Thursday, April 12, 2018

Mouvements- Mouvements (Mental Experience MENT021CD)


This is the first ever rerelease of a very strange and bizzare album from Switzerland. It was originally released in boxsets and sold in art galleries in 1973. Only 150 were pressed. This material was recorded by a group of jazz and avant garde musicians in 1972 including Christian Oestreicher, Jean-François Boillat, Blaise Catalá and Jerry Chardonnens. The original album features 8 tracks and starts with a piano and ocean sound piece that is very slow track. Goutte de sang en Feu is another weird one with the band having a bit of a rock and roll surf jam with a barking rooster in the background and some saxophone and violin. Hard Rock Ouverture has some dripping water, as the drums slowly get louder and the band noodles away in the background. The intensity builds but in a weird jazzy way and not at all hard rock.  Strange title for this mostly exploring jazz rock track. Ailleurs is a short dual guitar piece that you feel like will go into a cool jam but ends at under 2mins. 7 Contre 4 features some more guitar exploration and starts slowly. Le Voyage Spreper starts with some crowd at a gallery or something and a more jazzy funky piece starts to evolve. Nebel/Leben is a longer almost 7 min piece with some interesting interactions with the keyboards and guitar. I like the mood on this one with some really avant exploration.  Mémoire Pulvéisée ends the normal record with a weird art collage of different sounds and instruments. As for the bonus tracks, The Playwriter’s Drift is a 7 min jam focusing on the sax and a uptempo rhythm. Roots Eater (take 1) is slightly funky track that you can hear they were trying to work out some ideas. My guitar is driving me Mad is 17mins of musical exploration not as interesting as I had hoped. I love you Sugar Beef is a very short piece of violin solo take from a jam. The bonus trackson the CD end with another longer version of Hard Rock Ouverture.


The CD version includes 5 previously unreleased tracks from the recording sessions including the 17min jam called My guitar is driving me Mad! The digital download code gets you and additional 4 more tracks. Over 70mins of music!


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