Roaring in 2025, continuing their deep dedication to the catalog of recordings made by François Tusques and his politically charged Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra during the early 1970s and the mid-1980s, Souffle Continu returns with beautifully produced, immaculate first ever vinyl reissues of the pianist and band’s “Après la Marée Noire” and “Vol. 4 Jo Maka”, originally released in 1979 and 1982 respectively. Joyous explosions of musicality that offer a potent reminder that serious and rigorous music can also be fun, we couldn’t possibly think of better soundtracks for the coming Spring.

Since their humble launch in 2014, the Paris based imprint, Souffle Continu, has assembled a discography that is second to none, bringing together some of the most important gestures of the historic French avant-garde. Particularly focused on efforts of free improvisation that sprang from the country across the 1960s and 70s, artefacts from the vaults of seminal imprints like Futura, Saravah, Un-Deux-Trois, and Palm have formed an axis around which their cause has spun.

By the time he set out to found the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra in 1971, the pianist, François Tusques, had already made history by contributing the first gesture of free jazz laid to tape in France in 1965, as well as collaborating with a wide range of luminaries like Barney Wilen, Don Cherry, Kenneth Terroade, Steve Potts, Alan Silva, Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin, and Alan Shorter. It was during this period that Tusques began to search for other avenues of creative possibility, with the new project - calling a diverse range of artists from different communities into its ranks, and incorporating nearly as many musical touchstones into its forms - offering the way forward.

Incorporating a transnational cultural position and a deeply political consciousness - often referencing the Black Panther Party and playing for labor unions, within a sound that incorporated jazz, free jazz, folk elements, and Afro-latin, Arabic and South-American touchstones, by the time of 1978's “L’inter Communal”, originally issued by the fledgling Disques Vendémiaire imprint and lovingly reissued for the first time by Souffle Continu last year, the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra had been running for seven years and committed two full-lengths to tape. “Après la Marée Noire”, released by the legendary imprint Le Chant Du Monde, is technically the band’s fourth outing, but was released under Tusques’ name alone, leading to the possibility of splitting hairs about the order and appropriate naming of what’s what.

A clear illumination of the exuberant “social function” that embodied the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra’s sound - featuring a large band of players from nearly every corner of the globe, described by Tusques as a griot “who created of new genre of popular song improvised with our music, based on events going on at the time”, with its sound being “an interpretation of a music which synthesizes the different communities living and working in France.”

“Après la Marée Noire” encounters Tusques and the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra drawing a surprising amount of influence from closer to home, specifically from music from the region of Brittany, where the pianist had spent a great deal of time, leading to the invitation of Jean-Louis Le Vallegant, Gaby Kerdoncuff and Philippe Lestra - all players of bombards (a Breton double-reed instrument similar to the Indian Shehnai Nadaswaram, as well as the North African rhaita, the Arabic mizmar and the Turkish zurna) and bagpipes - to join the ranks of the Intercommunal tribe, intent upon developing a new music from Brittany: “Vers Une Musique Bretonne Nouvelle” (the subheading of the resulting LP).

Comprising truly singular tracks over the LP’s two sides, Tusques leads the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra into almost entirely uncharted realms of an exuberant form of jazz, closely linked to the folk traditions of Brittany. Incredibly hypnotic and infectious in its sense of rhythm and groove with each piece heavily driven by the droning reeds of bombards and bagpipes, it equally internalizes waltz, swing, blues and gavotta, producing a realm of musicality that is equally trance inducing, while provoking a desire to dance.

Absolutely amazing on every count, there’s nothing quite like “Après la Marée Noire”. Think Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath meets folk drone. Once again, Souffle Continu has done a great service to the musical landscape by bringing an absolute gem back into the collective consciousness, reissuing it for the first time since its original 1979 release on Le Chant Du Monde.

The Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra’s penultimate release, “Vol.4 - Jo Maka”, originally issued by Disques Vendémiaire in 1982, is equally a joyous and sorrowful affair. Comprising five pieces, recorded live between 1977 and 1981, a handful of months before the album's release the Guinean saxophonist, Jo Maka - a steadfast member of Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra and brother in arms - passed away, leading the band to dedicate it to him. Fittingly, Maka’s brilliant playing features prominently throughout, allowing it to double as a wondrous last hurrah.

A thrilling window into the roaring, collectivist spirit of the band and how truly incredible it must have been to see them live - so meticulous and locked in that it’s hard to imagine this not being a studio recording with the luxury of multiple takes - the album’s two sides are a rollicking journey, drawing heavily from African jazz, as well as the idiom’s roots in New Orleans, threaded with the blues and plenty of Latin flavors. Internalizing the dirge and dance, from the ashes of Tusques’ former avant-gardism emerges a new vision of the true spirit of jazz: a people’s music, occupying the range of emotions of everyday life.

A foot tapping sonorous party from back to front - spirited and joyful - falling somewhere between spiritual jazz and bop, while taking on so many fantastic touchstones from a truly global notion of musicality, The Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra rolls and rolls with “Vol.4 - Jo Maka”, easily giving the impression that this adventure in collective creativity might never end.