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Reviews

François Thollot — Happy Lockdown
(Bandcamp no#, 2021, DL)

François Thollot — Virtually Spring
(Bandcamp no#, 2021, DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2021-05-01

Happy Lockdown Cover artVirtually Spring Cover art

When French composer and multi-instrumentalist Francois Thollot first appeared on the scene shortly after the turn of the century, he released two full albums of angular avant-zeuhl music within mere months of one another, Ceux d’en Face and Contact; both were fairly striking releases on the new Soleil Zeuhl label, then he promptly disappeared for about ten years, only to turn up nine years later as the drummer and chief composer of the band Scherzoo. By the band’s third album 03 (2015) Thollot had switched to bass guitar following some wholesale changes in the band’s lineup, where he continues to this day, while remaining as the band’s main composer through the fifth album released in 2020, though probably recorded months earlier. Apparently restrictions due to the Covid virus in France are fairly strict, and given that Thollot can play nearly any instrument that his bandmates can, he went to work composing a bunch of new material in his studio in Lyon, enough to release two albums Happy Lockdown (January 2021) and Virtually Spring (March 2021); who knows, at this rate by the time you see this review in early May he may already have another album out. There’s nothing happy about a lockdown, but he seems to be getting a lot of compositions recorded, and although the arrangements aren’t on the full-band level, Thollot nonetheless holds his own on bass, drums, multiple layers of electric piano, with a little bit of guitar, organ and vibraphone here and there. Mainly, the strength of both of these albums are in the compositions, nineteen pieces in all across both, with many standouts among them. Much like his writing with Scherzoo, the pieces tend to be angular and complex, though most are overtly melodic, informed by elements of jazz, rock, avant-prog, Zappa, and zeuhl in varying degrees, most ranging from four to six minutes in length. One might find some serious standouts here, from “Moving Wave,” “Positive Squirrel,” and “The Useless Little Ventriloquist” on Happy Lockdown, and “Crossings,” “Limited Be Bop,” “Palindrome,” and the opening title track from Virtually Spring, but to be fair, you won’t find a duff track here anywhere, especially if you’re already tuned into the music of Scherzoo — since Thollot composes most of their tracks in pretty much this same style.

Filed under: New releases, 2021 releases

Related artist(s): François Thollot

More info
http://scherzoo.bandcamp.com/album/happy-lockdown
http://scherzoo.bandcamp.com/album/virtually-spring

 

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