Rockfort! French Music for January, Reviewed by David McKenna

While the days are still chilly and the nights long, I thought I would round up some Rockfort-centric viewing to both entertain and inform you while you’re staying cosy indoors. First up is Sebastien Dehesdin’s 2018 splendid short film La Nòvia, Bal Acoustique, which has recently been uploaded to YouTube and which can be viewed with English subtitles. It’s an introduction to the French folk (or trad) collective through the lens of their annual Bal Acoustique in the village of Blanlhac, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, featuring fully acoustic performances, guest musicians and plenty of dancing. Dehesdin’s relatively narrow focus on the event nevertheless allows musicians, such as Guilhem Lacroux, to tell the story of La Nòvia’s inception and give a flavour of the collective’s ethos. I wrote about trad ‘bals’ and the renewed interest in them last year and La Nòvia, Bal Acoustique features a beautiful description of the ‘bal’ (from La Nòvia’s Elodie Ortega and Yann Gourdon) as being about “flow… an equilibrium reached between all the components” that relies on a “to and fro between the dancers and the musicians.”

Then we have Echoes, a delightful series of 12 artist portraits produced by the Murailles label and live agency to celebrate 20 years of existence. They released one a month throughout 2024 so the full set is now accessible and focuses on French musicians for the most part, including Marion Cousin, Julien Desprez, Sourdure, Èlg, Eloïse Decazes, Gaspar Claus, Bégayer’s Loup Uberto – as well as a few, like Eric Chenaux and Borja Flames, who are based in France. The series opens with Thomas Bonvalet and his deactivated L’Ocelle Mare project, using footage from a yet-to-be-released film by Stéphanie Régnier, and there’s a particularly moving and life-affirming encounter with Alexis Degrenier (La Tène, Tanz Mein Herz) which begins with him reciting Beckett in French.

Prohibited Records, meanwhile, are celebrating their 30^th anniversary this year and have also produced a short film for the occasion. Prohibited was set up by brothers Fabrice and Nicolas Laureau who, back in 1995, were members of post-hardcore band Prohibition. It’s now a home for various projects involving one or both brothers, like Can-influenced groove machine NLF3 (who released their latest album, the slinky O Days, last year), Specio, R/A/D, F/Lor and Don Nino, as well as The Berg Sans Nipple’s Shane Aspegren, pop-folk artist Pacôme Genty and seasoned improvisors Quentin Rollet and Jérôme Lorichon. In the film, Nicolas Laureau also covers Peel favourites Herman Düne and recalls a French post-hardcore scene that also included Purr and Heliogabale; with their 1997 album The Full Mind Alone Is The Clear, the latter joined the select few French acts (alongside Sloy, Dionysos and Chevreuil) to have been recorded by Steve Albini.

As usual, I’ve brought you a mix to accompany the column, featuring acts reviewed below, plus I’ve included music from a couple of great albums that came out towards the end of last year from double bassist Jeanne Gorisse and a trio led by saxophonist Sakina Abdou, a track by EDH from a new compilation curated by producer Hypo, and an intense track featuring TH from the latest album, Essonne History X, by Ziak.

Rien VirguleBerceuse Des Deux MondesZamzamrec / Permafrost / Murailles Music / La République des Granges

Here’s a perfect record to compliment the winter gloom, if you’re willing to lean into it. Trio Rien Virgule have followed up their hulking 2021 release La Consolation Des Violettes, their first following the tragic loss of fourth member Jean-Marc Reilla, with an album that sounds even more labyrinthine (in fact the superb closing track is called ‘Labyrinthes’). It’s also less like something that’s dragged itself out of a dank basement but the band’s uncanny power hasn’t been diminished; there’s a crisp, sci-fi sheen to the twelve tracks here but they still amalgamate Eastern European folk, goth or metal-like minor chords, naive synths, abstract noise, dramatic percussion, spring reverb pings and pops and a sensibility that’s attuned to Lovecraftian cosmic terror and the mood of the darkest fairytales. Lumbering slow-burners like opener ‘Le Rythme Du Sang’ are still their speciality but the hair-raising ‘Ostinato Des Parades’ locks into a submerged techno pulse and ‘Chute Imaginaire D’Un Astre’ rides an almost-jaunty, fairground rhythm. Anna Careil’s heavily treated voice is the star of the show, a thing of blood-curdling beauty; she can sound like a terrified child or a malignant entity wailing as it’s banished to some hellish dimension.

