Hector Zazou - Geographies (Made to Measure, Vol.5) '2021

Tracks list

Hector Zazou Geographies — remastered edition — vinyl, CD &
digital out 28 May 2021 on Crammed Discs

Geographies was recorded in Paris between 1982 and 1984, with a group of no less
than twenty-five instrumentists and vocalists. Beautifully scored for strings,
woodwind, brass, guitar, piano, synth, percussion, sound effects and voices, the
nine pieces abound in colorful atmospheres and eerie moments.

The album opens with Cinecittà, a title which might indicate Zazou’s
fondness for certain Italian film music composers.
Denise à Venise is reminiscent of the heyday of what is known as
mélodies françaises (a genre whose major exponents were the likes of
Debussy, Ravel, Satie).

Sidi Bel Abbès, a piece for string quartet and classical vocalists, is an
evocation of Hector Zazou’s childhood memories in Algeria.
The album takes a lighter turn with the pop-folk-y Vera C, and its vocals in
Spanish, before plunging into mysterious territory with Pali Kao. Does this
title refer the eponymous battle which took place in China during the Second
Opium War? Or to L’usine de Pali-Kao, an alternative arts centre in
Paris, which hosted numerous exhibitions and performances in the early
‘80s? Or more simply to the name of a street in the Belleville
neighbourhood, near Zazou’s erstwhile domicile? As it happens, we
recently found out that Zazou originally intended to call the piece
L’Opéra de Pali Kao, and to subtitle its four sections a) Le jeune
matelot, b) Les sirènes, c) Les brumes de Pali Kao, d) Le jour se
lève.
The next three tracks, Au bout du monde (‘At the End of the
World’), Motel du sud (‘Motel of the South’) and Sous les
bougainvilliers (‘Under the bougainvillea’) are mostly instrumental
and contain some Zazou’s finest and most poetic compositions and
arrangements.
The album proper closes with Des Cocotiers (‘Coconut Trees’), a
dreamy track with child-like vocals, vibraphones, strings, flute, bassoon and
field recordings.

Geographies is complemented by 13 Proverbes africains (pour quatuor vocal), a
collection of thirteen short pieces for classical vocal quartet which were first
included in the first CD edition of the album, in the late ‘80s.
It’s now available as a digital download via a card included in the vinyl
edition. The remastered versions of Geographies and 13 Proverbes africains are
also being reissued on CD and digital.

Written by Zazou, the lyrics for 13 Proverbes africains (pour quatuor vocal) are
supposedly based on (real or invented) African proverbs. This is probably
related to Hector Zazou’s fascination with the work of eccentric French
writer Raymond Roussel (1877-1933), whose work exerted a strong influence on
many 20th century writers, including the Surrealists, the Oulipo group and
nouveau roman writers. One of Roussel’s most famous works is Impressions
d’Afrique (‘Impressions of Africa’), a totally imaginary
travel adventure story whose underlying structure is completely based on
linguistic games and wordplay. Zazou’s interest in the work of Roussel
led him to stage a music/visual performance inspired by Roussel’s
Impressions d’Afrique, which took place sometime in the late ‘70s
at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

On another note: during Made To Measure’s first decade (’84 to
’94), the back cover of most albums in the series featured a sentence
which described what the music had supposedly been created for. “Made to
Measure” for such and such film, dance performance etc. As many albums
were actually imaginary soundtracks, the artists would come up with their own,
often quirky variation on the sentence. Hector Zazou went for “Made to
Measure to flesh out the theory of post-modernism”. He felt that, on this
album, his approach to chamber music shared a common spirit with the work of
certain so-called po-mo, neoclassical- musicians or painters (such as for
example Gérard Garouste), whose declared objective was to become more
conscious of the way artists always position themselves in relation to systems
of representations rooted in the past. They adopted an attitude which was
simultaneously ironic, irreverent and nostalgic in its use of quotations and
references. In the three following decades, the term
‘postmodernism’ has obviously been used -positively and negatively-
in a wide variety of contexts, so this was just a reminder of what it could have
meant for Hector Zazou in 1985... 

Tracklist:
1 01. Hector Zazou - Ciné citta: Gare centrale (Remastered) (03:15)
1 02. Hector Zazou - Denise a Venise (Remastered) (05:19)
1 03. Hector Zazou - Sidi Bel Abbes (Remastered) (05:42)
1 04. Hector Zazou - Vera C. (Remastered) (02:32)
1 05. Hector Zazou - Pali Kao (Remastered) (04:23)
1 06. Hector Zazou - Au bout du monde (Remastered) (03:56)
1 07. Hector Zazou - Motel Du Sud (Remastered) (01:26)
1 08. Hector Zazou - Sous les bougainvilliers (Remastered) (03:07)
1 09. Hector Zazou - Des cocotiers (Remastered) (05:20)
1 10. Hector Zazou - La tendresse de la glu (Remastered) (01:19)
1 11. Hector Zazou - Remonter le Courant (Remastered) (01:21)
1 12. Hector Zazou - Les anneaux dor (Remastered) (01:11)
1 13. Hector Zazou - Celui qui monte (Au baobab) (Remastered) (02:46)
1 14. Hector Zazou - Le conducteur déléphants (Remastered) (01:10)
1 15. Hector Zazou - La femme est une eau profonde (Remastered) (01:01)
1 16. Hector Zazou - La perdrix (Remastered) (01:48)
1 17. Hector Zazou - Lentendement de la femme (Remastered) (01:15)
1 18. Hector Zazou - Le borgne na quun oeil (Remastered) (01:06)
1 19. Hector Zazou - Les arbres de la foret (Remastered) (00:27)
1 20. Hector Zazou - Le buffle (Remastered) (00:39)
1 21. Hector Zazou - Un papillon (Remastered) (02:07)
1 22. Hector Zazou - La souris pue (Remastered) (01:00)

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