Jac Berrocal & David Fenech & Vincent Epplay - Transcodex (CD)

Release Date: 11/04/22

Fourth album by French group consisting of Jac Berrocal, David Fenech and Vincent Epplay. Guests: Jan Wobble and Jean-Herve Peron

Jac Berrocal is a 1946-born musician (trumpet player), poet and sometime film actor who came of age in the '70s Paris improv scene, where the boundaries between music, art and theatre were porous and begging to be breached. During the 70s his uproarious performances routinely wound up jazz and rock audiences alike, but earned the admiration of many musicians: Steven Stapleton invited him to perform on two Nurse With Wound albums, and other notable collaborators in his career include Sunny Murray, Lol Coxhill, and James Chance. Fenech cut his teeth in the mail-art scene of the early '90s, leading the Peu Importe collective in Grenoble. His 2000 solo debut was recently reissued by Felix Kubin's Gagarin label, and he has also worked as a software developer at IRCAM, and played with Jad Fair, Tom Cora, Rhys Chatham and James Plotkin; in 2011 he formed a trio with Berrocal and Ghedalia Tazartes for the Superdisque LP. Epplay is a highly regarded sonic and visual artist with a particular interest in aleatory composition and autonomous pieces, concrète, and the puckish reappropriation of vintage sound and film material, with dozens of published works to his name on labels like Alga Marghen and PPT/Stembogen. Transcodex is the fourth album by the trio. Turning more towards pop than in their beginnings, this fourth record follows the footsteps of their previous album, Exterior Lux. The trio seems limitless: they experiment with a large variety of styles (pop, dub, electronica, dark jazz), always coloured by their very own touch. For this album, they invited two amazing musicians. Jah Wobble, founding member of the mighty Public Image Ltd. and Jean-Hervé Peron, one of the fathers of German krautrock legend Faust.