Skip to product information
1 of 3

[CP 313 CD] Camille Sauvage; Musique Concrete and Electronique, Fantasmagories, Delirium Tremens, 7 Drums Concerto +

Alpha State NYC

Regular price $16.00 USD
Regular price Sale price $16.00 USD
Tax included. Shipping calculated at checkout.

June 2025 release; long in the works (apologies Larry!) double-disc set covering three impeccable Library LPs issued between 1974 & 1976 on Montparnasse & Mondiophone by the storied French bandleader & Composer Camille Sauvage, presaged w/ bonus materials as issued by Music De Wolfe (on 78RPM 10" & LP) in 1961 & 1973, respectively.

Credited to Celebrity Symphony Orchestra, the original 1961 "Musique Concrete And Electronique" issue covers four short pieces for Ondes Martenot (Sauvage was an early proponent of the instrument) & ensemble, acting a more abstract & impressionistic (the writing takes many pages from the Debussy/Ravel playbook) foil to Jean-Jacques Perrey's contemporanous "Mr. Ondioline" outings. The first disc continues with "Fantasmagories" (#MP 33, 1974; although heard here in its, to my ears, slightly better, later pressing on Zéro International Records) & it's here that things get really interesting; a general sense of malaise creeps in (surely this is where J.P. Massiera / Horrific Child cribbed many ideas) spurred on by pointillist concert percussion and pitchless electronics that lands somewhere between the electronically-tinged free improv of Morris Pert & the more outré end of the Italian "Giallo" film-score miasma (Morricone / Il Gruppo for sure). At the tail-end of the disc, we get the (same) two "Musique Concrete And Electronique" pieces (slightly reconfigured) as issued on the "Creeps" comp (#DW/LP 3269, 1973) followed by the two short Ivor Slaney pieces (for completion's sake) from #DW 2687.*

The second disc kicks off w/ 1975's "Delirium Tremens" (#MON 28; subtitled "Angoisse Et Mystère, or "Anguish & Mystery") & it's here that the production (by the imprint's Louis Delacour, and featuring Georges "Nino Nardini" Teperino & Roger Roger throughout) ramps things up considerably, with a fairly consistent layer of keening synths & "Effets Spéciaux" dotting the largely improvised "Nightmare-Space-Jazz" constructs. Finally, "7 Drums Concerto" (#MON 34, 1976) is Sauvage's masterpiece, fusing Free Jazz & Freely Improvised playing with (again) Teperino & Roger's Electronic touches in increasingly more transgressive & experimental combinations, yielding some of the best music from the whole French Library milieu.

Comes as two discs in side a six-panel booklet, w/ the familiar "Diagonal-Lane" layout & panels dedicated to the tracklistings of "Delerium" & "7 Drums"; incredible music!