André Demay - Generic (1980)

I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome our new amazing contributor and collector pollux (with perhaps myself le castor--?). In honour of him, I will post a few extremely rare gallic goodies, including some so rare, they don't even exist! for the propagation of le patrimoine francais. I'm sure I'm not alone in having a deep and profound love for the progressive of France, with its crystalline, melancholy, highly emotional, sometimes brilliantly pure and perfect, classical and often rigorously composed music. Whether it's folk, jazz-rock, classical, RIO, symphonic or genesis-style, any style, the French will provide examples of mastery of the subgenre.

I love how pollux is highly in tune with the covers of these albums. I often feel I'm the only one who truly cares about this (lost) art, which is sometimes breathtaking, witness the recent Galorn cover. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who has framed favourite covers for my basement walls (Art Bears' Hopes and Fears, Jan Hammer's Like Children, etc.), right Tom? Pollux really puts me to shame with his efforts that have gone into cover scanning, where I wimp out with a smartphone. It's clear that in the CD era, with the size difference alone, not as much care is put into cover art by musicians. Holding a record and gazing lovingly at the cover whilst listening to the vinyl is truly a lost experience for most.

Some comments were made earlier about the fantastic team we have going here (thank you for the positive remarks) and I think we will all be spoiled rotten in the next little while with master shige, the indomitable pollux, mighty osurec, our very own beautiful princess of prog Isabel, and myself, all of us coming up with rarities right left and centre. Although Isabel has been MIA recently I sure hope it's not due to some negative comments in a recent post, which, as I can testify, can be a little bit off-putting. It surprises me when people feel they have to complain about a record they never bought: what you could do is right-click on the folder and then press delete, it's really that simple. Of course perhaps you wasted 5 - 30 minutes downloading it, and for that, I sincerely apologize on behalf of all of us for your wasted time.

To me this record is quite a find, a genuine rarity, not expensive, and with a load of progressive elements, with a very high dynamic that is sustained throughout. Notice the high quality of the musicians too (incl. credits below).

In terms of music, think Patrick Moraz' Story of I as interpreted by Heldon and Jannick Top and I think you can get a rough idea, a mix of electronic and jazz fusion with excellent synthesis or heterosis (hybrid vigour) as the biologists would say, including great guitar effects and some really throbbing (erect?) bass (as the cliche goes). The song "Private Entrance" in particular really sounds like a Jannick Top late-fusion song, full of odd vocal effects, great jumping bass figures. Or perhaps imagine if Michel Moulinie's masterpiece Chrysalide was played twice as fast and twice as deep with a ton of heavy drums due to several complaints about its wimpy nature, or maybe if some drunk and crazy deejay wanted to use it for house techno trance electro-jungle music or whatever it's called, tritones and dissonances and all, horrifying the partiers with progressive music their small and simplistic ears could never handle... Or perhaps think Stravinsky as played by a US-made flamethrower educated at Juilliard with some extra lessons from jazz great Herbie Hancock (in his fusion period) who however is the reincarnated electric guitar maker Les Paul after he was killed in a bizarre industrial accident involving an electric kazoo and a robotic amplifier made at MIT by the artificial intelligence lab headed by Walt Disney's head in suspended animation, recently revitalized by area 51's extraterrestrial metabolism lab... I think you get the point.

Tracklist
A1 Generic Cycle 5:50
A2 Nervous Structure 4:50
A3 Musical Syntax 4:20
A4 Sybarite Island 4:50
B1 Private Entrance 5:15
B2 Telepathically Yours 4:30
B3 Razzia Man 4:35
B4 Automatic Stop 5:00

Credits
Guitars - Andre Demay
Bass – Jannick Top
Drums – Joe Hammer
Guitar – André Demay
Other [Artwork] – Razzia
Percussion – Fred Desplan
Producer – André Demay, Paul Scemama
Synthesizer – Celmar Engel

Song Samples and links up soon -- or rather, maybe never, given the trouble with uploads these days.
Please enjoy this wonderful 'lost' record.
Absent from the credits (and record) are compositional information, but I think it's safe to say Demay wrote everything, since all songs feature strong guitar leads. Although the titles sound like a kind of electronic library record, in fact there is a huge variety to the music. I was praying it would not turn out to be droney boring electro music, and looks like my prayers were answered.

1


5