Jean Schwarz, Philip Beetz, Jacques Lejeune - Des Musiques Des Sons, Hommage A... (2023)

May 2023; as referenced in the description to "Ritratto Di Giovane, Symphonie Pour Un Enfant Seul" ([CP 193-193.5 CD]) here is, at long last, the C.P. replica edition of the absurdly rare 1974 "Musical Business/Calling Card" LP "Des Musiques Des Sons", collecting work by the French Composers Jean Schwarz, Philip Beetz, & Jacques Lejeune (with a little bit of Guy Reibel thrown in for good measure) & issued in a "Private Press in a 100 copies edition" to give to friends & prospective clients to drum up licensing & sync work (ala that Aphex Twin "Melodies from Mars" set).

Finding this one has been something of an ordeal; after scouring the record stalls in the Paris Saint Ouen markets for decades, I finally made a friend-of-a-friend connect and ended up waiting on the street nearby the Puces in the 18th for a few hours for said to come and unlock the trunk of his car where copies of both "Des Musiques" and the sole Beetz-led Soleil Masqué title "Hommage A ..." were being stored. Long story short, I ended up only with the latter (and some well-meaning but ultimately bad acid that, unfortunately, I took just before a performance of Giselle Vienne's "This Is How You Will Disappear" making my evening somewhat... complicated). But this karmic mishap led to perhaps one of my greatest strokes of luck; months later a copy was just sitting there, for €20, amidst a bunch of other Schwarz titles in the "Jazz" section of a small stall in the Marches Dauphine, complete with a stapled-on business card return-stamped from Schwarz's Rue De Bellevue address with a hand-written note (wonderfully recreated in the inner-panels herein).

So, without further adieu the C.P. P.T.B. can finally present you with this blessed affair, dovetailing raw Concrète & quite Avant-Garde GRM-aligned bleep of the highest order with confusingly "Genre" attempts in that grand library fashion (if the staid wanderings of the first few tracks scare you off, trust me, stick with it!). In addition, the entirety of the "Hommage A . . ." set (similarly mired in genre work, albeit with many stellar cuts & some inspired synth-led cues by Gérard "Stéphane Kastor" Doulssane, the Australian composer Lawrence "Stuart Hondes" Whiffin, Serge Biondi, Gilbert Dias, and of course our man Beetz) is presented at the tail-end of the disc (for a whopping TRT of 79:55).

It's times like this in which the entire premise & machinations of the whole C.P. setup are made abundantly clear, and that this (after many failed attempts at restoring from the somewhat thrashed copy, the C.P. restoration engineer had an "AHA" moment resulting in this comparatively pristine transfer) is seeing the light of day in the month of the 18th anniversary of said makes perfect sense; enjoy!