Claude Engel - Teddy Lasry - Bernard Lubat - 1971 - More Creative Pop

Claude Engel - Teddy Lasry - Bernard Lubat
1971
More Creative Pop

01. Claude Engel - Freedom Fiesta (2:51)
02. Teddy Lasry - A Song For Leila (3:20)
03. Claude Engel - Bear's Walk (2:39)
04. Teddy Lasry - Happy Street (2:31)
05. Claude Engel - That Good Old Shuffle (2:12)
06. Teddy Lasry - Fiction Melody (2:21)
07. Bernard Lubat - Beat It Hard (2:21)
08. Claude Engel - Indian Reflexions (2:56)
09. Teddy Lasry - Yellow Mood (3:36)
10. Bernard Lubat - Dancing Penguins (2:34)
11. Claude Engel - West Coast Memories (2:23)
12. Bernard Lubat - Pop A Bossa (2:34)

laude Engel
Teddy Lasry
Bernard Lubat

This seriously fantastic library music LP intersperses cuts from early Magma members Teddy Lasry and Claude Engel alongside those of top notch jazz drummer Bernard Lubat (featured on the Laurent Petitgirard LP I posted a while back), who would himself shortly thereafter record a live album with Engel as part of the Lubat/Louiss/Engel group (soon to be posted here). As you'd expect, this being a library music album, none of what's contained here really qualifies as zeuhl, despite the pedigree. The back cover's description of the contents as "hard pop light" perhaps comes a bit closer, provided that you're definition of pop is Wolfgang Dauner's The Oimels or the soundtrack to Vampiros Lesbos. Yes, some of this is that groovily swinging, notably Engel's album opener "Freedom Fiesta". Engel also turns in two other exquisite bits here, both in a sort of poignant Alain Markusfeld cum Total Issue psych mode that's really rib-sticking. Other stellar turns here include the doomy Besombes-like acid rock blowout of Teddy Lasry's "Fiction Melody" that closes out side A and two of Lubat's cuts ("Beat It Hard" and "Dancing Penguins") which traffic in a species of jazz rock grooviness that wouldn't be out of place on one of Roberto Colombo's albums. An essential missing piece of the puzzle for this wing of the French 70's underground.