FAIS QUE TON RÊVE SOIT PLUS LONG QUE LA NUIT

Fais que ton reve soit plus long que la nuit ("Have your dream last longer than the night") is one of the rarest and most curious albums of Vangelis. It pays tribute to the 1968 Paris student riots against the deGaulle establishment. Vangelis and his Aphrodite's Child fellows Demis Roussos and Lukas Sideras stayed there at the time recording their first album. In 1972 Vangelis captured the atmosphere and passion of these student uprisings and his personal experiences. The album offers an effective collage of folk based chansons, protest songs students sang on the barricades, heated discussions, street noise and the typical Vangelis sound effects from the early 70s best known from L'Apocalypse des Animaux, Earth or Ignacio. The album provokes a peculiar melancholy mood. A vinyl copy of Fais que ... is very hard to find. On CD there's only a bootleg existing on which you can find Fais que ... titled as Poem Symphonique together with the 1969 solo album Sex Power. It is not reaching up to Vangelis' masterpieces, but due to the brilliant realisation and the historical audio document the album is more than a collectors/fans only.

This album makes a lot of references to the student movement which saw the light in May 1968 in Paris. Not only in the sub titles of the songs ("Jouissez Sans Entraves", Baisez Sans Carottes"). Both are totally linked with the Front de la Libération de la Femme (Women Liberation Front). These are quite expressive if you do master the French language.

There are some wordings here and there which seem to come out straight from the barricades. Some "dialogues" between the police forces and the students serve as guidelines for this work. I have to say that the mixing is quite well done. Bearing in mind that the original work was released in '71, the result is not bad at all.

The second leg of this album is not so strong: it sounds as a long and revolutionary item. But with no risk since put together in a studio. For those who can grab some French though, there are interesting verbal exchanges.

Depending how close you were from these events you will differently appreciate the whole picture. Between two or three stars.

Two for me.

In 1968 Greece is ruled by "the colonels". It's a bloody dictature that has repressed a student movement with a massacree at the university of Athens. Vangelis and other members of Aphrodite's Child are in France when the "May Movement" guided by Daniel Cohn-Bendit explodes. Making an album of popular chants (without lyrics) and sounds of barricades and riots is a way for Vangelis to express his political position. Said so, the album is very short, just 30 minutes in total. The side A has a very long title that can be simplified as "what matters of the colour of the night?". The track starts to be interesting after 6 minutes, when the "sounds of the movement" leave room to a spacey keyboard. They don't disappear, but as "background noise" they become a comment to the music. At least there's some music. I can understand the reasons behind the album: the frustration for a fascist government in his own country and the sympathy for the left-winged movement in France, but this album doesn't say much from a musical point of view, and from the political point of view it just mentions the facts in froms of noises. "Cela Importe Mon Ami" is a song interrupted by gunshots.

Side B opens with another song. I don't know if it's a traditional or what. I have tried to translate the title using Google and the result has no sense, but it's something about living without wasting time. Apart of it, there's some Vangelis here and there but it's just a document about the political movement of the '68 released in 1971, with a bit of political passion by the author. Only an instrumental part in the middle of Side B is clearly recognizable as Vangelis' stuff.

The second of the two stars is a gift because I believe in the sincerity of the author.

Just one note: an unofficial CD reprint contains two more tracks called "Poem Symphonique", that are not too different.