Review: Aksak Maboul – Un Peu de L’Ame des Bandits (1980)

Un Peu de L’Ame des Bandits is the second studio album by Belgian avant-prog band Aksak Maboul (sometimes known as Aqsak Maboul), formed in 1977.

Aksak Maboul was part of the second wave of the Rock In Opposition movement founded by Henry Cow. It was in this scene that Aksak Maboul’s co-founding member, multi-instrumentalist Marc Hollander, met Henry Cow’s drummer Chris Cutler and guitarist Fred Frith and asked them to join Aksak Maboul’s next album. And with the addition of Univers Zero’s wind player Michel Berckmans a little earlier, the band was an avant-prog supergroup. Other key members of the band are cellist Denis Van Hecke and keyboardist Frank Wuyts.

Ex-Henry Cow wind player Geoff Leigh had also been part of the band for six months before Un Peu de L’Ame des Bandits, but he disappeared(!) just before the recording sessions. Fortunately, he has since been found and his fine playing can be heard for example on Artaud Beats’ excellent album Logos (2015).

Un Peu de L’Ame des Bandits , which consists mostly of instrumental music, was recorded in Switzerland at Sunrise Studios in late 1979 and would be released in January 1980. Incidentally, the studio is the same place where Henry Cow’s last album Western Culture and all three studio albums by Art Bears were recorded. Aksak Maboul’s Hollander also made a guest appearance on Art Bears’ albums.

Un Peu de L’Ame des Bandits starts with the great song ”A Modern Lesson (Bo Diddley)”.

Built around a beat-up riff borrowedfrom Bo Didley, the song features some truly hysterical backwards vocalisation and wicked fiddle squeals from Frith. The song rattles and rattles along with a hilariously quirky kick from the occasionally sped-up drum track. ”A Modern Lesson (Bo Diddley)” also contains subtle excerpts from future tracks on the album and acts as a trailer for the whole album. Really great and crazy music. If I was forced at gunpoint to choose the twenty best songs I’ve ever heard, ”A Modern Lesson (Bo Diddley)” would definitely make the list!

Next up is tango. Yep tango. A somewhat wacky tango, but a tango nonetheless. ”Palmiers en Pots” was composed by cutting up bits and pieces of random tango sheet music and then randomly gluing them together. The musicians then learned to play this mishmash and played it live in one take. And it works. You can also compose like that!

””Tango” was composed with ”hat, scissors and glue” and features several popular tangos cut up and reassembled at random; the resulting ”opus” was learnt and performed live in one take.” -Marc Hollander

The album bounces from genre to genre, but still manages to sound like its own weird self and not just a random mix of genres. For example, ”I viaggi formano la gioventu (Truc Turc)” offers delicious Middle Eastern atmospheres as an arrangement of a Turkish folk song, and then again on the short ”Inoculating Rabies (Pogo)” the band seems to be doing some kind of punk parody. On ”Inoculating Rabies (Pogo)” the rest of the band (accompanied by an electrically amplified cello) rattles along in the background with a jagged rock beat that sounds like it was recorded in a rusty metal bucket, and above it all, Berckmans’ bassoon and Hollander’s bass clarinet float and duet brightly and beautifully.

Most of the music on the album was composed by Hollander, but Frith composed one of the best songs on the album in the middle of the sessions. Opening with a quick bassoon riff by Berckmans, the wryly twitching ”Geistige Nacht [Rondo]” features a feisty soprano sax solo by Hollander. The track is clearly related to the music Frith made for his solo albums in the 80s, but the more acoustic and chamber music-like instrumentation distinguishes it nicely from, say, the tracks on the Gravity album released with Bandits the same year. Frith doesn’t play guitar at all on the track, but sticks to bass.

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On the B-side, the mood becomes a little more serious. While the A-side seemed to draw from many different cultures and musical styles, the 23-minute ”Cinema”, which fills the second half of the album, seems to be a clearer exploration of Western modern art music. The slow-building track occasionally lapses into some dull avant-garde chugging and whirring but also contains some really nice dark sections and clever Henry Cow-esque development. In fact, some of the music in the long piece could well be described as roughly ”Henry Cow meets Univers Zero”. ”Cinema” contains some of the most stunning and powerful ”rock band as chamber orchestra” moments I’ve ever heard. The song is also an excellent extreme example of the alternation between complex and precisely notated music and free improvisation that is typical of avant-prog.

