While he was still just a young adolescent who had perfected his drum technique under the benevolent wing of Kenny Clarke, the Club Saint-Germain liked to present Jacques Thollot as a prodigy capable of holding his own with the famous jazz musicians who came through Paris. It was there that Eric Dolphy immediately noticed him, and from René Thomas to Walt Dickerson, everyone wanted to work with him. However, it was during the 1960s, first with Jef Gilson then François Tusques, Barney Wilen, Joachim Kühn and Steve Lacy, that the decisive encounters occurred. Without forgetting that he joined, in 1968, one of Don Cherry’s groups, went on tour with them and came back transformed. That being said, to present Jacques Thollot as an in-demand virtuoso who could adapt to any circumstances would be to ignore both his demanding compositions and his complete freedom from stylistic boundaries. To prove the point, and although he had already featured on some cult albums (Our Meanings And Our Feelings by Michel Portal, Monkey-Pockie-Boo by Sonny Sharrock), the first album under his own name, recorded in 1971 for producer Gérard Terronès, who gave him free rein, would turn out to be an unexpected, unclassifiable and astounding work. Entitled Quand le son devient aigu, jeter la girafe à la mer, (when the sound gets high-pitched, throw the giraffe into the sea) it is an extraordinary sonic collage, created from discrete re-recordings and using just a handful of instruments including drums and piano. The result is a miracle, though the economy of means the production technique succeeds in putting the spotlight on the oddly elaborate compositions under an enigmatic but well-chosen title, borrowed from poet Henri Michaux. It puts into words the mysteries of a fragile melancholic universe which can be compared to another album by an iconoclastic drummer: The End Of An Ear by Robert Wyatt. The difference being the highly personal elements which shine through the French musician’s album, clearly drawn from listening intently to classics from Debussy, Ravel and Barraqué (whom he knew), a seam which he would continue to mine on his equally excellent following albums Watch Devil Go and Cinq Hops. Yes, it is true that Jacques Thollot recorded rarely under his own name (five albums during his lifetime), but what marvellous albums they are!

Jacques Thollot - Quand le son devient aigu, jeter la girafe à la mer

A1   Blues pour Miguel Enriquez.mp3

A2   Piano Dazibao.mp3

A3   Abrisme Galanica.mp3

A4   Olendja.mp3

B1   L'Heure est à la Lutte.mp3

B2   Mazir-Mare Jo Cantar No Sabia.mp3

Quand le son devient aigu, jeter la girafe a` la mer.

Qu'ils se fassent un village, ou bien c'est nous qui s'en allons

Mahogany Extraits

Enlevez les boulons, le croiseur se désagre`ge

Position stagnante de réaction stationnaire

Cécile

After their first album which came out in 1971 on Futura Records, Perception wanted to rapidly record a second, but Gérard Terronès did not want to produce another, especially so soon after the first. Therefore, the only solution was to produce it themselves. It is thus completely logical that it came out on the label of the Association for the Development of Improvised Music (A.D.M.I.) created by Didier Levallet with the aim of promoting creative music ( and, on this subject, it was this same label which also produced the excellent Inter Fréquences by the Free Jazz Workshop).  As the album was entirely created from A to Z by Perception, they decided on a more ambitious project, exploring a wider palette of colours by augmenting the original quartet with additional instruments. So, it was with numerous guests including Teddy Lasry, Jean-Charles Capon, Kent Carter and Jean-François Jenny-Clark, that Perception developed still further the apparently contradictory directions which were their specificity. This is further highlighted by the fact that Siegfried Kessler, largely absent on this recording, is temporarily replaced by Manuel Villaroel, a pianist from Chile with a completely different temperament (and, by-the-by, already the name behind the superb Terremoto with the Matchi-oul Septet).  Contrary to the first album, which seems in comparison much more compact and united this second (and second-to last, not counting the live recordings), with the many different options proposed, would seem to predict the different directions that musicians from Perception would subsequently take. One track, by Yochk'O Seffer, who had already been part of Magma two years previously, looks forward to the more structured Neffesh Music, whilst, in the opposite direction, another track, by Didier Levallet, is more evocative of the future arrangements on Swing Strings System. It is, to sum up, a nice paradox that all these different elements, from tightly written pieces to wild improvisation, work so well together and are one the key attributes of a group free like few others.

Colima

To finally become oneself: that was the lesson, in the 1960-1970s, that European musicians attracted to improvisation had learned from American free-jazz. Following this idea, the musicians of Perception, whilst individually accompanying Mal Waldron, Slide Hampton, Johnny Griffin or Hank Mobley when they played in Paris, decided early on to break free from what was going on across the Atlantic and seek their own authenticity.  When Mestari, their third and final album, came out, Yochk'O Seffer, Siegfried Kessler, Didier Levallet and Jean-My Troung had four years of questing and originality behind them developing their own individual language. A language in which the spontaneity of the improvisations did not exclude influences taken from European folk or classical traditions.   Balanced, ethereal and structured, Mestari was a return to the original core quartet (the previous album included numerous guest musicians). It opens infinite perspectives and is totally in phase with what was being produced in France at the same time by Cohelmec Ensemble and the Dharma Quintet.

Mestari

Chott Djerid

Trabla Air

Cécile

souffle continu records

Recent comments

mascaria

nachdenken

beats yesterday I cooked with no sample

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