Ange

Which is the key band of French progressive rock? Many enthusiasts around the world, today as in the Seventies, would answer without hesitation: Magma! But that would not have been - and still is not today - the choice of French listeners. While the founders of Zeuhl have always remained a niche cult, the symphonic Ange won gold records and strong chart placings in their home country, charting with their style an ambitious, theatrical path that, followed by numerous other acts, would become one of the richest strands of the national prog scene. Even today, although the genre's popularity has waned in France as elsewhere, streaming data show the French public's preference for their own symbol band. Their fanbase, rooted almost exclusively within the Hexagone, actually seems to prove a surprising claim: for international reach, the French language is a far bigger obstacle than Kobaïan!

Ange were formed at the end of 1969 in Belfort, a town in what was then the Franche-Comté region, close to the borders with Switzerland and Germany. The founders were two brothers, Christian and Francis Décamps, both keyboardists. Christian had for some time led a group with guitarist Jean-Michel Brézovar: they mainly played popular and dance music, and were called Les Anges. Merging with Francis's group, Évolution, shifted the lineup toward a more rock-oriented direction. It also gave rise to a peculiarity that would characterize the band throughout its history (even when, in 1999, Francis's place was taken by Christian's son, Tristan): the presence of two keyboardists.

The style was already fully formed on "Caricatures", released in 1972, which sold 100,000 copies and earned a gold record. Throughout the songs one can hear echoes of Genesis and Procol Harum, but the approach is decidedly original, with broad medieval and traditional-sounding passages, and hard-rock blasts that, combined with the fullness of the keyboard-driven sound, can shift the mood from joy to anguish within a single bar. The follow-up, "Le cimetière des arlequins", boosted by a cover of Jacques Brel's "Ces gens-là", went as far as 250,000 copies sold and was hailed as a masterpiece.

By the time the third album, "Au-delà du délire", came out, then, Ange were a band with a distinct personality as well as significant commercial clout. The new record also went gold, selling 150,000 copies - a result that would be matched again by its follow-up, "Émile Jacotey", released in 1975.

The album is a concept album, written by Christian Décamps in collaboration - depending on the track - with the other members of the band. The narrative springs from a concept devised by Christian Décamps, playwright Roger Lombardot and manager Jean Claude Pognant: the result of this joint venture is a thoroughly fanciful tale that blends past and future, historical precision and utterly implausible elements. It's an apparent escape from the present day that nonetheless reveals, between the lines, a strong connection to the themes and outlook of post-1968 France. The backward glance through the story of a man of humble origin, the attention to the imbalances and injustices of the society he lives in, the emphasis on the socially progressive aspects of heretical movements - all these threads link "Au-delà du délire" not only to the reflections and battles of the young student left of those years, but also to the approach of the new generation of "Nouvelle Histoire" scholars, who in those very years were producing the most significant contributions to historical research through figures like Jacques Le Goff and the researchers active on the journal "Annales", which he co-edited starting in 1969.

A text purportedly the original version of this story is reproduced on various websites, but the actual songs as written diverge from it somewhat - perhaps simply because the writing process pulled the plot a little away from the initial idea. Either way, the album centers on the imaginary story of the illiterate farmhand Godevin ("Godevin le vilain"), whose life as a medieval peasant is upended by his encounter with the alchemist Isaac ("Les longues nuits d'Isaac"), who introduces him to knowledge entirely new to him - revolutionary ideas that make him question his identity and challenge royal authority. Back with his family, Godevin seeks freedom, but the revolt in his village ("Si j'étais le Messie") is crushed by the local lord who, after trying to extract the wisdom he learned from the alchemist, decides to burn the rebel at the stake as a heretic ("Ballade pour une orgie", "Exode").

Here the story takes a science-fiction turn: from the flames of the pyre, Godevin's soul departs on a journey through the centuries, arriving in a year 2015 thrown into turmoil by a surreal sugar famine caused by pollution, urban sprawl and the excessive exploitation of resources ("La bataille du sucre"). Through a presumed divine intervention ("Fils de lumière"), Godevin is finally reincarnated in a kind of new Eden, where, surrounded by animals, he may perhaps be able to bring the human race back to life after its extinction ("Au-delà du délire"). This, at least, is the reconstruction one can piece together from the lyrics in the splendid illustrated booklet - brilliant, evocative verses, though not always easy to interpret given their allusive nature. As an example, take the passage from "Ballade pour une orgie", which seemingly depicts Godevin being burned at the stake after the revolt is put down:

Viens butiner mon bréviaire

Abeille hérétique!

De la première prière au dernier cantique!

Courez, buvez, chantez!.. le Roi est mort ce matin!

…Troubadours, quittez vos tréteaux…

Les chevaux s’emballent!

Il y a feu au château

C’est la fin du bal!

Courez , buvez , chantez!.. le Roi est mort ce matin!

