It’s unlikely that anyone will love all the tracks on all the albums here, but I suspect most rock fans would find enough material to their liking to conclude that the box set was worth the purchase. There’s certainly something quite unique about Clearlight, and in these times of regimented musical styles, surely that alone merits investigating this set?
If you were to write a history of progressive rock, it’s fair to say that a chapter on the French contribution to the genre could be quite modest in length. Yes, there’s Magma and Ange, and let’s not forget that a good percentage of the internationally known Gong were French musicians, but if we’re honest then French prog music is something of a footnote compared to what was going on in the UK prog scene. Like me, you might have had little exposure to French prog music, and that’s what made this box set so fascinating, even for a seasoned prog fan such as myself.
So, who were Clearlight? The question might be better phrased as ‘who was Clearlight?’ since it was very much the brainchild of keyboard wizard Cyrille Verdeaux. These Cherry Red box sets often have interesting booklet notes, and here there is a unique touch in that the notes are 100% written by Verdeaux himself. Hence, we get a first-hand account of how Verdeaux, having created a demo tape of what would become his first album, headed off to London to successfully win a recording contract with Virgin Records. He’d been advised to target Virgin due to their recent unexpected hit with Tubular Bells. Since he had written a single 40-minute piece of progressive music, exactly like Tubular Bells, this must have been appealing to the A&R folk.
Verdeaux’s classical background is immediately evident in the album title: Clearlight Symphony, further reinforced by the track names of First Movement and Second Movement, each of which are a shade over twenty minutes in length. This, you might think, was merely to match the two sides of a vinyl platter, but there is a substantial difference between the two parts: the First Movement was recorded by Verdeaux with his French team while the Second Movement was recorded in the UK with three members of Gong (most notably Steve Hillage). Confusingly, for promotional reasons, the record label swapped the running order and hence the 1974 release had the ‘Gong side’ as the First Movement. In this remastered version they have been swapped back to what was originally intended.
Musically, the Clearlight Symphony does have echoes of Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, most notably in the minimalist patterns that are employed at times, but this is more of a mainstream rock album than Oldfield’s with symphonic prog elements and even psychedelic outbursts. The range of keyboards employed by Verdeaux is impressive and heads off any risk of boredom – always a risk in a 40-minute instrumental piece. At times, you can sense his classical training, especially in his piano work where you can see shades of Wakeman. Some of his organ work reminded me of Bo Hansen, and the extensive use of the sax sometimes gives a Van der Graaf Generator feel to the music. The music ebbs and flows between quieter and faster more energetic passages with the frenetic passage around the 11-minute mark being a highlight.
The second movement opens with an impressive almost Tangerine Dream like atmospheric passage with piano and synths interweaving nicely. Things change abruptly with a wildly discordant passage which seems like a hangover from some 1960’s experimentation. The following guitar solo seems slightly hysterical, having little to do with what the rest of the band were playing. This gives way to a beautiful piano section at the mid-way mark – without doubt the highlight of the whole piece. But the spell is broken by the acceleration towards the end and the return of the main theme which provides a slightly uninspired ending (for a 40-minute piece at least!).
Overall, Clearlight Symphony is a solid piece of ‘70s prog. Why did it not make that much impact? Well, I suspect, it’s the sort of music you can thoroughly enjoy listening to and then half an hour later are unable to recall a single theme. You could accuse Verdeaux of being overambitious, or overdoing the improvisation elements, but those were the times when this was the norm so you can’t fault the guy for trying. It may be that (unlike Oldfield) he learnt his lesson and switched to shorter compositions straight away. The second album, Forever Blowing Bubbles has a whopping seven tracks!
The booklet makes no reference to the origin of the album title, but perhaps our Frenchman had become an avid supporter of West Ham United while in London? In any case, the project team changed considerably for that second album, most significantly with the addition of bassist Joël Dugrenot who produced the album and wrote two of the tracks on which he also contributed vocals. The first of these, Chanson, is a late ‘60s hotchpotch of whimsical vocals, strident guitars and Dugrenot’s unconvincing voice. One quickly appreciates Verdeaux’s preference for instrumental music. Suffice to say that Dugrenot was never going to win a Best Vocalist award. Dugrenot’s second effort, entitled Way, is a more substantial piece at eight minutes and has some stronger sections while still having all the faults of Chanson.
