JACQUES BERROCAL / Paralleles (Experimental)

d'avantage / France / 1977

VG++ / M- 150 €

Critic

ULTRA LIMITED ARTIST RECORD ON HIGHLY COLLECTIBLE D'AVANTAGE RECORDS 001
Jacques Berrocal has been very active since the beginning of the 1970s. No one in France could mix jazz, improvisation, rock'n'roll, punk, no wave, spoken words and industrial music like him. He also had a central position in the creation of d'Avantage, a collective record label that issued some of the most particular sessions of the mid-late Seventies. At the same time he was working on never ending sessions for records that were never issued. Jac and his band were the Apostles of the non-urgency, enjoying recording in unusual situations, with no rules, improvising on undefined structures or using non-musical material mixed with ethnic instrumental solos. In 1976 d'Avantage issued a wonderful record LP titled "Parallèles" featuring, among the others, Bernard Vitet, Roger Ferlet, Pierre Bastien, Michel Potage, Daniel Deshays, with the intervention of Vince Taylor, the dark diamond of rock'n'roll who inspired David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust. Just a couple of years later Berrocal collaborated with Steven Stapleton to create the first Nurse with Would record LP. "Parallèles" features very different styles; acoustic solo and duo for trombone and cornet as well as a large ensemble 25 minutes long piece dedicated to the Futurist Russolo (again, two years later, Mr.Stapleton dedicated his first NWW record to the same Italian artist). Also to mention are "Post-Card", recorded in a Pigsty in 1976, and the legendary "Rock'n'roll Station", a mini-concert for voice (Vince Taylor), double bass (Roger Ferlet) and bicycle (Jac Berrocal). The doormat reads 'everything is possible' - you are at the original 'second pirate session of a strange wax': "Rock'n Roll Station" - Nurse With Wound covered this tune to great effect, naming an entire marvelous album afterwards in nepotistic frenzy alluding to the steady dour retelling in repetition of Vincent Canby accompanied by steady 3-notes-bass thrung-thum-blugneah wheel spinning crank clickety-clack interference bells, whine on rubber, words slightly morphing elongated syllable perplex. 'Jacques bicycle is music to my ears, do you remember?'. Final wheel screech click-tap matched for tring-a-ling fades to coughing, and frog, lighter, poured water, laughter, muted bike vamp, utensil plated tangle stop. "Bric-a-brac" is over 25 minutes and takes the entirety of side two into submission. This is opus direction, outré style. Dining with pleasure, listening to all the sounds around wooing for flickered dispersion. Mounted violin parapet intermittently stroking a straddle, evolving rubato in anomalous supportive crumble. All in chip fin and disquieting escapes the face making master powerful, juiced avant-pounce by the ounce, poured in a splash at a time. Incorporating footfalls, plate wobble, pot lid organic percussion, string struck precision childlike mercurial atonal pluck, megaphone grunts, metal sheet wobbler, requisite pterodactyl shrills from elephantine monster spills of sonic departure ticket-stamped voucher felling the glacier hearts for the 'out-there' that is easy to feel 'in-here'. Cover have small RW and SOC.