Ghédalia Tazartès - Diasporas (1979)

As promised, here's Ghédalia Tazartès debut album, recorded in 1977 and released in '79, to complete my posting of his first four releases (see tag below for the others).  More will definitely come along in due course as I get hold of them, but for now, here's the record that introduced the world to a truly unique sound collage artist and vocalist.

Diasporas starts of with a 9-minute suite of shorter pieces, and was the perfect curtain-raiser for Tazartès' striking sound, with loop after loop of voice or instrument being introduced, sometimes dominating the stage or providing backing for Tazartès' own singing.  The shorter individual tracks that make up the rest of Diasporas continue on from there, with La Vie Et La Mort... showing off the range of his voice over some ritualistic percussion, and there's occasionally even a straightforward song -  Quasimodo Tango is a nicely odd collaboration with composer Michel Chion.

On the second half of the album, the vocal collages continue to go to fascinatingly weird places: the low drones of La Fin Du Prologue, the rhythmic craziness of Rien Qu'au Soleil, the sweetly melodic Mourir Un Peu with its loop of a child's voice... something for everyone.  Like all the Ghédalia Tazartès albums I've heard so far, every time you dive in there's something different to love.

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 P.S. time to spin that snowy day favourite of mine - this is currently the view from my front window:

For anyone who's ever read Ian Rankin's 'Let It Bleed', that lighted pathway in the distance is Coffin Lane aka Coffin Walk.

Ghédalia Tazartès - Tazartès (1987)

Ghedalia Tazartès' fourth album saw his unique sound becoming more streamlined and accessible - but only relative to the all-over-the-map insanity of his first three (see links below - just realised I still have haven't posted his debut, so will put that right soon).

This 1987 release could still hardly be called commercial, despite a modest update to the sound and more discrete, self-contained tracks. Tazartès' singing is still wonderfully weird, and the little idiosyncracies in the background continue to delight, like the funk rhythm loop that gradually fades in towards the end of opener Merci Stéphane.  The album's lyrics include settings of texts by French surrealists Stéphane Mallarmé and René Daumal, as well as words by Gustave Flaubert and even Jacques Cousteau - an esteemed bunch of French legends indeed, which I reckon is entirely appropriate for someone like Tazartès.

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Previously posted at SGTG: 
Tazartès' Transports
Une Éclipse Totale de Soleil

Ghédalia Tazartès - Une Éclipse Totale de Soleil (1984)

Third album by French sui generis oddball Ghédalia Tazartès.  Like its predecessor Transports, there's no track titles here - just two album sides of whatever Tazartès felt like pasting together into a mindbending journey into vocal and musical sound warping.  Éclipse Totale's original release confuses me a bit when trying to learn more about it - was it released in 1984 by Celluloid records as discogs says, or was it released in 1979 as the CD reissue and a couple of other websites seem to claim?  I'll take a guess that it was recorded in '79 and released later - any clarity welcome.

Perhaps it's just an apt record to be slightly bamboozled by before even listening to it.  As with all the Tazartès music I've heard, the best thing to do is just sit back and follow where he leads with all the jump-cut sections of each record fusing into something truly unique and memorable.  Éclipse Totale starts with a chugging and hissing mechanical rhythm, then a child singing, then Tazartès singing over bleeping and a female voice, and so on.  The second side also starts rhythmically, with a bit more bounce and musicality, before plunging into some dark, grinding electronics and unsettling screams, and just keeps getting weirder.  I live for albums like this.  Don't miss it.

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Ghédalia Tazartès - Tazartès' Transports (1980)

Second album from Parisian outsider legend Ghédalia Tazartès, whose beautifully strange music I was first introduced to via - you guessed it - the Nurse With Wound list.  Recorded in 1977, and first released in 1980 on clear vinyl with no track titles, Tazartès' Transports on CD is split into 15 tracks with... no track titles.  So, one to just dive headfirst into for sure.

That LP cover isn't the only thing that brings Faust to mind for me - listening to these tracks, with each sudden jump-cut going off at a totally new tangent, is quite a Faust Tapes-esque experience.  The opening moments of the album throw up a couple more German reference points - a pretty Roedelius-like piano incongruously paired with a harsh, Tietchens-ish rhythm - before Tazartès speed-shifted voice replaces the piano, and we're plunged into his wonderfully weird sound world.  Chiming cathedral bells, electronic squiggles, more loops of different voices, a mournful wind instrument emerging from the embers of a noise onslaught - that's just track two.

Listing the many delights of the remaining 13 tracks would be a pointless exercise - just listen, enjoy and discover the many looped elements, found sounds and little snatches of actual music, and on repeat listens, hear something different every time - that's the enduring magic of Tazartès' music for me.  His singing is a constant joy in whatever form it takes - plaintive wailing, throaty droning, or rasping Dada-esque nonsense in one of his comic personae.  Don't miss the spoken word closing track, intoned in English - "All animals have a personality, a personality, a personality... I'm a dancer,  I'm a dancer, moving on a stage, moving on a stage...".  A memorably bizarre ending to a magnificent, absolutely essential record.

alternate CD cover

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