Jazz LambauxMusic for Fools (2022-2024)Éditions Gravats

It’s rare at my age for an album to leave me genuinely confused but Jazz Lambaux’s album on Philippe Hallais (aka Low Jack) and Jean Carval’s Éditions Gravats label falls squarely into WTF territory. I’ve been trying out ‘bagpipe hyperpop’ as a description, since Enora Morice’s bagpipe is all over the album (which, despite the title, is apparently proper debut rather than a compilation, although some of the tracks have previously been released as singles on Belgian imprint City Links). It’s made to co-exist with the ghosts of noughties punk and emo-pop, Irish drinking songs, cartoonishly oozy, re-pitched vocals and tinny, preset beats. It’s a compellingly absurd and, in some ways, very French response to a couple of decades of mirage-like US popular culture, but it isn’t mere mockery and grotesquery: on ‘Broken Jukebox In B-Flat Minor’, Rachel Coster (I’m assuming it’s the US comedian and TikToker) sobs “I just want to hear something beautiful” over a loop of clicking and whirring sounds, like a tape that constantly being stopped and rewound, and we do in fact get some beautiful moments: the intro to ‘Lexus Waltz In B-Flat Major’ lays gaseous gasps over Arthur Russell-like cello, while the bagpipe-and-synth-pads combo sounds particularly elegiac on ‘Xorcism In B-Flat Minor’. Music For Fools is, as I say, a bit of a head-scratcher, but I tend to view that as a good thing.

Tartine De ClousCompter Les DentsOkraina

I caught this a cappella folk trio live several years back at The Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury, the three of them (Geoffroy Dudouit, Thomas Georget and Guillaume Maupin) seated around a table in the candlelit room and singing without amplification while the audience – also seated – was arrayed around them. This is apparently their preferred way of performing and it creates an extraordinary intimacy, an atmosphere quite unlike that of a standard gig – it’s as though you’re being regaled with songs by a few high-spirited locals in a French tavern. Their debut, Sans Folklore, was largely recorded this way, the trio captured live in various venues across France; on Compter Les Dents, their rich close harmonies are still at the heart of the project but it also features a few guests who fill out the arrangements with violin, guitar, piccolo, double bassoon, additional vocals and – in the case of Jean-Loup Baly of 70s folk revivalists Mélusine, who died in between the recording of the album in 2019 and its eventual release – accordion. The songs here are from the Vendée, a department on the Atlantic coast: ‘C’etait Un Contre Navire’ tells the story of a sailor wounded by the English and was apparently sung as people were heading off to be married, while elsewhere we have, in the words of Alasdair Roberts’ liner notes, “songs of love and war, life and death, played out on land and sea.” It’s a gorgeous record, and fans of Okraina will know that physical copies come in a beautiful sleeve, illustrated as ever by Gwénola Carrère.

Clément VercellettoL’EngouleventUn Je-ne-sais-quoi

Engoulevent is a French word that was previously unfamiliar to me. It’s the name of a bird (or member of a family of birds) that has a number of names in English: nightjar, nighthawk, whip-poor-will and – alarmingly – goatsucker, because of the belief that it sucked milk from livestock at night. It’s also the name of a unique musical device, the engoulevent, made by luthier Léo Maurel at the request of Clément Vercelletto: a small, portable organ which has had its pipes replaced with a variety of birdcalls.

This is Vercelletto’s first release under his own name; previously he has put out solo work as Sarah Terral or as half of duo Kaumwald with Ernest Bergez aka Sourdure. And he has produced it using only the engoulevent, playing the bird calls with a MIDI controller and recording in a few different locations including a hugely resonant wine silo. It’s virtually impossible to describe this music without resorting to avian imagery; on ‘La Tourmaline’ the engoulevent twitters and chirrups as Vercelletto makes drastic changes to the tempo (I’m doubtless not alone in having David Lynch on my mind at the moment, and the uncanny combination of the natural and the mechanical brings to mind the robin at the end of Blue Velvet). Elsewhere, ‘La Grande Berce’ features a reedy tone slicing through a thicket of scrabbling, scuffling, squealing noises but tranquil passages predominate. On ‘Le Serpent Testa L’Air’ there are clicking and clacking rhythms like the sounds of motorised wings and dawn-chorus trills while, on ‘Hoedic long’, (one of the wine silo pieces, I presume) seemingly distant clouds of ghostly reverberation gather and swirl.

