FRANÇOIS BREANT

"Poursuite Sur Le Peripherique Nord" features sweeping synths that bring disco to mind unfortunately. Love the bass though as drums beat away. The pulsating keyboards after 1 1/2 minutes sounds better to my ears then a calm with piano and a beat takes over. Lots of keyboard sounds before 3 minutes then those sweeping synths are back. Yikes! "8 Aout, Oh.15, 125-eme Rue" has a relaxed start, very mellow with bass and synths standing out. It does turn louder with synths before a calm with picked guitar, keys, bass and drums takes over. A relaxed tune over all though. I like it. More of that intricate guitar 3 minutes in then synths lead the way after 4 minutes as it stays mellow with bass and a beat.

"L'amour Au Grand Air" opens with piano melodies as those sweeping synths are back from earlier then this strong classical vibe takes over. Not into either. This is like music from a TV show or movie. The violin before 3 minutes is laid back with piano and more. A calm follows them more violin at 5 1/2 minutes which sounds so sad. "Cadence D'eperonnage" is my favourite. I like the multi-vocals to start sounding like mellotron choirs almost. Piano helps out then it turns fuller when the vocals step aside.

"Danse Rituele Talmouse" has bright synths and a bright overall sound with percussion. No Albert Marcouer this time around though. High pitched pulsating synths take over as a beat helps out. More synths as well. I'm not into this, too plastic sounding at times. Those pulsating synths are back after 2 minutes as themes are repeated. "L'eveil De L'acrobate" opens with what I believe is synths and keys as drums, bass and violin join in. There's those sweeping synths again 2 minutes in, at least we have some excellent bass here.

"L'obos Rouille Trouve Dans La Dune" has a beat with keys as it builds. Synths come in over top as the bass arrives as well. Some aggressive guitar but it's very brief. It turns much fuller but that will come and go as synths, keys, bass and a beat continue until the violin makes some noise after 2 1/2 minutes. "Les Funeralles Du Voyeur" is my second favourite song on here. Love the atmosphere that floats along as other sounds start to come and go. Suddenly before 2 1/2 minutes we get sequencers. What!? Electronics as the atmosphere disappears and the violin comes in over top of the sequencers. Cool!

"We Ate The Zoo" ends it with just over two minutes of Blasquiz and Stella Vander doing their best opera impressions. This comes across as a musical which I despise. Shoot me now!

So this album certainly has it's moments but far too few to offer up 4 stars. I'll stick with the debut which I spun this morning and it confirmed to me how much better I like it than the sophomore release. I'm glad Didier Lockwood came back playing violin at least.

"Les Journeaux Annoncent La Guerre Generique" got me going the first time I heard it as we get a strong UNIVERS ZERO vibe. Dramatic outbursts of drums, synths and more before a haunting calm arrives but then it kicks in again as contrasts continue. How beautiful is this just before a minute and then it kicks in again. So good! An almost silent calm arrives after 2 1/2 minutes before those dramatic outbursts return. Oh and check out the bass 3 minutes in.

"Vacances A Concarneau" has plenty of intricate sounds with some piano outbursts as the synths come in over top. It's all quite restrained. Some brief guitar just before a minute. The violin comes in ripping it up after 1 1/2 minutes. Themes are repeated then more violin around 2 1/2 minutes that's really impressive.

"De Retour A Paris" has some beautiful piano melodies as the sax joins in. The tempo picks up before 2 minutes as we get piano and sax leading. A calm takes over quickly though that is quite gorgeous with those vocal melodies helping out. It picks up again like before to that Symphonic sound that brings Oldfield to mind.

"Scenes De Foule Et De Pour Suite Pendant Le Carnaval" opens with outbursts of different sounds that will come and go then it settles into a piano, synths and timbales led groove. So much going on here though, bass too. Some vocal melodies come and go sounding like mellotron choirs before it turns avant before 2 1/2 minutes.

"Dilemma De Jeanne Au Restaurant Chinois" has these slowly pulsing synths to start as some sparse piano joins in. Some outbursts of sound and atmosphere follow. It picks up before 2 minutes with Marcouer doing his thing then it calms right down again with atmosphere and sparse piano coming and going. "Survol De Rio" is piano, synths, percussion, violin and more. A pleasant sound here. Sax before 1 1/2 minutes.

"Scenes De Mobili Sation Et Retrouvallies Avec Bruno" along with the opener are my favourites. This is the longest track at close to 10 minutes. Sounds like mellotron choirs again but it's real. Synths and atmosphere before a minute as the mood changes. Marcouer helps out here along with Lockwood. It seems to start over at 2 1/2 minutes with piano outbursts and atmosphere as we get some space too. Drums and violin a minute later as the music starts to come alive with energy. Atmosphere and violin melodies after 4 1/2 minutes as it changes again. Some interesting sounds here. Kind of haunting as well then it starts to build with plenty of synths and more.

"Briser Au Crepuscule Et Fin" ends it and we get piano, synths and violin coming and going. A GENESIS vibe with those synths before a minute surprisingly that will come and go. A change before 2 1/2 minutes as sounds pulse then sax and much more take over. It settles with piano and violin after 3 minutes.

