A Review & an
Interview by
Ed Pinsent
for
“the Sound Projector”
12th issue 2004
Jean-Marc Foussat
Abattage
FRANCE NO LABEL NO NUMBER CD-R (2001)
A fantastic loony French LP from the early 1980s, now presumably long since
unavailable and here repackaged in CD form.
Begorrah! There's enough wild energy in Jean-Marc Foussat’s outpourings
to rostain the basic needs of a small French village (wine, bread, electricity,
sex) for about the next ten years… this twitching, grinning octopus of
music plays anything and everything he get his tentacles on, from guitars, pianos,
the mighty EMS synth and assorted bric-a-brac, plus he did the (very original)
field recordings and engineered his own sessions, composed and edited everything
— his only collaborator is Jean--Francois Ballèvre on the piano
on one track !
If your hunger is for wild, unexpected combinations of far-flung freewheeling
ideas, then this record (with the exception of first Faust LP, which oddly enough
it does kinda resemble) absolutely takes the biscuit; lets cut to the chase,
because the piano with pneumatic drill track is one of the most effective and
most intensive examples of such demented mixings, but then you also get such
things as truck drivers delivering huge vats of good French wine, screams, hammerings
and poundings, and — I personnally guarantee it — absolutely the wildest
synth playing you have heard in your life. I can't over-exaggerate the value
of the unfettered, screaming barbarity of Foussat’s insane EMS work, which
will ignite your spirit like a fucking sky-rocket and launch you 100 miles into
the stratosphere.
Zoosh!
Algerian-born Foussat started out as a guitarist in the mid-1970s, playing in
various ensembles which were either very experimental or didn't last very long.
Either way I assume nobody took much notice He got more interested in playing
the synth and then made a deliberate decision to stop performing in public,
instead working at home with his tape recorders and magnetic tape.
By the end of 1979 he secured a job in a studio and recorded lots of improvised
music — and the labels he worked with from that point read like an A-list
of independent labels that championed that early 1980s dream, that one day we
could make the world safe for experimental music : Incus, Bead, Hat Hut. Po-Torch,
Claxon, Rift, Rec Rec, Celluloid… any self--respecting weirdo in my circle
of friends has LPs from all those labels in their collections, and it makes
one nostalgic almost for a golden age when people Who got involved in experimental
music stiil had roch things as commitment. integrity, and good ideas, Not quite
like nowadays, thats for sure!
He finished Abattage in August 1981; the French word means 'demolition' or literaily,
'felling' — as though he were a lumberjack knocking down a forest of trees,
using his slicing hands for axes!!
As to how available this hand-made reissue is (stiil waiting an official reissue
apparently), you'd better work fast and send your shekels to Jean-Marc, or be
kicking yourself for evermore.
ED PINSENT
11-2003
1
Abattage means ‘demolition’ in English, I think. It sounds like you’re having great fun on this record, either smashing things or recording the noises of destruction. Did you take great delight in this idea of destruction? Is it perhaps a metaphor...maybe for destroying ideas or people which you oppose?
In french the word
Abattage have five main meanings (see under), and this is this polysemy
I like the much.
Yes, not one, but four meanings and all as trash or gore… and all INTO
the depth of the life.
Destruction is there but not only. For me, if I had something to destroy at
that time, it was more old inner demons than other things.
Abattage is something to destroying those devils to be able — or better,
be able to dare — to build something from myself, breaking dawn the barriers
wich limits before. Behind those broken limits there is something like the music
I hope and, in itself, in embryonic form, the necessity to broke the limits
to live, etc..
Abattage hold some secret and hidded musics & sounds I did between 1975
and 1980 wich were at this moment (1981) absolutely necessary to show, because
I was simply absolutely sure to have to do that.
2
You made recordings
for a lot of great labels which recorded and released improvised and experimental
music in the 1980s. What work did you do? What drew you to that music? What
musicians did you work with? The ‘scene’ appeared to be quite vibrant
and vital then, even if there wasn’t much money involved. How does it compare
to nowadays?
Traveling from Nice to Italy because I'd read in a Jazz magazine an annoncement
about the Florence/Pisa festival in 78 or 79 I receive the confirmation of the
music I wanted to meet, ear, listen, do, live & love.
