Fille Qui Mousse - Trixie Stapleton 291 (1973/1994)
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Album: Fille Qui Mousse - Trixie Stapleton 291
Released: 1973 (1994)
Genre: Prog-, Psych-, Jazz-, Experimental-, Avant-Rock
Gnosis Rating: 9.92
Mellow Records - MMP 197
Originally recorded in 1972 by a band often referred to as the French Faust. They mixed collage, experimental 70's rock, surreal poetry and psychedelic rock. - Greatest Hits
...Still in the experimental side of French rock music, Fille Qui Mousse was one of the most original. In opposition to classic rock standards they delivered avant-rock, radical compositions as Faust, Can had done... - Philippe Blache
Fille Qui Mousse ("Girl With Froth"??) is one the most mythical albums to be released(?) from France. Recorded in 1972, it was issued in '73 (evidently only as a test pressing in an edition of maybe 50) by the legendary Futura label. Often referred to as the French Faust, FQM's album mixed collage, psychedelic rock, surreal poetry, and organically tapped noise purity with the absolute best of experimental 70s rock-and-beyond. Was bootlegged a few years ago by the Italian Mellow label, but still very difficult to get ahold of. One of the essential reissues of the 70s rock underground. "Straight off, we plunge into that Faust structure...riffing with a psychedelic bent, hints of Gong too...we move into bizarrely constructed patterns of percussive sound and chopped-up rock music, and just as a musical focus takes shape it disappears. A poem, recited by a girl, over an urban landscape populated by numerous barking dogs then gives way to an intensely strange mangled web of sound that's almost brain numbing. And, yet more in the way of strangeness is a piano based piece that recalls some of Roger Doyle's early experiments. The only actual song has the most bizarre lyrics (in English) and is followed by an excursion in distorted and processed guitar. Next is where the folk music comes in, but even with gypsy violin FQM's interpretation of folk is strange and twisted. Finally, we return to the psychedelic jamming that opened the album, but with a jazzier edge, ending the album perfectly - Exposure
This album has a srange history, but not as strange as the music it offers. Se taire pour une femme trop belle (Shutting up for a woman too pretty) is the first and only album to have been recorded by the French collective Fille Qui Mousse (Frothing Girl). It was recorded in July 1971 in a single day of studio time for the Futura label. Its release was cancelled due to the label struggling with financial problems, but about five test copies were pressed and "escaped" to build a cult status among collectors. The album was later released on CD by Mellow and Spalax, but it now appears that both reissues were illegal and misleading. In 2001 Fractal put out the first authorized reissue, with legitimate track titles and for the first time songwriting and performing credits. Was the music worth all that trouble ? It's hard to say. This album is part tape experiment, part experimental psychedelia, part Krautrock. Some tracks are very strong and intriguing, but as a whole the album covers too much ground with too varying results to make a strong impression. Things start and finish with two good Krautrock-type jams (over the same riff) featuring guitarist Daniel Hoffmann, the rhythm section of Jean-Pierre and Dominique Lentin and soloing guests Francois Guildon guitar and Leo Sab violin, all directed by Henri-Jean Enu, the group's mastermind. These two tracks account for 14 of the 35 minutes of running time. In-between are squeezed nine short pieces by Enu, Denis Gheerbrandt and Benjamin Legrand. "Amour-Gel" pairs a recitation in French with barking dogs and other field recordings. In "Derriere le Paravent" male voices are looped and strerched into a nagging drone. "Mirroir nagait dans le Lac du Bois de Boulogne" and "Tibhora-Parissalla" feature Legrand's piano playing treated, edited and otherwise mauled with what the technology could offer at the time (mainly overubbing and applying razorblade to tape). You probably had to be there : for 1971 Fille Qui Mousse was far out, even more extreme than the Mothers of Invention. Today, fans of Neu! , Faust, the No-Neck Blues Band or Jackie-O Motherfuckers will find it entertaining. - Francois Couture
One of the most mysterious groups from the French experimental underground of the early '70s, Fille Qui Mousse was as radical as the German band Faust, and utilized similar studio trickery. Their one album never got properly released, and they might have been forgotten if not for being included on the influential Nurse With Wound list of influences in the early '80s. Fille Qui Mousse was a leftist political collective led by journalist/musician Henri-Jean Enu in the very early '70s in Paris. In 1971 they obtained a record deal with the legendary Futura label, which had mostly released avant-jazz at that time but were expanding into more experimental rock. The record was recorded in the summer of 1971, most likely in one day, and then mixed in December of that same year. Over a year passed before about a dozen test pressings of the record were made in early 1973. Unfortunately, Futura was having financial problems at the time and these 10 or 12 copies were all that existed, becoming one of the most rare, sought, and yet virtually unobtainable LPs of French avant-rock. Finally, in the mid- to late '90s, several CD versions of the record were released, under the titles Trixie Stapelton and Se Taire Pour une Femme Trop Belle, often without song titles or the names of performers or composers (which weren't listed on the test pressing), until the Fractal release of Se Taire in 2002 - Rolf Semprebon, All Music Guide
Fille Qui Mousse is one of most eccentric French underground bands I have heard so far. Trixie Stapleton 291 (Se Taire pour une Femme Trop Belle) opens with six minutes of trippy spacerock (sounding somewhere between Agitation Free, Ash Ra Tempel and the French band Nyl). After a short, repetitive twinkling of piano notes, a strange, rumbling track evolves for percussion and guitar. We have arrived more or less in minimalist free rock territory. At the beginning of "Esplanade" a female voice recites a text supported by barking dogs, followed by an undetermined, repetitive, noisy sound. This track is just plain weird. Next airy piano playing is replaced by almost industrial sounding tones, but soon the piano returns in a more threatening, atonal passage. In the middle of the album I am occasionally reminded of Faust. "Antinomique" is an intriguing track, basically a very experimental folk song with a completely distorted violin (or maybe bagpipes?), playing an almost Middle Eastern-like melody. Great. The album makes a full circle by returning to the cosmic rock of the beginning, but now extended to 8 1/2 minutes. Beware: this album is an highly experimental collage of various styles, although overall it would be safe to call this album free rock. Not a "beautiful" album, but different and bizarre. - Sjef Oellers, Gnosis
In 1979 an album was released by a bunch of postpunk weirdoes who had never owned music instruments before they went into the studio one weekend to record it. Only five hundred copies of this record were made. Well, this isn't that record. This is even more obscure and strange. For years Fille Qui Mousse was known only as a name on the checklist of influential "electronic experimental music" that graced the aforementioned record, Nurse with Wound's Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella". Fille Qui Mousse never released an album - they recording one for the little known French Futura label in 1971 but its release was shelved and only ten test copies were ever made and the last known copy was sold for $3,000. Of such things are legends made, amongst obsessive record geeks, at least.
