Clivage – “Regina Astris” {France} [1977] @192 kbps – French-Ethnic Space Prog

Nowadays, some people points David Byrne and Brian Eno's masterpiece “My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts” (1981) as the beginning of modern “world music” as we know it. Certainly this work is a truly landmark, but for me there’s no a unique beginning, as a matter of fact, in the 60’s and 70’s were also landmarks of the genre, some examples: Czukay And Dammers “Canaxis V” (shows Vietnamese women's voices, using an early idea of sample), Between-“And the Waters Opened” (they made a really middle orient fantastic sound specially in the track Uroboros), Aktuala -“Tapeto Volante”, Embryo-“Embryo's Reise”, Third Ear Band, etc…

Clivage -the band reviewed today- certainly deserves an honor place among the above-mentioned bands: “Instrumentally, the rhythm section is based on Armand Lemal's percussion and Patricio Villaruel's tablas, upon which Fertier (guitar and keys), Jean Pierre de Barba (sax), Claude Duhaut (bass), and Mahmoud Tabrizizadeh (violin) weave a spellbinding tapestry”. Works like “Regina Astris” should not remain among the “obscurities” of rock.

In this album features four long tracks:

“Moving Waves” begins with some familiar sound to the fans of Dead can Dance –a hammered dulcimer, I presume-, mixed with some analogue-synth atmosphere that will develop in wild percussion for a droney jazz improvisation.

The title track (track #2) begins with an echoing fiddle, which will be accompanied by an acoustic guitar, creating -with some synth sounds and tablas percussion- a mesmerizing meditative atmosphere that will develop into a chameleonic masterpiece; it produces to me the same feeling of Mauro Pagani’s first solo work.

The Third track “Mama Swat”, the most jazzy of all, it's a fantastic crescendo of improvisations that lies on a metronomic Indian tablas percussion, very exciting indeed!

And for lovers of space rock, Tabarkha, is epic: full of strings, oriental percussion & dark saxophones, kinda Van der Graaf’s David Jackson trapped in a Indian droney hell!

As Gnosis 2000 claims: Clivage is “a virtual delight transcending several genres that should appeal to fans of east-meets-west music”

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Clivage-"Moving Waves"