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LA SOCIETE DES TIMIDES A LA PARADE DES OISEAUX, "LE COMBAT OCCULTE"
This is the second La STPO release to surface on Portland's Beta-LactamRing Records, the new home for this strangest of French prog-rockensembles. La STPO, whose name translates literally as "Shy Society atthe Bird Parade," were discovered by legendary French experimentalistsDDAA (Defecit Des Annees Anterieurs—"The Deficit of Former Years"), whoreleased the band's first EP on their own Illusion Productions back in1986.
Beta-Lactam Ring
With a name only slightly less stupid than German contemporariesHNAS (Hirsche Nichts Aufs Sofa—"Moose Without A Sofa"), and an eclecticsensibility only slightly less whacked-out and surrealistic, La STPOhave trudged on in near-total obscurity for two decades, with arevolving door membership that has included more than 30 musicians overthe years. BLR's '86-'90 reissued the hard to find Illusion EP, together with an equally impossible-to-find LP from 1990. Le Combat Occultedoesn't reissue anything, but instead collects a generous amount ofunreleased, alternate, rare and live tracks drawn from the band'sentire history. La STPO records are always scattershot, rapidlychanging, almost pathologically eclectic affairs, and this one evenmore so, as most of these tracks were not even conceived in eachother's presence. In a strange way, this increased randomnesscontributes to the kind of Dada pranksterism that the band appear to beaiming for, the majority of their songs senselessly shifting musicalgears in ways that only make sense within the post-RIO experimentalprog milieu in which they are generally considered. For all of theirdeliberate goofiness, however, there is very competent musicianship atthe heart of La STPO, and only a talented band could pull off thesebreathlessly dynamic rock gymnastics, switching from histrionicstop-start prog-rock virtuosity to Neanderthal free jazz skronk, toSpike Jones-style cartoon wackiness, to percussive breakdowns onmallets and sheet metal, to tuneful psychedelic ballads and austerechamber music, often within the span of a few minutes. The sillinesscan be downright exhausting at times, but it certainly keeps thingsmoving; I challenge anyone to be bored by the music found on this disc.With their opaque lyrical aesthetic and sleeve designs, the bandclearly align themselves with a long tradition of Europeanavant-gardism of the kind exemplified by Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst,but they also invoke Russian Suprematism in tracks like "TechniquesExplositionnistes," giving shoutouts to Malevich and Kandinsky. Unlikeother bands such as Nurse With Wound or HNAS that traffic in thesekinds of kitchen-sink compositions, La STPO actually have the musicalchops to pull off these death defying leaps of musical illogic withoutresorting to tape-splicing or plunderphonia. There is a lot more thatcould be said about music as chock full of complexity, eccentricity andobscurity as that made by La STPO, but it's best to just be jerkedalong by these intelligently insane and spectacularly talentedmusicians, and just see where the journey leads.
Beta-Lactam Ring
With a name only slightly less stupid than German contemporariesHNAS (Hirsche Nichts Aufs Sofa—"Moose Without A Sofa"), and an eclecticsensibility only slightly less whacked-out and surrealistic, La STPOhave trudged on in near-total obscurity for two decades, with arevolving door membership that has included more than 30 musicians overthe years. BLR's '86-'90 reissued the hard to find Illusion EP, together with an equally impossible-to-find LP from 1990. Le Combat Occultedoesn't reissue anything, but instead collects a generous amount ofunreleased, alternate, rare and live tracks drawn from the band'sentire history. La STPO records are always scattershot, rapidlychanging, almost pathologically eclectic affairs, and this one evenmore so, as most of these tracks were not even conceived in eachother's presence. In a strange way, this increased randomnesscontributes to the kind of Dada pranksterism that the band appear to beaiming for, the majority of their songs senselessly shifting musicalgears in ways that only make sense within the post-RIO experimentalprog milieu in which they are generally considered. For all of theirdeliberate goofiness, however, there is very competent musicianship atthe heart of La STPO, and only a talented band could pull off thesebreathlessly dynamic rock gymnastics, switching from histrionicstop-start prog-rock virtuosity to Neanderthal free jazz skronk, toSpike Jones-style cartoon wackiness, to percussive breakdowns onmallets and sheet metal, to tuneful psychedelic ballads and austerechamber music, often within the span of a few minutes. The sillinesscan be downright exhausting at times, but it certainly keeps thingsmoving; I challenge anyone to be bored by the music found on this disc.With their opaque lyrical aesthetic and sleeve designs, the bandclearly align themselves with a long tradition of Europeanavant-gardism of the kind exemplified by Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst,but they also invoke Russian Suprematism in tracks like "TechniquesExplositionnistes," giving shoutouts to Malevich and Kandinsky. Unlikeother bands such as Nurse With Wound or HNAS that traffic in thesekinds of kitchen-sink compositions, La STPO actually have the musicalchops to pull off these death defying leaps of musical illogic withoutresorting to tape-splicing or plunderphonia. There is a lot more thatcould be said about music as chock full of complexity, eccentricity andobscurity as that made by La STPO, but it's best to just be jerkedalong by these intelligently insane and spectacularly talentedmusicians, and just see where the journey leads.
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