NOPAL, Jean-Marc Foussat and Simon Hénocq

Some days it seems enough to get people's name right, find a cover image, get the title typed correctly and...time for a nap! Seriously though that is not what I am about on these pages. Today it's time for some avant duets between synthesizer and skronky electric guitar, as put forward by Jean-Marc Foussat and Simon Hénocq, respectively. The duo and/or the album is entitled NOPAL (FOU CD 03).

It's edgy avant, sometimes noisy, sometimes surprisingly subdued, but always creative and very electric/electronic. Now I have no idea what segment of the population finds this kind of music interesting other than me, but there must be a fair number since I get readers when I review music such as this.

So what gets me especially interested is the thickly textured complexities that result when Hénocq's guitar comes through fully overloaded or distinctly foregrounded doing something Syd Barrett got fired for doing too much of live with Pink Floyd. That is, this sort of guitar abstractionism coupled with Foussat's creative synthesizer striations and strangulations.

You get 42 minutes of it, all interesting, and I believe you can get it on LP or CD. These are imaginative sound sculptors. If you go for noisy and ever-shifting sound complexes, like your electric guitars on occasion to be played with psychedelic irreverence, this is definitely for you.