★Souffle Continu
Dharma LPs in Bundle
All four Dharma Quintet, Dharma Trio & Dharma reissues at a special price. Long regarded as one of the best record stores in the world, offering a particular focus to avant-garde and experimental music, in 2014 Paris based SouffleContinu launched as bonafide record label. While France has played a crucial role in the history of avant-garde music - from its beginnings in Dada, to the developments of Musique concrète, experimental electronic and electroacoustic music, many of the country’s more ad…
Archipel
Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Dharma's Archipel, originally released in 1973. "Do your own music!" was Albert Ayler's advice, received loud and clear in France. Cohelmec Ensemble, Workshop de Lyon, and the Dharma Quintet, three groups close in spirit, which would each illustrate, in their own way, a local principle: to get some distance from American free jazz. As far as Dharma is concerned, the community-based approach was put in place to escape from any academism. T…
End Starting
Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Dharma Quintet's End Starting, originally released in 1971. For Gérard Marais, guitarist with Dharma (the quintet), from this third album -- in fact he replaced Gérard Coppéré, one of the two saxophonists present on the first album (FFL 038LP, 1970) -- Albert Ayler's instruction to play your own music was the detonator. This did not fall on deaf ears, and was particularly appropriate as it would have been difficult, even for a musician at…
Snoopy's Time
Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Dharma Trio's Snoopy's Time, originally released in 1970. Dharma as they were simply known, at the time when they were still playing, englobed all the incarnations of the group, trio, quartet (essentially as a live band), and quintet built around the stable core of pianist and bassist Patricio Villarroel and Michel Gladieux. Snoopy's Time is their second album, concentrated on the rhythm section including the ever-faithful Jacques Mahi…
Mr Robinson
Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Dharma Quintet's Mr Robinson, originally released in 1970. In an interview with Jazz Magazine in the early 1970s, Dharma, as a collective voice, outlined their method: "we try to reach, within free jazz, the same sort of rhythmic cohesion as in bop, a cohesion based not exactly on tempo, but something which feels like tempo. A kind of underlying pulse." Evidence of these ideas can be heard immediately on listening to Mr Robinson, the…
Mahjun (1973)
Solid orange vinyl version. Milestone repress! First time vinyl reissue of the eponymous classic debut album by Mahjun, one of the most innovative French prog underground bands, on the productive Saravah label in 1973. Their music, as you can hear on tracks such as "Les Enfants Sauvages" or "Chez Planos", is a subtle mix of spiritual jazz, pop music, folk and avant-garde reminiscent of Full Moon Ensemble, Brigitte Fontaine or the Thêatre du Chêne Noir. Standard black vinyl LP version is in …
Mahjun (1974) - LP
Solid blue vinyl version. Edition of 200. On Mahjun's second eponymous album released by Saravah in 1974, percussionist Nana Vasconcellos joined the line up on the nearly 14 minute long track "La Ville Pue" and "Fin Janvier". Their politico folk-prog sound moved to an ethnic flavored psychedelic fusion. First time reissue of this classic and influential album. Standard black vinyl LP version is in an edition of 500. Comes in 350 gram sleeve with an obi strip, insert and matte printing.
Stand By
**Sea Blue vinyl; Edition of 700** Souffle Continu Records present a reissue of Heldon's Stand By, originally released in 1979. Richard Pinhas began by absorbing Jimi Hendrix as an adolescent, leaving that behind at the beginning of the 1970s, after having heard what Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock were doing with synthesizers, and then discovering the seminal duo Fripp and Eno. It was one year on from this epiphany that the first album by Heldon was released (1974). The main idea was to rock and…
Heldon . 6 . Interface
**Swamp green vinyl; Edition of 700** Souffle Continu Records present a reissue of Heldon's Heldon . 6 . Interface, originally released in 1977. The idea in the mind of Richard Pinhas, the driving force behind Heldon, was to produce music "as cold as a huge block of ice" a vertiginous experience, of course influenced by the King Crimson trilogy, from Larks' Tongues In Aspic (1973) to Red (1974), except that Heldon represents an electrified version, leading to a perfect rapport between though…
Un Reve Sans Consequence Speciale
**Clear purple vinyl; Edition of 700** Souffle Continu Records present a reissue of Heldon's Un Rêve Sans Conséquence Spéciale, originally released on Cobra in 1976. In Heldon, nobody particularly likes liner notes. However, although the group's albums have none, they abound, from the very beginning, with clues and often cryptic references. The name of the group, obviously, comes from a science fiction novel by Norman Spinrad, but perhaps it is less well known that the title of the album Un Rêve…
1976-1979
**Edition of 300 copies, sold out at source **1976-1979: four years of intensive creativity for Heldon, following on from them leaving the home-studio on the Île Saint-Louis for Davout also in Paris, where a Moog 3, purchased from the Beatles, was ready in a space reserved for the leader of the group, Richard Pinhas. From here on, a trilogy was created which compares favorably with King Crimson of the period from Larks' Tongues In Aspic (1973) to Red (1974), the French band breaking new ground…
Tiens! Les Bourgeons Eclatent...
Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Workshop De Lyon's Tiens! Les Bourgeons Eclatent..., originally released in 1978. The collective methodology of the Workshop De Lyon led to the creation of the Association Searching for an Imaginary Folklore (ARFI) in 1977, their aims were very much a mission statement "encourage improvisation, spread diverse musical styles and provide means of expression to others with similar ideas, establish a folklore..." Their reference was the As…
La Chasse De Shirah Sharibad
Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Workshop De Lyon's La Chasse De Shirah Sharibad, originally released in 1975. In France, in the years 1960-1970, musicians pondered over how to transpose the political struggle of free jazz onto a completely different political terrain. One of the first to do so was pianist François Tusques (agitator, theorist and militant) who recorded 1965's Free Jazz (CACK 020LP), and then continued with Le Nouveau Jazz (1967), French equivalents to th…
Inter Frequences
Souffle Continu Records present the first ever vinyl reissue of Free Jazz Workshop's Inter Fréquences, originally released in 1973. The Free Jazz Workshop came into being in 1967 but their first album, Inter Fréquences, only appeared in 1973. Unfortunately there is no recorded trace of the group including the first drummer Pierre Guyon before he was replaced by Christian Rollet in 1970. One of the slogans doing the rounds at the time sets the tone: "Aesthetic liberation is but a prelude to the …
La nuit est au courant
Souffle Continu Records present the first vinyl edition of Jac Berrocal's La Nuit Est Au Courant, originally released on In Situ in 1991. Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" on the radio, Renaissance motets, his grandfather in a Zouave military band, Syrian deserts... Columns of tanks in the streets, the soundtrack to Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped (1956), Juan Manuel Fangio's car, the fall of the Berlin wall: from the first and fantastic Musiq Musik (1973), this is where Jac Berrocal's trumpet com…
No Man's Land
Souffle Continu Records present a reissue of Jean-Francois Pauvros and Gaby Bizien's No Man's Land, originally released on Un-Deux-Trois in 1976. Whether it is with the label Palm, or for Un-Deux-Trois, Jef Gilson has produced some of the best albums of French free jazz and improvisation. But that's not all: he also offered perfect recording conditions enabling some of the fresh young talent to emerge, including Daunik Lazro, André Jaume, and Jean-François Pauvros, all three of whom released …
Pays Noir
Previously unreleased, the three tracks on Pays Noir come from recording sessions held at the same time as those for the cult album No Man's Land (FFL 026LP), produced by Jef Gilson in 1976, and published on vinyl by Souffle Continu Records in 2017. Singled out at the time of its release by Actuel, Rock & Folk, and Melody Maker, the tabula rasa of No Man's Land is the result of free-flowing experiments born of chance, if the two musicians are to be believed. Indeed, their approach to free im…
Pérélandra
Souffle Continu Records present a reissue of Emmanuelle Parrenin's Maison Rose, originally released in 1977. An album such as this obviously owes a lot to the atmosphere in which it was recorded. It took place in Fromentel, Normandy, in a farm converted into a studio by the producer Jacques Denjean, known for his work with Dionne Warwick or Françoise Hardy, as well as having been a member of the Double Six. It was also in Fromentel that Denjean would record two fantastic albums with Albert Marco…
Maison Rose
RSD 2017 release. Late addition. Souffle Continu Records present a reissue of Emmanuelle Parrenin's Maison Rose, originally released in 1977. An album such as this obviously owes a lot to the atmosphere in which it was recorded. It took place in Fromentel, Normandy, in a farm converted into a studio by the producer Jacques Denjean, known for his work with Dionne Warwick or Françoise Hardy, as well as having been a member of the Double Six. It was also in Fromentel that Denjean would record tw…
Cohelmec Ensemble LP Bundle
All three reissues of the fantastic free / spiritual jazz french Cohelmec Ensemble at a special price.Souffle Continu Records present the first vinyl reissue of Cohelmec Ensemble's Hippotigris Zebra Zebra, originally released in 1971. The Cohelmec Ensemble celebrate, above all, the pleasure of collective music-making. A group without a designated leader, they base their approach on reciprocal listening, but also on a dialogue between written and improvised material, in which all members have an …