The Next Phase
With a mega 14-disc box set out to celebrate the career of Art Zoyd, one of avant-rock’s most underground of underground bands, Prog spoke to Gérard Hourbette and Thierry Zaboitzeff to discover the story behind the French band that made music without limi
Never underestimate the importance of the humble transit van in the lives of musicians and the music they play. For all its practical applications, the van has never just been a way of getting from A to B. Life in the van is something more than that. Some players can tell you almost to the year, month and day how long they’ve been getting out of the back of the van as a prelude to a gig. Some will recall writing songs as the wheels trundled over the tarmac. Most will have a story about life on the motorways, the sights and the scenes, the fights and dreams that come and go as the miles and the wear and tear on both the transport and its passengers accrue.
Experimental French outfit Art Zoyd are no exception. The band’s violinist and keyboard player, Gérard Hourbette, remembers that in the early 70s, the band lived and slept in the van. “In the winter it was very cold and we pitched a tent inside the truck,” he remembers. “One night, while I was sitting alone, watching the campfire burning out and dreaming, I suddenly heard a noise in the bushes. I picked up a stick and silently walked around the truck, when suddenly this lout covered in a white sheet fell on me, screaming. I was ready to fight and defend my life and that of my comrades who were sleeping. Suddenly, the man burst out laughing – it was our drummer, the joker of the band. No surprise that subsequently, Art Zoyd never had another drummer!”
That story appears in the booklet of 44 ½: Live And Unreleased Works, a lavish 14-disc box set released late last year by American label Cuneiform Records. Crammed with rarities, demos and previously unavailable live performances, it celebrates the work of one of France’s most underground of underground bands. Their reputation as one of the more uncompromising outfits on the avant-rock scene was cemented with the release of their 1976 debut album, Symphonie Pour le Jour Où Brûleront les Cités, roughly translated as Symphony For The Day Cities Will Burn. This self-issued album was about as far away as it was possible to get from the only other Art Zoyd release at that point, Sangria, a groovy, psychedrenched single released in 1971.
Back then, the group were led by a hip guitarist and Zappa lookalike, Rocco Fernandez. “They were already a ‘famous’ group in Valenciennes.
They had recorded a single and travelled in a van that belonged to their record label,” says Hourbette, recalling how he came to be recruited after meeting Fernandez.
Keen to join, he insisted that his childhood pal Thierry Zaboitzeff step into the ranks of Art Zoyd as well. It would be a life-changing moment for all parties concerned, though the slightly boozy whiff that wafts from
Sangria’s happy vibes gives no hint of what was to come. That only became apparent once life in the van became too much for Rocco, who quit and left the direction of travel in the eager hands of Zaboitzeff and Hourbette.
“Like many other teenagers of my time, I was very attracted to the rock music of the late 60s,” says Zaboitzeff. “I laboriously scraped guitars to try to understand and emulate. I knew that I wanted to do this job and lead the life that goes with it, but little by little, I realised that all this was often too superficial. I was interested in Hendrix, Zappa and Soft Machine, but then went back to Miles Davis, Stravinsky, Bartók, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Berio… all this in no particular order.”
While Zaboitzeff may have lacked the formal musical education of the conservatoire-trained Hourbette, he more than made up for it with a formidable instrumental technique. The alchemy that grew between the two very different players was crucial to the distinctive sound they would forge. With a line-up now consisting of Alain Eckert on guitar and percussion, and Jean-Pierre Soarez on trumpet and percussion, alongside Hourbette on violin and Zaboitzeff’s bass, vocals and percussion, Art Zoyd were never going to be in the mainstream.
“We were four guys who decided in 1972 to make a rock band without drums, without the clichés of rock, and to constantly push the limits in the composition and the instrumentation,” says Zaboitzeff.
That act set Art Zoyd outside of the mainstream in which most bands of the day operated. The lack of a drummer should not suggest for one minute that Art Zoyd lack either punch or dynamics. Symphonie Pour le Jour Où Brûleront les Cités conjured a raw and frequently jagged aural space. An imposing and at times intimidating listen, the taut string lines, bursts of supple brass and bass counterpoint, demented vocals and skittering chords fuse into a nightmarish landscape filled with dark, foreboding shadows.
