I have been enjoying this album for awhile now. Below you will find a review. Enjoy and comment!
Born in Clermont-Ferrand in central France, M. Frog Labat began life simply as Jean Yves Labat de Rossi. The grandson of composer Raphaël de Rossi who authored the evergreen romantic theme, “Strangers In The Night,” Labat fell in love with the church organ music he heard during his early schooldays at Catholic Seminary School. He went on to attend the Met-de-Penningen studio, Académie Charpentier and the prestigious Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. It was at this last-named location of higher arts education that Labat discovered and studied avant-garde, concrète and electronic music. He then came in direct contact with Gregorian chants during a spell in a Benedictine monastery and all of these forms would wind up informing much of his immediate musical future.
After a one-off EP of his own material was released by French CBS in 1967, Labat then joined an early progressive Rock group called Baba Scholae on keyboards and woodwinds. The group was British except for Labat and a Hungarian musician, and they recorded one (as yet unreleased) album in 1969 in London before splitting up. However, ex-Baba Scholae guitarist John Holbrook would remain in contact with Labat and would wind up as a consistent collaborator in many of his sonic endeavours to come.
Moving to Woodstock in upstate New York, Labat’s instrument of choice for much of the seventies was the Synthi-A, a portable synthesiser produced by EMS in 1971. Best known by its near-exclusive use on European space Rock albums like “Obscured By Clouds,” “Join Inn,” “Cyborg,” and “Rubycon” it was capable of subtleties of miniscule gradations and the ability to achieve an extremely wide range of colourations. Labat found a nearby friend in Woodstock possessed a Synthi-A and subsequently borrowed it for an extended period of gestation with experimentation and work on several pieces that would wind up comprising much of his first album, “M. Frog.”
In the meanwhile, he was dishwashing in a nearby restaurant owned by none other than Bob Dylan’s former manager, the imposing Albert Grossman. A chance meeting with Rick Danko during work resulted in an offer to pass on whatever recorded material he might have to Grossman, who recently had set the Bearsville Record label with its own studio. Courtesy of Danko, a tape of the Baba Scholae album arrived at the Bearsville offices. Grossman was away on business, so it was previewed by his wife, Sally who thought enough of it to then pass it onto a Bearsville Records artist, Todd Rundgren. Both were immediately impressed by it so that upon Grossman’s return and subsequent review, Labat was contacted with an offer of a contract. Once the deal was struck, discussion turned to a more palpable name for the young French synthesist. But when Grossman suggested ‘Maestro Frog’ Labat’s lighthearted reply of “No, just ‘M. Frog’” stuck. And as a newly-christened Rock’n’Roll artist, M. Frog Labat would begin the most overt stage of his career.
Once finished adding synthesiser applications to Jackie Lomax’s “Three” album, Labat returned to Bearsville Sound Studios to embark on recording his first solo album, “M. Frog.” It was at these sessions that he first met Todd Rundgren, who was immediately taken with his informed, unorthodox strategies and freewheeling spirit. The first fruits of their musical partnership would quickly follow with: Labat’s “M. Frog” and Rundgren’s “A Wizard/A True Star.” Rundgren contributed guitar and vocals to “M. Frog” and wound up doing the final mix while Labat contributed EMS synthesiser and synthesised treatments to “A Wizard/A True Star.” The comparisons of certain sounds on both albums indicate not only the use of the same EMS Synthi-A but are markedly similar as if the resonances between Labat’s avant-garde-to-rock and Rundgren’s rock-to-avant-garde approaches were entirely complementary.
Comprised of local Woodstock musicians, fellow Bearsville labelmates and his old friend John Holbrook on electric guitar plus engineering tasks, the assembled contingent that appeared on “M. Frog” were about as unlikely as the album itself. Not only did Todd Rundgren guest throughout on vocals and guitar but Rick Danko contributed bass and violin while fellow Band mate Garth Hudson appeared on uncredited Lowry organ. Seeing better days, Paul Butterfield dropped by to add some harmonica, Joe Simon played prepared piano, Fanny vocalist/guitarist June Millington contributed vocals while the trio of Dennis Whitted, Christopher Parker, and Michael Reilly rounded out the proceedings on drums.
“M. Frog” is as kaleidoscopic as its multi-coloured cover of Labat’s own synthesiser notations plotted out on graph paper. Although the songs touched upon many different styles and distinctly different shapes, taken together they sounded like the end result of the same endorphin time release capsule in LP form. Labat’s confident compositions and attention to detailed tonal colourations drew together the many disparate sections and refracted them back from the same source of robust warmth. In the accompanying 8-page cover booklet glue to the front of the album, Labat described the aim of “M. Frog”: “I want the music to pop out. It’s funny music. It’s alive. It is for the living” and the album’s opener, “We Are Crazy” achieved all of the above and then some. A sensationally catchy exercise in sonic extremism, “We Are Crazy” is like Jean-Pierre Massiera backing a spirited, 3-chord/3-IQ band of heavy metal kids by blasting holes through their efforts with excruciating Synthi-A zappings, squiggles and explosions that discharge with random precision in between both your eyes AND the gleefully moronic chant-lyrics (brayed out twice thusly):
“We are crazy!
We are stupid!
We are lazy!
We are dirty!
If you understand / You’re gonna win a prize!
If you understand / You’re gonna win a prize!
If you understand / You’re gonna win a prize!
If you understand / You’re gonna win a prize!
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na / A washing machine!
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na / A date with the Queen!
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na / A sewing machine!
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na / A date with the Queen!
We are crazy!”
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