Label: Creel Pone CP 199.12 CD

Alexandre KushとBernard Lamastre、二人のコンポーザーがお互いの楽曲を混ぜこぜする形でリリースした、1986年の2枚のLP[Secrets - Musiques D'Angoisses Et De Tension]、[Quiet Times]を一つにしたCreel Pone新編集版。でヘビーなシンセサウンドを軸に構築されたオブスキュアなダークアンビエント作品で、まさにここ最近の新たなCreel Pone路線を象徴する謎多きカルト物件。陰鬱な世界観も面白い。



Released the same year as Kent Carter's masterful "Network" (CP 253 CD) on the adjacent Lamastre-helmed Discobole, French Production-Library Illustra-Son issued this pair of collaborations (recorded at "Studio Family") between Régis "Bernard Lamastre" Raymond Justin Marie Charles Delaye & the shadowy "Alexandre Kush" (who, as it turns out, is none other than the French Free Jazz musician Michel Alexandre "Misha" Lobko, whose early-80s Synth & Sax duo dates w/ Raymond Boni & Tran Quang Hai & his Private-Press solo outing "Troglodyte" are well worth investigating) back-to-back as #IS 860 912 / 913.

Long held (in escrow) by yours truly, many have come forth to nominate these for the C.P. program proper (based largely on the too-good-to-be-true LP covers, which, I have to say, have slowly & surely looked better & better with each passing year, and are absolutely stunning here in their Double-A-Side C.P. configuration) but, for 15 years, I held the line at the incorporation of the much-maligned "Devil's Xylophone" (aka the Yamaha DX7) as the sole C.P. deal-breaker; a tenet broken by the appearance of Jan Beran's "Aniseikonia, Zeitsplitter, Etüden" a few short years back & now that the floodgates are fully & truly wide open there has been a newfound embrace of its 6-Operator timbre-set (even if I'm pulling rank by placing this one in the CP 199.XX serié).

Subtitled "Musiques D'Angoisses Et De Tension," the first of the two LPs appearing here (with its 8-bit Max Schreck rendered in perfect Amiga Deluxe Paint spec) is an appealing simulacrum of the post-DX "Synth Horror" spec as doled out in the films of Charles & Richard Band, John Carpenter, et.al & works the Ops to maximum effect, conjuring up rising swarms of detuned digital gunk & excessive "snappy" ADSR bonk to maximum effect. The second title grants us exactly what it says on the tin; a pastoral / plaintive suite of music that dareisay borders on "Hokey" in places (trust me; if you grew up with this sound-palette beaming at you in 15s intervals during your weekly Saturday morning cartoons instead of seeing it as an exotic artifact of a time-before you'd understand) while psychically implanting visions of the supplied / charming Cyan Provençal townscape (again, massively downsampled to wonderful affect) as an aesthetic waypoint.

Given the prospective edgelording of the latter (which we simply could not omit due to the forces at play) the C.P. P.T.B. have opted (much like the Roosenschoon / LaPierre collection a few "Dots" prior) to offer these two shining beacons of laser-tight 1986 aesthetics as a "Two-For-One" incentive as they're a few minutes Ouest of neatly fitting on a single disc.