(Free Jazz, Avantgarde Jazz) Francois Tusques - Free Jazz - 1965, FLAC (tracks), lossless

Interesting piece of trivia - Colette Magny was artistic director for the initial release on Moloudji.
Continuing with the Francois Tusques postings and backing up a couple of years, this was recorded on 26 October 1965 at the Comedie de Champs Elysee in Paris and issued on the small Moloudji label the year after. The pic above is clipped from an Ebay auction and the disc ended up above my price range, to say the least. So we're settling for a cd reissue on the In Situ label from 1991 (at a considerably nicer price). I believe the cd is by and large out of print, though I imagine it's possible to pick up copies in France still. This came from Japan, btw.
This was at the birth of French free jazz and involved a number of musicians who were to put their distinct footprint on the scene in years to come. Francois Tusques has been partially documented here already and Michel Portal, Bernard Vitet and Bernard (Beb) Guerin were to play together in Michel Portal Unit in the 70s (we'll get to that in due course) and they were to play hosts and partners to many arriving from the other side of the Atlantic later on.
This is a very mature and cohesive outfit for a first record I find. I've no idea whether they had played toghether before or for how long, but it sounds like they know each other pretty well. The music veers from arranged to improvised passages in a very smooth manner and it's hard to know what is what. There are hardly any extended solo sections on this record, time signatures change rapidly, pieces of melody are picked up, tossed around and disappear again. Instruments intertwine throughout the entire record and everybody is on tiptoe and on the alert to what's going on around them. Decidedly "free", yet retaining melody, structure, rhythm, but never for too long before somebody comes up with another idea. Remarkable, innovatory! This was at the birth of European free jazz, yet of a different kind from that emerging on the west side of the Atlantic. But one can imagine someone like Dolphy fitting into this company (and maybe Joe Harriott, too).