Notes from the Mosh Pit:
Alan Dearling
Absolutely motorik psyched-up Kraut rock from the 3-piece France (err, um, from France) on tour in the UK for the first time. A strangely staged show with bass player and the hurdy-gurdy maestro out in the audience playing facing towards drummer, Cyril Bondi (playing with France on this tour), on stage. It was a rammed audience at the Golden Lion in the Calderdale Valley. A cacophonous mosh pit in a busy venue down below the towering Pennines. Stunningly ear and mind-numbing.
France had followed on after a brief set from local, The Universal Veil, who had provided frantic beats and weird sounds from hand-crafted instruments. Sam and Dave were handicapped by having to play on either side of a big drum kit and some techie problems. Interesting and intensely strange. Mostly, during the evening, the stage was bathed in pink and blue, with swirls of smoke, so a mixed batch of images, with many re-colour-balanced in Photoshop!
Here’s a video of France performing live in a somewhat quieter mode with their ‘repetitive drone music’. Mesmeric body-swaying, head and hair-bobbing sounds, FRANCE, 07/08/2022, Rituale Festival in Saint-Roman-de-Cordiers in France.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-YDgN8G5UI
Live on this UK tour, the drum-bass-hurdy-gurdy mix is a bit reminiscent of early Hawkwind, in terms of timbre and volume!
Progarchives.com:
“France are – appropriately enough – a French krautrock trio, formed in 2005 by hurdy-gurdyist, Yann Gourdon, bassist Jérémie Sauvage and drummer Mathieu Tilly, all students at the École des Beaux-Arts in Valence. The three also participate in the various bands of the Le Puy-based avant-garde folk collective La Nòvia. The long shadow of Tony Conrad and Faust’s seminal Outside the Dream Syndicate looms over France’s pulsing minimalist ‘drone-folk’, expressed in over twenty releases of usually limited editions and issued over various labels including Sauvage’s own Standard In-Fi.
Barring their 2010 self-titled debut and its 2011 follow-up Pau, France’s discography mostly consists of room recordings of their hypnotic improvised live shows, performed in the middle of the audience and ranging from around thirty minutes to over an hour of relentless zoned-out jamming, revolving around the steady din of Gourdon’s amplified vielle à roue.
France come highly recommended to fans of Water Damage, Gnod, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Spacemen 3, David Maranha and even Boredoms.”
– Gordy, September 2023
The France set is definitely unique, as it offers a mesmerising, trance bombardment, wave upon wave of pummelling, repetitive, propulsive sound.
The advance promo for France suggests that, “Since around 2004/2005 FRANCE have been ripping the French/Belgian underground scene with their ridiculously-basic sonic-jam formula. Some say it’s kraut, some say it’s drone, some say it’s traditional French music, some say it’s more punk than punk, psychedelic or noise… it just all depends what you can hold on to. France suggest: “Let’s just call it DOPE!”
This contagious, repetitive-drone band were founded in Valence, 2005. As one member of the audience said on-line the following day, “My ears are still ringing!”
France really need to hit the dance stages at festivals in the UK. It was a seriously memorable experience. At the Golden Lion gig, the live acts and punters enjoyed a richly diverse array of World Sounds supplied by Paddy from GNOD playing what the publicity described as: “Rhythmic Trance Inducers, Peat smoke infused folk clangers and Olde Worlde New Trad Bangers.”
The Universal Veil is a duo comprised of Sam A McLoughlin (Twisted Nerve/Pre-Cert Home Entertainment) and Folklore Tapes head honcho David Chatton Barker. Their improvised live performances with their own handmade ‘ritual instruments’ are by turns meditative, trancelike, joyous and surreal. ‘Helios/Hind’ is a fascinating sonic artefact. They’ve put on a number of outdoor sound installations. David emphasises the “improvisational nature of our music” and Sam says it is “Spiritual and Animist nature” and “almost like biofeedback”.
Here’s the link to a lengthy Outer Sounds interview, ‘Environmental Meditation Music’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ISSbw3lZQo
Sam A McLoughlin is a songwriter and electronic artist from the North West of England. His music takes a cut and paste aesthetic, piecing together short sketches and home-recorded ideas into long tracks, mixing everything from wyrd folk, Kraut, tropicalia, experimentation and a strong DIY aesthetic.
McLoughlin has released four EPs on Folklore Tapes and is a regular contributor to the label’s compilations. He also records under the names Tongues Of Light, Samandtheplants (formerly with Alison Cooper of Magpahi) and N.Racker, and is a member of NeoTantrik.
Post- the Tor Fest, Rural Colours released an EP, they describe as “…scrappy percussive loveliness from Todmorden’s Sam McLoughlin.”
It is just possible that you might have come across his work under various guises including N Racker and Tongues of Light. Sam’s ‘The Dawn Trance’ provides a soundscape for the dream-like ‘…soft atmosphere of the start of the day’. It makes good use of his extensive collection of homemade instruments, found objects, analogue synths and harmonium, which can be seen in action in his many youtube videos.
