the state51 conspiracy

This latest live album from this “legendary hurdy-gurdy-powered kraut/psych/folk/drone band” captures an impressively raw, fiery, and thoroughly trance-inducing performance at state51 Conspiracy’s East London headquarters. In fact, it is damn near impossible to avoid invoking Tony Conrad and Faust’s iconic Outside the Dream Syndicate album when discussing Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts, but that is only because France feel far more like Conrad’s legitimate spiritual heirs than they do inspired imitators. In place of Conrad’s violin drones, however, we have the considerably more feral and explosive spontaneity of a gin-soaked Yann Gourdon absolutely ripping shit up on an electric hurdy-gurdy that was actively falling apart during the performance. This is viscerally snarling, howling, and burning drone nirvana for the true heads, as France were definitely straining for the transcendent here (and managed to do it with an impressively throbbing and libidinous groove).  

Notably, the line up for this performance was not the usual trio, as drummer Cyril Bondi subbed for the absent Mathieu Tilly, but the boundaries between individual bands are so porous in France’s avant-folk milieu that who is actually playing doesn’t seem to matter all that much as long whoever shows up can sustain the right vibe. I suppose Gourdon is the major exception to that rule, as I am unaware of any other artists that can whip up such a gnarled yet mesmerizing electric hurdy-gurdy cacophony. From the outside, however, it seems like roughly the same dozen people are continually reconfiguring into new projects with new names and a good many of them are pretty goddamn great. For example, bassist Jérémie Sauvage’s oeuvre also includes Tanz Mein Herz and Omertà.

Given that everyone involved is in like five bands at all times, it is unsurprising that France and many France-adjacent projects are extremely spontaneous and improv-driven affairs. This album continues that trend, as France’s last studio album was 2011’s Pau and all albums since have been documents of unique and unrepeatable live performances. That suits France perfectly, as it captures them at their most alive and volatile. In keeping with that theme, The Quietus’s Jennifer Lucy Allan  amusingly observed that France really only has JUST a single song after 20 years of playing together “but it exists in multitudes.” Sauvage credits the legendary Les Rallizes Dénudés for inspiring that vision, as their template of “ageless repeating basslines”  and their tendency to continually reinvent the same songs casts a long shadow here (though I will note that France masterfully distilled that formula to just a single droning epic).

To be fair, it is technically an oversimplification to call France’s vision just one song, as the beat and the bass line significantly vary with each album, yet it is also true that the rhythm section tends to stay absolutely locked into that groove from the album’s first notes until its last. Each album is essentially a hypnotic cosmic pulse propelling a prickly drone-heavy hurdy-gurdy catharsis and the band have zero interest in departing from that ragged, raw, and volcanic vision. Consequently, the two main variables that define the character of any individual France album tend to be the nature of that groove and the intensity level of Gourdon’s trance-inducing squall.

Also, at the risk of sounding like an especially insufferable Grateful Dead fan, the recording quality is yet another crucial variable, as the balance between the instruments can vary dramatically and the more lo-fi recordings tend to viscerally intensify the more dissonant aspects of Gourdon’s oft-fiery performances. In the case of Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts, Bondi and Sauvage unleash a throbbing and sexed-up motorik groove and Gourdon is in impressively howling and ecstatic form, which is quite an ideal confluence of elements from where I am standing. The mix is also pretty bass heavy on this release and Gourdon’s hurdy-gurdy has a harsh trebly edge, which is exactly how things should be. Does this performance evolve at all? Nah. Are there any memorable hooks or melodies? Nope. Instead, France offer something far more singular, transcendent, and vibrantly alive: a hypnotic, howling, and intensely visceral drone juggernaut chugging its way into heavy cosmic infinity.

Listen here.