The cities evoked here are alienated, contested places whose towers, terraces and monuments are connected on the map by dread, uncertainty and claustrophobia. Lacking any of the usual resting points in rock music, such as steady grooves, repetitive rhythms and hooks, the themes
“We were four guys who decided in 1972 to make a rock band without drums, without the clichés of rock, and to constantly push the limits in the composition and the instrumentation.” Thierry Zaboitzeff
found on that debut album are typical of Art Zoyd’s uncompromising methodology, which would then extend to a discography that includes over 20 subsequent albums. If you like your prog music to be filled with sweet tunes, beatific guitar and rhapsodic keyboard solos, Art Zoyd are not the band you’re looking for.
In joining the Rock In Opposition movement in the late 70s, Art Zoyd joined a group of bands that included Sweden’s Samla Mammas Manna, Belgium’s Univers Zero, Italy’s Stormy Six and the UK’s Henry Cow among others. While stylistically quite diverse, the common thread that ran between the groups was their desire to operate outside the dictates of the music industry. Through an alternative network it was possible to bring the music to audiences that regular promoters didn’t want to touch.
Hourbette explains, “Rock In Opposition allowed us to exchange concerts and we could play in almost all European countries. We were all rebel groups, iconoclasts in our way, artistically and politically.”
Despite changes in personnel, a defining characteristic of the band’s work has been a willingness to experiment and work with practitioners across other disciplines. The 80s saw them increasingly collaborating on multimedia events. In 1985 they released Le Mariage du Ciel et de l’enfer (The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell), which was the score to a ballet choreographed by the celebrated dancer Roland Petit, who had worked with Pink Floyd in 1972. The group were also creating ambitious soundtracks to accompany screenings of classic silent movies by director FW Murnau that included Nosferatu and Faust, and later, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
“I like the idea of crossing audiences, of ‘decompartmentalising’ them and thus of widening them,” says Hourbette, who thinks hybridisation, openness and the incessant search for new forms are what Art Zoyd do best.
With any long-lived ensemble, there will come a point where the different visions as to where the band should be heading will lead to tensions. Zaboitzeff says that by 1996, the common ground the members of Art Zoyd had occupied was nonexistent.
“My colleagues wanted to move towards more ‘contemporary’ music and open our studios to various composers for residencies,” he says. “That wasn’t a view I shared. I dreamed of an Art Zoyd-plus, out live with real musicians and using fewer machines.”
“Rock In Opposition allowed us to exchange concerts and we could play in almost all European countries. We were all rebel groups, iconoclasts in our way, artistically and politically.” Gérald Hourbette
Following what he describes as multiple and insoluble tensions, he quit. The psychological damage that such a departure inflicts upon those affected shouldn’t be underestimated.
“Any group ends up having artistic divergences,” offers Hourbette. “Me, I wanted to open Art Zoyd to new adventures focused on music creation and research, while Thierry did not want that. Realising that we no longer had the same values was the lowest point in Art Zoyd’s history for me.”
As Zaboitzeff forged a solo career, Hourbette continued to steer Art Zoyd through the cultural crosscurrents. That sense of unfinished business, however, led both men to entertain the idea of performing together and, in 2015, at a special concert as part of the Rock In Opposition Festival in Carmaux, France, Hourbette and Zaboitzeff were reunited on stage.
Joined by an expanded line-up, performing material from across the band’s considerable repertoire was exciting, but not without its challenges. “What was most difficult was not the choice of music but the mixing of the musicians from the current line-up who had not known the old pieces and the old musicians who did not know the new material,” says Hourbette.
That concert is included in the 44 ½: Live And Unreleased Works. Zaboitzeff, who worked alongside Hourbette on compiling the box set, was pleased to revisit the material of the band he was a member of for 25 years. “It was a wonderful and exceptional adventure that opened up so many things and so many artistic doors for me,” he says.
Hourbette is currently planning more archive box sets and new releases that include a virtual reality project. And as Art Zoyd near their half-century milestone, there’s a very real sense of celebration. The group are continuing in much the same way that they began, he explains: “A centre combining creation, pedagogy, composers in residence, a record label: a real Tower of Babel, a tool for the creation of music.”
44 ½: Live And Unreleased Works is out now via Cuneiform. See www.artzoyd.net for more information.