After two dubious appearances on different labels under the title Trixie Stapelton 231 and with incorrect track titles, the album finally has a fully authorized release, 31 years after it was recorded. I'm not sure who they expect to buy it, however The sort of person who feels a need for this sort of arcane, esoteric and willfully obscure racket will no doubt have already grabbed the earlier reissues and you'd need to be an obsessive of a very special genus to want to buy it again just for the definitive track listing - and a new cover showing a cat and a glass of beer.
But what about the actual music on this thing? Do the playful, experimental squeaks and clatter of 1971 have anything going for them today, beyond a quaint, nostalgic charm or mere curiosity value? Is it just another cacophonous diversion for those of us who get our kicks from disdaining everything contemporary, reasonable or popular, to play once or twice and then file away amongst all those other supposedly important classics of collectible avant-rock? Obviously it's not easy listening. It's not recognizable as rock music, not even if you stretch your parameters to include the wackiest stuff around today or yesterday. And unlike many of the German bands of the early 70s who were chasing their own freaky vision of hard (American) electronic rock out into space or deep into their own acid-tweaked heads, the almost unknown pioneers of avant guard 70s French rock - like Mahogany Brain, whose determination not to be able to play their instruments somehow gave them (in hindsight at least) a pristine, darkly poetic insouciance that made the Velvet Underground seem like Herman's Hermits - aspired to something that wasn't just anti-rock but flagrantly anti-music/non-music. Whether this was born of a genuine revolutionary spirit or just to epater les bourgeois probably no longer matters. Se taire pour une femme trop belle, is, ultimately, even after trying to place it in historical, cultural or goddamn psychogeographical context, just too detached from anything recognizable for me to be able to venture an opinion as to whether it's good or bad. It just is - slabs of sounds out of context, springs twanging, two-fingered piano abuse, detuned guitars, a few moments of gibberish chanting, dogs barking, some lackadaisical folksy jamming that opens and closes the album - and at its heart a single, unplaceable, inhuman shriek that goes on for at least six minutes and feels like it'll never end and probably causes brain damage no matter how quietly you play it. How does that sound to you?
Album of the year, undoubtable. - Nigel Richardson
At the beginning of the 70's, Futura Records from France released some of the most intriguing, strange and unsung LP's of all times. The artists who recorded them were alternately serious jazzanatics and social outcasts - most of the times, they satisfied both categories.
People like Red Noise, Mahogany Brain and Jacques Berrocal (most recently involved in some Nurse With Wound project) chose to make wildly experimental music, spiked with psychedelia and free jazz, following an approach not so distant from their German counterparts. Even if Futura releases are more stressed on the jazzy side, it is not impossible to consider them as cousins of the most adventorous Krautrock heroes.
Among the others, Fille Qui Mousse, led by the erratic talents of Henry Jean Enu, were maybe the best - or, at least, their only record was more focused in its relentless phantasmagoria of different inspirations.
Trixie Stapleton 291 is packed with ideas and little follies: you cannot find much actual music in it, but many of its solutions remind Faust and anticipate some of the Residents' best work. Sound collages, cut ups, short crazed piano pieces (sounding like Chopin on speed), white noises cranking up the stereo, all of these studio trickeries manage to create a mysterious, shadowy, ever shifting soundscape. The final effect is paradoxically much more in a proto wave vein than in a progressive one.
Fille Qui Mousse arrange their sonic chemistry paying absolutely no attention to the well-practised musicianship: they edit the sound in an almost cinematic way, and their "songs" have a vivid cinematic feel - albeit they do not perfectly fit the Hollywoodian norm.
For example, in the fourth track we can hear a girl told us a story in her beautiful French,while dogs are furiously barking in the distance, evoking confused images of urban wilderness. Massive layers of noise begin to grow in the background, until everything is submerged by this white, thick sheet of demented sound - the track is over, and it was like watching one of those ugly, pretentious short movies of the 70's (but with much more effect and no nude scenes).
The first and the last pieces of the album are, on the other hand, "real" music: the same theme is developed in two different ways, with an incredible acid punch for the opener, with a more jazz inclination for the closer (here, we can also listen to what seems an electric violin, but played with such an eversive attitude to make it hardly recognizable).
Trixie Stapleton 291 has been recently re released and is worthy of a listening, especially if you want to taste something really different (even in terms of 70's standards). - Julian Cope
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