ALL LINKS FOR CAUVIN, COXHILL AND NUTS & CO NOW CORRECTED

MUSIQUE NOISE-FULMINES REGULARIS, LP, 1988, FRANCE

Like Pseu, Uppsala and Eskaton, Musique Noise were part of a later wave of French Zeuhl outfits with no formal connection to the Magma mothership. Though more overtly avant garde-ish manifestations of the Zeuhl spirit like like Art Zoyd and Shub Niggurath would continue to carry the torch for this stylistic trope through the later half of the 80's, this 1988 debut of Musique Noise's arrived at a time well past any presumed sell-by date for the sort of overtly Magma-derived choral avant fusion gestures found here. And yet, aside from some dubiously dainty digital key voicings, there's no denying that a lot of what's going down here simply smokes. 

As was the case with Eskaton before them, a lot of the action on the front line on these tracks is dominated by insistently intoned choral female vocals stitched into and cross-hatching rhythmic tattoos, though unlike the majority of bands that arrived in Magma's wake and took their pointers from the more feverishly martial dimensions of their musical template, Musique Noise, while fully capable of fusion fireworks, spend as much time extending their line of inquiry out from the most mellifluous and dreamy bits of their Magma muse. Surely, they're the only exponent of this style I've heard thats seen fit to use Magma's much derided 80's release "Merci" as a template for some of their tunes; no mark against 'em in my book as I'm perfectly happy to ride that particular train right off into its sappiest sunset, but it's doubtless to be a deal-breaker for some. Their loss. 

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION-TILT?, 10", 2001, USA

Carrying on with shares from our own back catalog, this 10" was our contribution to the Lactamase series of 10" vinyls on Beta-Lactam Ring and captures the same extended line-up of VDO heard on some of our more overtly kosmiche-directed efforts of the time like Zyzzybaloubah and Quicksand, with Doug Ferguson (Yeti/Ohm), David Fargason (Liquid Sound Company), Jim Edgerton (Burnin' Rain, Fish Eye Lens) and saxophonist Scott Lindsay all present for these sessions.

There's a particular patina to these recordings, a darkly queered and melancholic atmosphere specific to only this recording of ours. The PR for this release at the time it came out was name-checking Bowie/Eno instrumentals, Goblin and Van Der Graaf Generator and that still seems apt enough on some level, though it's all been filter-fucked and structurally skewed as per VDO's usual peccadillos.

Get it Here 

NUTS & CO-KANGOUROU, LP, 1982, FRANCE

Another lost gem from France's absurdly verdant overgrowth of freak fringe groups circa the early 80's, Nuts & Co.'s minimal synth meets clonk and bonk Residential formulations seem custom made for Mutant. Within their skewed key/bass/drum machine attack are echoes of other early 80's French operatives of the time like Achwgha Ney Wodei and Lucas Trouble, though Nuts & Co.'s cheerfully maddening approach shares an even greater simpatico with Germany's Originalton, Belgium's Bene Gesserit and Denmark's Ivor Axeglovitch.

LOL COXHILL, PIERRE COURBOIS, JASPER VAN'T HOF-TOVERBAL SWEET, LP, 1972, UK / NETHERLANDS

The second of innumerable albums released by soprano sax master Lol Coxhill during his lifetime (he sadly passed away earlier this year), Toverbal Sweet arrived on the heels of Coxhill's tenure in two key Canterbury concerns, Delivery and Kevin Ayers And The Whole World. This trio outing finds him paired with one half of Nurse With Wound-listers Association PC in the form of keyboardist Jasper Van't Hof (also of Pork Pie and Electric Circus) and drummer Pierre Courbois, who'd previously been mixing it up with Gunter Hampel, Manfred Schoof and Alexander Von Schlippenbach in Hampel's Heartplants group. The live recording quality here is a mite rough (in keeping with Coxhill's warts and all DIY approach heard on his debut solo Ear Of The Beholder), but the glow generated by this inspired trifecta quickly renders such concerns moot, with the arc, swoop and drunken list of Lol's delicately shaded soprano statements snaking through and spiraling out from the wily and invigoratingly raw thrust and parry generated by Van't Hof's insistent vamping and Courbois' Robert Wyatt-like rhythmic attack.

PHILIPPE CAUVIN-MEMENTO, LP, 1984, FRANCE

This is the dazzling second solo album from the lips, lungs and string slinging fingers behind 80's French Zeuhl masters Uppsala, who've had both their albums shared previously on Mutant and also got name-checked in another of today's French shares. Left to his own devices, Cauvin generates strangely shaded and emotionally wrenching vignettes that braid idiosyncratic avant folk runs reminiscent of Quebec's Conventum against ravishing and quizzical falsetto vocal embellishments and musical interventions that suggest the direction taken on King Crimson and Peter Hammill outings from the same period.

NEW POSTS UP BY THE END OF FRIDAY NIGHT

DOING MY VERY BEST WITH THE RAPIDSHARE SITUATION

But, alas it's still an uphill battle. I've been diligently at work shifting files onto new accounts, but I know a lot of you are still running into the dread new "file owner's public traffic exhausted" message, and this with three accounts currently housing files. There's been an even greater stress on Mutant's files, as both the interview on the Awl and the Red Bull playlist drew a lot of new people to the blog. In light of this, I'm just remaining in full-on blog repair mode for the next "x" number of days instead of getting new posts up. Those will come in about 4-7 days, but my main focus at this point has to be rescuing Mutant from running up against these download walls I keep getting messages about people encountering. Please be patient and bear with me as this crap gets tended to...