Super Freego - 1982 - Pourquoi Es-Tu Si Mechant

Super Freego

1982

Pourquoi Es-Tu Si Mechant

01.Yekto Le Kreutre (3:40)
02. Il Y A (4:26)
03. Tu Peux Crever (4:14)
04. M'en Fous (3:30)
05. Dommage Tu Avais L'age (3:52)
06. A La Folie (3:52)
07. Rock II (5:16)
08. Tentative De Courgettes (2:54)
09. Pourquoi Es-Tu Si Méchant? (4:14)

Karaki / bass, voices
Hervé Dupon / guitars, keyboards
M. Skolarczyk / voices
Rockez Melendy / drums, percussion
Max de Pol / guitars

Recorded at Studio Vénus (Longueville) 2/3 to 18/3/1982.
"A La Folie" recorded at Studio Synthesis (Boulogne) and mixed at Studio Vénus.

Ahhh, the mythical Super Freego, one of the rarest Zeuhl albums of the 80s. Also, as it turns out, one of the most interesting, as Super Freego mixed their Zeuhl with New Wave, winding up sounding like some strange amalgam of Magma and the B-52s. If that sounds about as appetizing as mixing peanut butter and pickles, well, it isn't; this album is fantastic. Zeuhl is often thought of as being really "heavy" and "serious", so it's a great pleasure to hear an album that is unquestionably Zeuhl and yet is still a lot of fun to listen to. I can't, of course, understand the lyrics, but this album definitely earns its place through its musical virtues alone. Highly recommended.

If you ever wondered what it would sound like if The Human League or Missing Persons were a Zeuhl influenced group, then Super Freego gives you a window into that world. Stylistically it fits in the early 80s New Wave synth pop camp. Except all these irregular rhythms combined with the familiar male/female chanting clearly point to that most unique French school of music. And it gets weirder as you go through the album, that by Side 2 it's almost purely Zeuhl. I've seen a couple of YouTube videos that demonstrate that Super Freego were a far wilder group on stage than in the studio, which gives me some hope there might be some crazy Zeuhl music sitting in a canister somewhere. The only other album that even comes close to sounding like this is Eskaton's "Fiction", though that album is far closer to pure Zeuhl than Super Freego. Maybe Foehn's "Faeria", though Super Freego are much more intense.

From Mutant Sounds:

In passingly referencing this French zeuhl unit in one of my other reviews a while back, I referred to Super Freego's music as sounding like Planet Kobaia meets Planet Claire, as pithy a capsulization of the irreverent new wave inflections they bring to this often decidedly serious (bordering of sanctified) genre as I can manage to muster. Of course, their name alone is a bit of a giveaway vis a vis their playful attitude to the Magma mothership (Magma = heat, Super Freego i.e. Super Frigidaire = cold). This has earned them something less than adoration in certain humor deprived sectors of the prog geek universe. To these po-faced folks I say Feh! Super Freego are one of the most awesome zeuhl outfits of the whole period, their seemingly chalk and cheese mixture in truth picking up on a latent thread of show-bizzy wackiness in late model Magma, which in itself is a bit of a line in the sand in zeuhl quarters. Anyone that has ever caught Magma's early 80's Bobino concert footage will know precisely what I mean by this. Super Freego seize on some of this Rocky Horror Picture Show musical revue-style schtick (specifically Retrovision's high camp) and run for the hills with it. And, as it turns out, the hills are alive with the sound of...Rock Lobster.