vocalist and lyricist Hugues O. (aka Hugues Ometaxalia's) extraordinary Lettre D'Ocre album together with Speed Limit keyboardist J. L. Bucchi and the year following Bucchi's own Sunflower LP (both previous shared by Jim on Mutant long ago) Antilope 1 reunites several of the crew from Sunflower including former Magma/Weidorje bass monster Bernard Paganotti and Bahamas guitarist Patrice Tison. There's lots of delicious tension on hand here between AOR and avant instincts and a will to play fast and loose with how both are combined that reminds a bit of Muck Groh's Muckfuck LP.

RAOUL DUGUAY-ALLLO TOULMOND, LP, 1975, CANADA

 

This first solo outing from the one-time leader of the outlandish and pioneering Nurse With Wound-listed Canuck psych/prog unit L'Infonie is a definite corker. Widely variable in approach, Alllo Toulmond spans the gap from plaintive and tremulously voiced acid folk to percolating Dionne-Bregent-like mallet percussion prog entanglements, with some of the dewily rhapsodic acid folk bits here distinctly smacking of the approach taken by his fellow Quebecers in Harmonium.  

NEO MUSEUM-VOLUME 1, LP, 1985, FRANCE

With several members of fringe avant prog maestros Hellebore, Szentendre and Mick Hobbs' archly nutty Officer! present in its lineup, it's obvious this one's gonna be something pretty jake. And indeed, on the terms it sets for itself, this sole outing of theirs (barring their appearance on the Douze Pour Un Vol. 2 compilation LP) is a definite smoker if more formally avant prog qua avant prog then those previously cited groups in their attack. At its finest moments, their blithely odd angle of approach here swans around similar terrain to that mapped by Chris Cutler and Lindsay Cooper's work with David Thomas on More Places Forever.  Mostly though, like their fellow French underground scene travelers at the time in Virgule 4 and Les I, Neo Museum operated under the substantial shadow cast by iconic R.I.O. avant prog mavens Etron Fou Leloublan and the angular irregularity of their all-knees-and-elbows art rock antics sits right at the surface of Neo Museum's work, though Neo Museum's approach is less delicately reflective and woodily thrumming then Virgule 4's and and less boisterously antic then Les I.

Get it via Rapidshare Here

MARCUS-FROM THE HOUSE OF TRAX, LP, 1978, USA

Plangently emotional and quaveringly theatrical private press psych/hard rock/space/folk amazement that's been one of the more relentlessly booted titles over the years. The tunes here filter righteously blasted west coast acid rock moves through enough phased and heat miraged sense-expansion to trigger memories of old Eastern Block space rock units like SBB and Tako. Absolutely singular and singularly essential.

NEW POSTS UP BY TUESDAY NIGHT

Sorry for the extra-long delay with new shares this time, but the last several weeks have been devoted almost exclusively to finishing up work on multiple Vas Deferens Organization projects that were left neglected during all the recent blog repair. These include a new VDO collaboration with Philip Sanderson of Storm Bugs, two new VDO albums that are now in post-production and our previously announced collaborations with Michael Alan, Audace and Ben Presto

Thanks for your patience. It will be rewarded with some particularly choice goodies this with this next round of posts.