“My abiding recollection of the recording itself is of a series of jaw-dropping moments when, one after another, my fellow band-members whipped out some ridiculous overdub or negotiated a series of hair-raising musical slaloms, as if retying a lace.” – Chris Cutler

And that’s not all. The CD reissue, released by the Hollander-founded Crammed label, features a bonus track after ” Cinema ”, the charming ”Bosses de crossess” with the band Honeymoon Killers, where avant-prog sophistication meets punky new wave spirit (vocals by Véronique Vincent) in a brash way. The 2018 vinyl release is accompanied by a bonus CD called Before and After Bandits, over an hour long, containing ten never-before-released live or demo tracks charting Aksak Maboul’s journey from 1977 to 2015.

AfterUn Peu de L’Ame des Bandits , Aksak Maboul took a back seat while Hollander concentrated on his experimental music label Crammed. The band only returned in 2014 with the release of Ex-Futur Album. The Ex-Futur Album had been recorded between 1980-83, but was ultimately unreleased. Ex-Futur Album took Aksak Maboul’s style in a completely new eclectic electro-pop direction. Finally, in the spring of 2020, Aksak Maboul released its first all-new album in decades. The double album, Figures, combines different facets of Aksak Maboul, bringing together the avant-prog of the early days with the art-pop trend introduced by Ex-Futur Album.

Un Peu de L’Ame des Bandits is a somewhat disjointed album as it experiments with so many different styles, but all are united by a captivating joy of experimentation and a general boisterous and good-humoured strangeness. Un Peu de L’Ame des Bandits is a truly delightful album and, in my opinion, not only the best album by this band, which veers from one strange genre to another, but also one of the most significant releases of the entire avant-prog genre. And in general one of the best albums of the 80s.

Best tracks: ”A Modern Lesson (Bo Diddley)” ”Geistige Nacht (Rondo)”, ”Cinema”

Rating: 5 out of 5.
Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI

Side A

  1. ”A Modern Lesson [Bo Diddley]” (Hollander, sov.. Frith, Hollander, Jauniaux) – 4:58
  2. ”Palmiers en Pots”
    ”[Trio (from Nuits D’Argentine)]” (Verchuren) – 1:25
    ”[Tango]” (Wuyts, Hollander) – 1:59
  3. ”Geistige Nacht [Rondo]” (Frith, so. Frith) – 5:18
  4. ”I Viaggi Formano la Gioventú [Truc Turc]” (trad. turkkilainen kansansävel sov.. Kenis, Aksak Maboul) – 5:09
  5. ”Inoculating Rabies [Pogo]” (van Hecke, Wuyts) – 1:47

Side B

  1. ”Cinema [Knokke]”
    ”Ce Qu’On Peut Voir Avec Un Bon Microscope” (Hollander, Wuyts, Aksak Maboul) – 7:25
    ”Alluvions” (Hollander, Wuyts, arr. Kenis, Aksak Maboul) – 5:27
    ”Azinou Crapules” (Hollander, Wuyts) – 7:05
    ”Age Route Brra! (Radio Sofia)” (Aksak Maboul) – 2:48

Muusikot

Marc Hollander: organ (A1,A4,B1), piano (A1,B1), clarinet (A1), bass clarinet (A1,A5,B1), saxophone (A1), drum machine (A1), alto saxophone (A2,B1), soprano saxophone (A3,A4), dumbeg (A4), ”samplet” (A4), xylophone (B1), percussion (B1. 2) Frank Wuyts: drums (A1), pinball (A1), recorder (A1), piano (A2-4,B1), synthesizer (A3,A4,B1), percussion (B1), choir (A1) Michel Berckmans: bassoon (A1-3,A5,B1), oboe (A1,A3,A4,B1), choir (A1) Denis van Hecke: cello (A1-4,B1), electric cello (A4,A5,B1), vocals (A4,A5,B1), rhythm guitar (A5) Catherine Jauniaux: vocals (A1,B1), pinball (A1) Fred Frith: guitar (A1,A4,A5,B1), violin (A1,A2), viola (A1), bass guitar (A1,A3,A5,B1), prepared guitar (B1) Chris Cutler: drums (A1-3,A5,B1), percussion (B1), radio (B1)

Producer: Aksak Maboul

Label: Crammed

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