condition (record/cover): EX- / EX- Gatefold sleeve.  Michel Puig signs Stigmates on BYG Records, a label better known for free jazz than for contemporary composition. The title announces wounds, marks left by trauma, signs that cannot be erased. Puig's music carries such marks, residues of violence that the listener cannot ignore.

BYG's Actuel series had documented the radical edge of improvised music: Archie Shepp, Sunny Murray, Art Ensemble of Chicago. Puig's presence in this context suggests affinities between composed and improvised extremity, the common ground shared by notation and spontaneity when both push toward limit experiences. The stigmata of the title could be religious or secular, sacred wounds or merely human ones.

The LP preserves a moment when boundaries between composition and improvisation remained porous, when a composer could find home among free jazz radicals without contradiction. Puig's subsequent career would take different directions, but this document captures a specific possibility, a road that might have been followed further than it was. BYG's distribution ensured international visibility that purely French labels couldn't provide.