Something was happenning in this festival as a meeting between US and European
way of music, between Jazz and Contemporary music and the confrontation of those
two spirits was marvellous. It was very simple and easy. I remember that it
was in Pisa in a little chapelle listening the Lovens/Lytton duet that I thought
I the music I was listening, was the real music from the brain of those two
human beings playing together. Not a music from any instrument; a music directely
from their brain to mine. And all the concerts were like this one. And we really
feel free, as never again later.
But I was terribly shy, and at this moment really afraid to play and all those
musicians I meet there were so "great" and "virtuosis" and
generous that I prefer hide my little self taught french guy' desire… to
play with them and I decided to record them. Recording was easier and let me
listening and learning the music. As recorder I was as an extra musicain : the
one who take the music to get the possibility of remember it. It was the way
I did recording.
3
What were
you doing in your early guitar bands? What kind of music did you make? Why did
you give up performing in public?
At the beginning,
I was trying to copy — understand and play like — the Pop language
of Gong, Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, and else… my heroes !
Trying also to organize something with sounds, and looking for something different.
I try first with the electric guitar but it was very difficult to hold a candle
to them (Hendrix, Hillage, Allen, etc.).
During the early beginning I never play on stage. It was a full garage (even
if I play with my friends in my parent's dinning room) band. Later we begin
to show something but I haven't any recording of it and I remember it was as
trash as possible – as far as I can remember something quite Punk before
the Punks, but unconsciously. I remember a concert where I loose my mediator
and I finish the show with my guitar (a white neck' white Stratocaster) full
red of blood 'cause I'd broke my index nail to play louder !!!
4
What models of EMS did you use? The EMS synthi? I understand this is a very
difficult instrument to master. Who was your teacher? Or are you self taught?
I always used an AKS or VCS III (by
EMS) synthi. They are quite the same. I begin with this machine in 74 or
75 with a school friend Jacques Sordoillet. We liked toguether the same kind
of experimental music and he had find that the American Center in Paris have
a Studio managed by a contemporary composer named Essyad and rent it for cheap
price.
There, they were 2 AKS, a Grand piano, a lot of percussions, 3 Revox a mix table:
The Ali Baba cavern itself.
We didn't know anything to that (exept I was yet able to record and work with
the Revoxs and the mixing system) and we begin to learn touching everiything
and trying all possibilities as 18th century' supporters of scientific experimental
discovery.
And it was good. So, later Jacques decides to buy one and we went together in
London, by train, to do that.
With this one we beggin a new way to work with. One of the two have the "machine"
for a month and he try all he wanted. At the end he shows to the other all the
things he had found and we go ahead like that during quite two years.
My granfather died and I left Paris one year & half to live in Nice where
I begin to work at many pieces of piano & acoustic guitar music involved
in Abattage (but without any thought about a record at this time).
When I came back our friendship crashed, he disapear stealing my guitare, so
I bought a second hand VCS III, the one I still have and play today.
5
Is it better for
you to make music alone, or with collaborators? What do you consider to be your
most successful work?
Listening, preparing, thinking about music must be "alone". Anyway,
in a sens, playing is always "alone" too, even if it is playing inside
and with a band. Playing any instrument is still a kind of "fight"
between it — him — and I.
This solitude ends when a listener, or someone else to play with, comes. Thank
you "the others", you let me share all those things I have at the
ends of my fingers.
So I like the two ways, be alone and play with my friends. Because they must
be friends. If they are not, I can't find any interest to play something with.
I'm not looking especially for playing. I'm just searching the pleasure to play
with who I like & love as human being and nothing else : Makoto, Sato, Jean-François
Pauvros, Joe McPhee and not so many others. I'm still a little bit shy, probably
i'll be like that to the end. I never want to play solo exept for records where
I have the time to organize something as I need. Time is very important I think.
So if you aske me for my successfull work It's difficult to answer.
First I want to say : probably Abattage wich is the first dot I put on, but
also I know that each performance I play with Marteau Rouge — a still living
group from 12 years, today — is the event I prefer, and probably the next
one would be more exiting than ever… Each is different and this is only
the collection of all of them wich began to built something looking as a thing
really interesting, I suppose.
Jean-Marc Foussat
abattage nom masculin
1 (d'arbre) felling;
2 (d'animal de boucherie) slaughter; abattage rituel: ritual slaughter;
3 (de minerai) mining, working; abattage à l'explosif: blasting;
4 [!](énergie) dynamism; avoir de l'abattage: to be very dynamic;
5 [!](prostitution) prostitution with a rapid turnover of clients
http://continuo.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/jean-marc-foussat-abattage/