Come suck my breviary

Heretical bee!

From the first prayer to the last hymn!

Run, drink, sing!.. the King died this morning!

…Trovatori, lasciate i vostri palchi…

The horses are bolting!

There's fire at the castle

It's the end of the ball!

Run, drink, sing!.. the King died this morning!

Also lending evocative power to the album's words are the charisma and vocal versatility of Christian Décamps. Inspired by Peter Gabriel, the singer develops an even more eclectic and theatrical style, one that can shift within a few bars from solemn to gentle, from intimate to furious, with or without passing through intermediate shades. At times, the vocal metamorphosis can even happen over a single unbroken note (as in the transition between the second and third verse of “Les longues nuits d’Isaac”).

In “Si j’étais le Messie”, on the other hand, Décamps' inspiration plays out through an ambitious spoken-sung delivery that further reveals his debt to Jacques Brel, with the author constantly reshaping his vocal tone according to the images evoked, taking on the roles of different kinds of characters and adopting an increasingly agitated, emphatic manner, effectively matched to the ever more extreme character of Godevin's revolutionary visions. The many period live clips available online show how, on stage, Décamps' histrionics translate into a scenic presence not unlike that of Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, forever poised between rapture and mockery.

The enchantment of the album's atmospheres, however, unfolds even before the frontman's vocals come in. On the opening track, the entrance of harpsichord (Christian Décamps) and violin (played by sound engineer Henri Lousteau) already casts a centuries-old patina over the setting; the combined entrance of guitar, bass, drums and organ, which comes shortly after the vocals begin, then lends the atmosphere an apocalyptic, millenarian quality. Credit is due to the distorted tone adopted by bassist Daniel Haas, certainly, but above all to the band's distinctive choice of keyboards: as on most of the group's records from the Seventies (the sole exception being 1978's “Guet-apens”), the role of weaving enveloping textures is entrusted not to the Mellotron, but to the rarer Viscount organ, played by Francis Décamps. This is an Italian-made electronic instrument designed for liturgical use, a trait reflected in a decidedly majestic quality even in its more imitative registers: the strings, in particular, sound far fuller and more abstract than those associated with the Mellotron and its close relative, the Chamberlin.

The album's unique sound is inseparable from the singular expressive possibilities Francis Décamps found in his Viscount: his lines manage to sound spectral in the sparser sections of "Si j'étais le Messie" and triumphant in "Exode" (where the register mimics as best it can the ringing timbre of clarion trumpets), thoroughly digital in "Le bataille du sucre", where they come close to brushing against chiptune-like buzzing, and stubbornly out of tune in the powerful, hieratic opening of "Fils de lumière".

"Fils de lumière", the album's penultimate track, is also one of the songs with the greatest share of purely instrumental sections, offering the best vantage point for observing the band's compositional mechanics and interplay. Though harmonically less adventurous than others on the record, the piece incorporates some of the two Décamps brothers' favourite devices: chief among them, vertical ascents and descents that run through every note of the scale (and, whenever possible, a few extra ones too). The heart of the instrumental passages, used to ratchet up the track's tension, is in fact a slow, relentless ascending scale running from D to D, which slows as it nears its destination, shrinking each step down to a semitone. With every step, the pressure builds as new instruments join in or the bass, guitar and drum parts grow more insistent. The return of the vocal part tends to mark a moment of release, though it still carries the memory of the restlessness built up before it, and soon gives way to another swirling ascent.

Genuine calm only arrives with the title track that closes the album, "Ballade pour une orgie", the most pastoral song on the record and by far the least shadowy, even in its lyrical choices. Here it's guitarist Jean Michel Brézovar who drives the progression, with a descending chord sequence recalling "Dear Prudence" in its constant downward motion layered over the stable notes of the D major chord. After the restless, ever-shifting energy of the previous track, drummer Gérard Jelsch also allows himself a break, while bass and keyboards repeat an insistent pattern built around a single note, hypnotic and reassuring. The effect is soothing, and the song recovers the circularity that had characterised the opening track "Godevin le vilain". Where in the opener the repetition of each verse's final lines served to echo the protagonist's unchanging life, tying together the steps of his vindication in a kind of premonition, in "Au-delà du délire" the same device instead describes the satisfying simplicity of the new beginning awaiting Godevin. The inhabitants of this fairy-tale, post-human world are introduced one by one, each with their own habits and virtues: Grimaud the wolf, Bernard the hermit crab, Flo the squirrel; and Godevin's smile is likened to an oyster that "bursts open, swollen with pearls". Just before giving way to the murmur of the forest (and one last, closing instrumental interlude), Christian Décamps sings with a smirk:

Je suis Maître Godevin

Le dernier des humains

Premier Noé sans eaux

Le roi des animaux

I am Master Godevin

Last of the humans

First Noah without waters

King of the animals

Ride the wave of great music

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02/06/2024