The album cover with Breant pulling the film out gives us a hint at his idea for a sound and visual recording. Of course hanging out with a bunch of Zeuhl musicians over many years has to have an influence as well. A really solid album that Avant fans should appreciate.

Originally appeared in Feedback #70, Oct 02

Breant's musical flexibility was already known from the past and ''Sons optiques'' is another good example of his diverse music tastes in composition.His keyboard and piano work is dominant throughout the album and Breant explores the territories and limits between different fields such as Electronic Music, Zeuhl, Jazz, Fusion and Avant-Garde Music.This unmet blending of course hurts a bit the album's consistency but the overall result is trully experimental in a positive way with Breant offering a virtuosic and ecstatic performance as a whole.The album has often a strong MAGMA influence with some inventive and dissonant piano textures by Breant, often flirting with obscure Avant-Garde soundscapes, and a really spacey atmosphere created by his synthesizers.He is helped by the violins of Lockwood and the percussions of Marceur to make this approach sound even more outlandish.Other tracks are certainly closer to Jazz/Fusion, especially when Jean-Luis Chautemps and Eric Letournex with their saxes take over, with superb piano/synths movements by Breant and the whole back- up group delivering a solid background.Still these pieces have an overall cosmic feeling due to Breant's bizarre electronics.The Musea CD reissue contains a couple of bonus tracks composed by Breant in early-80's at home with a sound close to a mix of Avant-Fusion and Zeuhl.

A bit too cosmic for my tastes, but ''Sons optiques'' weird mix of sounds is actually attractive and inventive.Recommended, especially if you like experimental,electronic or Avant-Garde flavors thrown in your music menu.

The cover photo shows Bréant clutching what looks like a reel of 35mm film stock: a visual clue to the cinematic nature of his (entirely instrumental) music. You can hear it in the first dramatic fanfare of the opening track, complete with hair-raising Halloween scream and ominous piano arpeggios. And you can perhaps discern an imaginary narrative in some of the track titles (but don't quote me on that).

For the sake of lazy reference a comparison could be made to JAN HAMMER's early LP "The First Seven Days", another not exclusively keyboard-driven exercise with Jazz Fusion colorings: hardly Prog Folk, as it was originally labeled here. And there's a Zeuhl connection too, always a handy point of reference for music so hard to classify. Francophile proggers should recognize the name of Didier Lockwood, responsible for the occasional electric violin fill.

The energy of the first few tracks isn't sustained for the length of the entire album, and by the middle of Side Two Bréant seems to be squeezing as many keyboard sounds as he can into each remaining number. But the music has aged remarkably well since 1979, and I'm reassured to find it not entirely forgotten after so many years.

A quick personal postscript. I probably bought the album on the strength of its label, the always reliable Egg Records, at a time when imported music was still easy to find in the US (at least in the San Francisco Bay area: I'm guessing it was an impulse buy at the late, legendary Rather Ripped Records in Berkeley). The LP managed to survive all of my misguided vinyl purges over the years, which if nothing else is a testament of sorts to its enduring quality.

Recorded in the famous Hérouville Chateau and produced by master producer Laurent Thibault, Breant's Sons Optiques is anything but accessible, although some passages might appear ridiculously easy. But many of the tracks are pushing RIO-like, the opening one, even ogling towards Univers Zero. There is a fairly constant Zeuhl reminder (although not quite as much as in the follow-up VEL), but what gets this album's special feel is the incredible mix of influences, a bit like what you'll find on producer Laurent Thibault's album later that year. The concept throughout the album is a sound description of different stages in a child's life during the WW2 and was set as an original soundtrack for an imaginary film Succès De Foule is an incredible track that comes very close to Isao Tomita's very early works on Snowflakes Are Dancing and the closing Baiser Au Crépuscule is almost Henry Tomita Cow-esque.

Added on are two early 80's tracks that have been reworked in 01, for the release of this album. How much were these two track rewritten is anybody's guess, but they do sound out of context with the rest of the album, even if it's clear it isn't the same recording sessions. Souffleurs De Verre is very much a piano piece while the Montlhéry track has an almost semi-dance groove. Nothing horrible, but not bringing in added value on the original album. Much recommended..

Adopting a more informatics artworks, VEL was not recorded at Herouville studios like its predecessor and it was self-produced. These characteristics will turns the album a very different one from Sons Optiques, certainly less complex and more accessible, even a bit new-agey. Bréant playing much synths on this album than on SO, making the album less organic and less complex and if there wasn't, thankfully, Lockwood's violin helping out on half the tracks, but the absence of the guitar (except for one track and it's almost a joke) is too noticeable. The album closes on the only song that has vocals (Blasquiz and Stella Vander) and it's a ridiculous ditty that IMHO doesn't help the album

About the three bonus tracks (totalling some 9 minutes), we find again a bit the same deal as for Sons Optiques: 80's written and recorded pieces that were recorded for this album's release in 02. Of these three, only Fille De La Vie could've fit in with the original album, the other two... VEL is a much less interesting album than SO, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't have its own charms and should be forgotten about. No, it's like a shy little sister that would've grown in the shadow of an encumbering bigger sister.