LARD FREE - I'm Around About Midnight (1975) GATEFOLD 180 gram LP

Replica Records’ brand-new reissue beautifully reproduces the original 1973 gatefold cover, and is pressed on 180 gr. vinyl in a limited edition of 500. Wild and not to be missed!

Recorded in Paris during a three-day session and released in 1975, Lard Free’s second LP, “I’m Around About Midnight”, encounters the band with a significantly different line up. This time, joining Gilbert Artman, is Antoine Duvernet on alto sax and flute, Alain Audat on synthesizer, and none other than Richard Pinhas - at the same moment he was making waves in Heldon - taking the helm on guitar and playing counterpoint to the drummer in a brilliant series of explorations.  Launching in with a droning, synth driven cosmic soundscape - “Violez l'Espace de Son Réfrigérant” - that is pregnant with sounds of North Africa and the Middle East, the band then dives into a unique form of rhythmic prog that peppers a heady amount of humor into its brooding gloom, that shifts and evolves into different manifestations over the album’s length. Arguably the most fascinating and distinct of these are three works that stand slightly apart and establish the album’s creative range; “Tatkooz à Roulette” - primarily constructed from appreciating synths that foreshadows entire movements of electronic music that wouldn’t emerge until the 1990s - “Does East Bakestan Belong to Itself”, a wild gesture built around minimalist vibraphone lines, and “Even Silence Stops When Trains Come”, a work for piano and synth that makes interesting nods to the continuous music of Lubomyr Melnyk and works like Hans Otte's The Book of Sounds. Diverse, ambitious, and an endlessly thrilling listen, Lard Free’s “I’m Around About Midnight” is a true wonder of French electronic experimentation and prog.