Synths - Sax And Situationists Music From The French Underground 1973-78

Description

The quasi-revolution of May 68 in France marked the peak of this generation's struggle for a new life. It energized the French counterculture, then confidential but bubbling, and gave birth to a local underground music scene. The groups that emerged from it produced music far less conventional than that of British and American bands. Their musical and cultural influences emphasized improvisation, disjunction, and genre blending: Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, free jazz, and radical political engagement. The arrival of the synthesizer in the early 1970s further amplified this phenomenon. This collection of French underground music inaugurates a series that accompanies Synths, Sax & Situationists, the first English-language book devoted to this movement. It focuses on the music of the second wave of groups that appeared in 1972-1973, where psychedelic and radical jazz influences merged with the possibilities offered by new technologies. The next volume will study the heavily political groups that emerged immediately after the events of May 68.