La FèveEmpty The Bin Vol.4Walone

Parisian rapper La Fève, one of the pillars of the so-called new wave in France, has developed a habit of dropping albums with little warning, right at the year’s end and once the end-of-year round-ups have already been filed – in 2023 it was the excellent, ‘proper’ album 24, and the pre-Xmas treat this year was the fourth instalment of his Empty The Bin series. In addition, the previous three volumes, previously confined to Soundcloud, were also dumped onto streaming services at the same time. Everything about Empty The Bin Vol.4 screams of a lax quality control, from the title itself (the suggestion that La Fève is just clearing out his hard drive) and the sheer number of tracks – 48, adding up to just shy of two hours of music – and the intentionally (I think) wretched, thrown-together, Soundcloud-coded cover art. For all that, the odds-and-sods approach is surprisingly compelling, thanks to La Fève’s easy charm and facility with melody but also the variety of crunchy, jazzy, lush and raw trap beats on offer: tracks like ‘Goofy’ have a woozy, waking-dream feel; ‘Zéro Débat’ is vivid with distorted keys and rattling fills and ‘Un Bliki’ demonstrates his fluent triplet flow at its most hypnotic. He also carries the whole affair almost entirely by himself, although there are welcome guest-turns from 3010 on ‘Phase’, one of the more elaborate productions (it’s basically two tracks in one), and fellow new wave icon Khali bringing his own, distinctively buzzy vocal style to the party. Rather than an exhausting experience, Empty The Bin Vol.4 turns out to be surprisingly addictive.

Sebastien ForresterCoruscate (For Metal Percussion)Dense Truth

It’s also becoming customary to have a new work from percussionist and composer Sébastien Forrester at this time of the year. Out on Matthew Barnes aka Forest Swords’ label Dense Truth, it’s a departure from his recent folk-informed works, Orpheus’ Pipes and Nèplo. The starting point for Coruscate was a piece created to accompany an installation in Geneva by American artist Erin O’Keefe, and Forrester’s attempts to play the vibraphone with as little attack as possible, using broomsticks, brushes and bows to generate washy, “ghostly” sounds. The final, four-part work was pieced together from several sessions and adds cymbals, tuned gongs, bells and thunder sheets to the vibraphone, and stays true to the concept developed for the O’Keefe exhibition; while being punctuated by clinks and chimes, the overall effect isn’t hard-edged or angular. Beneath a coldly gleaming surface there’s the warmth of deep, resonant tones that enter through your chest as much as your ears. It’s as though Forrester is bringing the metals in his instrumentarium to their melting points, right up to the point where they start to liquify. He describes this as his most “meditative” work and I have to concur – Coruscate is a profoundly affecting, consciousness-altering work that occupies your whole body.

Ronan CourtySynesthesiaOrmo

Ronan Courty is the latest member of the group No Tongues to put out a solo work after Alan Regardin’s Ritual Tones last year and it also sees him getting into some minimalistic, durational work. Synesthesia is comprised of two pieces: the title track and ‘Ideasthesia’. Both are around 18 minutes long but neither one meanders or drifts. ‘Synesthesia’, recorded in a chapel, imposes itself immediately as Courty drags his bow across the bass strings, unleashing muscular tones, foghorn-like blasts and mournful harmonies. Around half-way through, he takes up a strident, sawing rhythm that carries the track through to its close, gathering fuzzy overtones on the way like a stylus collecting dust. ‘Ideasthesia’ is a response to or reworking of ‘Synesthesia’, picking up where it leaves off but adding synth and distant, chiming tuning forks and something called a mustard glass (a repurposed mustard jar, essentially). I wouldn’t necessarily call these pieces meditative, they’re simply too energetic. But they are hypnotic and thoroughly gripping.

FranceDestino ScifosiStandard in-Fi / a1000p

I wrote a fair bit about France at the end of last year but it would be remiss of me not to mention the fact that one of my favourite bands is releasing a new album. It’s also worth noting that, despite being recorded live like all their previous releases, this is their most ‘produced’ album to date: unlike, for example, the classic France Do Den Haag Church which was a ‘hit record and hope’ job (a Zoom recorder placed on the floor), Destino Scifosi was deliberately set up, with Mim from the a1000p label bringing his studio set-up to record the band at the Rituale festival in 2022, close-mic’ing the amps and setting up other microphones hundreds of metres away. With everything then being mixed by Mim, the result is the thickest, most hard-driving sound the trio have achieved on a record, with a weirdly pleasing, almost rubbery snare sound and the white heat of the hurdy-gurdy scalding your ears. It’s also fun at times to try to figure out whether you’re hearing whoops and whistles from the crowd, squeals from the hurdy-gurdy or a combination of both.