05/02/2025
mprovising Beings was a french free jazz label, 2010-2017. Founded by Julien Palomo. Sites: BandcampIn seven years of existence and around fifty references to its catalog, the Improvising Beings label proudly carries the banner of free music whose vitality makes more sense than ever. Overview of a house as welcoming as it is demanding. Improvising Beings was born in 2009 and the founding stone that seals its launch already contains all this dynamic. Nobusiko brings together the double bass of Benjamin Duboc and the trumpet of Itaru Oki . Or the meeting between two individuals with different cultures who, within the framework of the most unbridled improvisation, seek to define together a common ground and, free from all constraints, to articulate a common language. It is this idea that drives Julien Palomo , founder of the label. To provoke encounters and, at the same time, to pay homage to an underestimated part of the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Because not only does Improvising Beings strive to give visibility to musicians little covered by the mainstream media, but it does so with a double requirement of radicality and integrity. Its mode of operation will not allow it to compete with large production companies, but it does not matter, people are at the center of concerns. Money to live and not live for money: Improvising Beings, an activist label. And to do this, what could be more relevant than placing the catalog under the double sponsorship of two historical figures of free music ? That, African-American, of Sonny Simmons and that, French, of François Tusques . The first, born in Louisiana, grew up in Oakland, United States. He plays in his time with Charles Mingus or Eric Dolphy and participates in the Prince Lasha quintet on the superb The Cry(1963, Contemporary Records). A rich but tortuous life, he knows the vertigo of the abyss but remains an uncompromising creator. Some call it the second knife in the history of jazz; the future will decide. More than museification, what interests Palomo, for the moment, is this life in the process of being lived, its complexities, its reversals and its unwavering obstinacy in moving forward. The meeting with Simmons (like the one with Duboc, who was the first to invite him to take the plunge to found the label) is decisive, a filial relationship links them. Between spirituality and politicization of the artistic act. And on the subject of politicization, François Tusques (born in 1938), another godfather, is certainly among the French musicians of his generation, the one who most used his art as a libertarian pavement thrown in the face of well-thinking. Deeply protesting, close to the Communists, he was the first to sign a free jazz record in France. Effectively entitled Free Jazz (alongside Michel Portal, Bernard Vitet, François Jeanneau, Charles Saudrais and Beb Guérin), if it does not necessarily lay all the bases for a free "à la française" (a conception which would be absurd in these terms). periods of the International), in any case it opens its doors. Tusques will sign his first album with Improvising Beings, Topolitologie , in 2010 (duet with drummer Noel McGhie): we are still talking about politics, but far from ideologies, a question of time, a question of places. For these familiar figures of the label, other references will follow: eight times for Tusques, only four times for Simmons but among them a box set contains eight pancakes recorded between 2006 and 2014. Always this idea of representing the present. A duo finally reunites them in 2011, Near The Oasis . Because Palomo is faithful, in friendship but also in an aesthetic of which he stays the course. Other personalities have the opportunity to express themselves at his home. Alan Silva , former traveling companion of Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler participates in the New Today, New Everyday , OIL and Stinging Nettles , Linda Sharrock recordsalso who shared the life of guitarist Sonny Sharrock signs several albums including No Is No (Don't F**k Around With Your Women) . Here again, the scores are always contemporary and if the productions of these artists are mainly from a free vein, without a pre-established form and in which wandering can be the path of a sometimes burning asceticism, the meetings do not stop not to America. Some names even honor a country where this aesthetic of extremes has produced a scene that is too little known in Europe. Itaru Oki, trumpet, Keiko Higuchi , vocals, Sabu Toyozumi , drums, Takuo Tanikawa , guitar, Makoto Sato , drums, S***a Koyama , drums, Yasumune Morishige, cello, are the Japanese who enrich the label, followers and continuers of this branch of Great Black Music in which expressiveness prevails, and spiritual children of Masayuki Takayanagi. All these worlds intersect, play together (Itaru Oki plays with Linda Sharrock on No is No , Alan Silva with Makoto Sato, completed by Lucien Johnson, on Pieces Of Eight ) or quite simply brush against each other. The important thing is to bear witness to a dynamic, to give an account of a scene in which we find recurring characters: the friend Duboc (often part of the party, he signs The Return of Ulysses , a refined duet with Alexandra Grimal or a solo, St-James Infirmary , where he reappropriates in his deep and earthy way this American folk song), Jean-Marc Foussat , confers from Fou Records (keyboardist, he compiles with Alternative Obliquea guestbook in which he reports on 40 years of meetings) or even more discreet but equally important personalities: Raymond Boni for example alongside Didier Lasserre on Soft Eyes . However, Palomo is not only an aggregator: he is also a pioneer and endeavors to promote musicians little heard elsewhere, at least on record. Henry Heterman is one of them, who with his trombone solo Roule ta saliva reveals the extent of a know-how and a sensitivity that deserve further attention. We also think of the cello - piano duo Hugues Vincent - John Cuny or the violent United Slaves (with metal atmospheres ) Not everything is free jazz, not everything is improvised music either, but each time it is about musicians who, from noise to playing around silence, pay for themselves with daring and, out of thirst. unheard of, leave the major marked paths. This editorial line, certainly tenuous but perfectly homogeneous, may put off ears accustomed to milder or even warmer climates. However, it is in this way that Improvising Beings arises as a defender of an art practiced in complete freedom. It does not matter then that all languages are not new: by its very radicality, this music is the affirmation of a differentiated and unique identity, the expression of a relationship to the world. Improvising Beings is thus posed as an archivist of our present. by Nicolas Dourlhès // Published on June 12, 2016
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