Tag: electro

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Underground – good news for 2023!

Underground – good news for 2023!

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New albums are in preparation. Unreleased, nothing but unreleased material! Underground music, for sure: we took some out of the safe, we created and produced others at the Audiorama studio. And to celebrate this and also the end of this year 2022, we offer you 20% on any purchase of our records! Indeed, the year 2023 is off to a good start at Audiorama: 2 albums planned for the 1st quarter, just that!

Danger – Combo Combo

We unearth unreleased material from the second half of the seventies. Corbo Combo and Danger are 2 underground bands from Strasbourg which foreshadowed Alesia Cosmos in many respects. Totally improvised, radical music perpetrated by activist musicians from the Strasbourg underground, some of whom are future members of Alesia Cosmos.

You will listen to 2 unreleased concerts in Mulhouse and Strasbourg at the end of the 1970s. With Michel Froehly (bass and guitar), Dominique Gasser (sax), Bruno de Chénerilles (guitar, drums) and Marie-Berthe Servier (vocals).

This double CD album will be released on the Polish industrial/noise/experimental label Impulsy Stetoskopu.

Alien Disko

A parallel project to Alesia Cosmos, which brings together two of its members. Bruno de Chénerilles (guitar, moog, live electronics) and Pierre Zeidler (clarinets, sax) recorded and mixed in October and November 2022 at the Audiorama studio.

And there, you will listen to a series of radical improvisations in duet, an elaborate mix at the borders of free, noise, electro, jazz… with acoustic, electric instruments and electronic treatments.

The CD album will be released on the Audiorama label in the spring of 2023.

Your 20% discount!

In the meantime, on the occasion of this end of the year 2022, take advantage of a 20% discount on all the records of the online store, by entering the promo code CHRISTMAS directly in your basket before paying for your order.

Go to The Record Shop
Agitation Frite – vol 3

Agitation Frite – vol 3

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Agitation Frite is a striking panorama of the French musical underground. In this last of the three volumes, Philippe Robert documents the practices of this musical network. This book of 410 pages contains 26 interviews, including those of François Tusques, Joëlle Léandre, Delphine Dora, Jean-Baptiste Favory, André Jaume, Gérard Siracusa, Daniel Deshays, Philippe Carles, Theo Jarrier, Jacques Debout, Bruno de Chénerilles ….

And do not miss the pages where Alesia Cosmos is mentioned. A long interview with Bruno de Chénerilles p.74 to 80 and the first LP Exclusivo !, ranked by Jacques Debout among the 12 unavoidable recordings p.85

 

Agitation Frite vol 3 par Philippe Robert

In addition, it also contains more than 600 recommended record chronicles. From psychedelic rock to free jazz, from sound poetry to electroacoustic, from acid rock to Rock In Opposition, from library music to “experimental song”, from anti-yéyés to outsiders, from punk rock to rock indus, field recordings to free improvisation, hardcore to post-rock, noise to black metal …

Well known in the industry, Philippe Robert is the host of the blog Merzbo-Derek, a contributor to Revue & Corrigée and a former Jazz Magazine contributor, Les Inrockuptibles, Octopus, Mouvement. In addition, He has dedicated several books to creative music. Among which : Musiques expérimentales, Post-Punk, No Wave, Indus & Noise, Agitation Frite 1 et 2 and with Guillaume Belhomme, Free Fight This Is (Our) New Thing.

PHILIPPE ROBERT – AGITATION FRITE 3. TÉMOIGNAGES ET CHRONIQUES DE L’UNDERGROUND FRANÇAIS – Ed.LENKA LENTE – Book in French language – 410 pages – OCTOBER 2018

This 3rd volume of the essential tryptic Agitation Frite is available on the website of the French publisher Lenka Lente or on Amazon. The first 2 volumes, too.

Spring 1983: first album by Alesia Cosmos

Spring 1983: first album by Alesia Cosmos

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Following the story…

This fruitful period of musical experimentation of all kinds – see post: Premises -1977-1982 – ended with the launch of the first album of Alésia Cosmos.
End of 82 Pascal Holtzer and I Bruno de Chenerilles composed and prepared sketches in their respective home studios.

NB: the term did not yet exist, only a few electroacoustic composers and some sound tweakers ventured to analog mixing and recording equipment. Some Revox stereo recorders, a mixer, a few microphones, speakers and then analog synths, the first rhythm boxes, some effects – reverb, delay, fuzz, our electric guitars. It took us a few years to acquire these expensive machines.
At this time there was no computer software and the first affordable multi-track recorders appeared a little later. But with this equipment we could compose and rehearse. We found traces of some of these sketches recorded during the phases of preparation before recording this first album Exclusivo!

 

Beginning 83, we also founded a non-profit structure  to carry the first album’s project. Planetarium was founded in March 1983 at the very moment when we formed the group.

In addition to Pascal and myself, we invited Marie-Berthe Servier, who was involved in Corbo Combo in the previous decade, as well as an excellent Tunisian percussionist Lotfi Ben Ayed burning to mix his darbukas, bendir and bagpipes with our drum machines. A fifth strange character also joined in: Pierre Clavreux, a fake wacky breton ex-barde, who returned from Japan where he had hit the big drums of the group Kodō in Sado island.

In February or March, we were ready for recording the album at Studio Weekend in Gambsheim North of Strasbourg. A brand new small studio with a TEAC 8-track recorder, a professional mixing console, a few good microphones and a few analog effects. The studio was owned by Guy Mas and Jean-François Issemann. They  ensured all takes for a good week, which is very short for an entire album.

The project had matured for several years. The album was very well prepared. The members of the group were inspired and this very minimalist music was based on a mix between electro, rock, traditional music, composition and free improvisation. Each brought his particular feeling and the sauce had taken immediately on previous rehearsals.

We had decided to entrust the mix to another person in order to have an outside view of our music. We had met Michel Risse, ex-drummer of the french group Herbe Rouge and also electroacoustic composer. He was then beginning with his to become famous company Decor Sonore. Michel was involved in Sous-Paradis and he was in charge of producing the album in which all members of Alésia Cosmos contributed individually.

Appointment was made with Michel to mix the album at the Anagram studio in Paris. Pascal and I borrowed an old car to Jack Nietzsche (ex-bassist of Alesia Cosmos furi show duo). I remember an old Citroën Ami 8 which the engine went to smoke on East Highway in a downhill slope to Verdun.
Our tapes under our arms, Pascal and myself we joined Anagram studio by train, then by metro and stayed all night to mix the album with Michel Risse.

The launch of the album took place in mid-April with the first 3 concerts at L’Ange d’Or theatre-café our favorite venue in Strasbourg, France.

Concerts

Press extracts

Reissue

Exclusivo! will be reissued on vinyl in September 2017 !
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