Of the five Verdeaux compositions, Without Words is a good showcase of what a more concise and focused Verdeaux could create. I wonder whether he chose that title as a tongue in cheek sigh of relief at not having to listen to Dugrenot’s voice! In Without Words, a little minimalist keys phrase is developed over seven minutes with good interplay between guitars and keys, culminating in a thrilling acceleration which then eases into a gentle coda. A very satisfying piece indeed and the highlight of the album.
Ergotrip comes close to matching Without Words thanks mainly to the stirring sax solo towards the end. The brief Narcisse Et Goldmund is an interesting track, almost in a traditional medieval style accompanied by a female singer and choir (credited to Amanda and Ann, whoever they were). The brief Jungle Bubbles is also a very different track, consisting principally of tribal percussion and weird synth noises; an interesting experiment but nothing more.
There are a generous five bonus tracks, of which two stand out. Sweet Absinthe at nearly eight minutes is a quite substantial piece. It’s a nicely restrained piece, omitting some of the over-strident elements found elsewhere in Clearlight’s music, and with some good guitar work that sounds very much like some of Steve Hillage’s solo work to these ears. It’s a match for anything that made the official release. Equally interesting is Overture that was recorded a few years later in 1980. It’s a dramatic piano-led piece with shades of Rick Wakeman about it. Overall, this second CD is a mixed bag, but from the official Forever Blowing Bubbles release, Without Words and Ergotrip, plus the excellent Sweet Absinthe and Overture certainly make it one worth listening to.
Verdeaux lost his contract with Virgin – apparently because Richard Branson wanted him to move to London while he wanted to stay with his wife and newly born son in Paris. If the Channel Tunnel had been in place, maybe Clearlight’s history might be different! So, his third album was self-released, again with Joël Dugrenot at the helm and with the addition of Ian Bellemy as a singer (thankfully, with a marginally better voice than Dugrenot). Despite the reduced capabilities that the absence of Virgin’s funding implied, this third release, which saw the light of day in 1977, was an ambitious concept album called Les Contes Du Singe Fou (which translates to Tales Of The Mad Monkey).
Prog was a bad word in 1977 so it’s no surprise that the prog elements have been trimmed back significantly. Yes, it’s a concept album, and the songs do flow into each other giving the impression of a unitary 40-minute piece of music, but there’s little that’s overtly prog here. Prelude (which is the 6th track not the 1st!) is one of the most impressive vocal tracks, sounding as if it could have been an outtake from The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. However, the other vocal tracks are modest mid-70s rock fare that are far from memorable. The instrumental tracks provide more interesting listening. Two strongly classical piano-led pieces, Soliloque and Time Skater, are both solid pieces, and the one lengthy track, the nine-minute Cosmic Crusader tries hard to match the energy and quality of the first two albums but falls short.
In the booklet, Verdeaux states that the band worked 15 hours a day for 15 days but finishing touches were still required. The album was apparently released in this incomplete format without Verdeaux being aware of it. Extra time in the studio might have improved it for sure but the bottom line is that this was a fairly average album with little to get excited about.
Just a year later, Clearlight were back with Visions and it heralded a return to purely instrumental music which was clearly Verdeaux’s forte. In the meantime, Verdeaux had been to India, and the influences can be heard in the instrumentation (sitar and tablas appear) as well as the meditative nature of a lot of the music.
The first track, Spirale D’Amour, opens in impressive style with dramatic piano work that evokes the start of Yes’ Awaken, Part 1. It doesn’t quite maintain that momentum, and despite good contributions from flute, and violin, it tends to drift towards a elevator music anonymity. The absence of electric guitar also contributes to the lack of forward momentum. Fundamentally, Verdeaux’s Indian trip has resulted in him losing much of his rock edge and moving towards New Age music.
I nearly groaned on discovering a track with vocals, albeit mostly spoken lyrics rather than sung, but in the end it turned out to be a highlight. Au Royaume Des Mutants sheds the New Age mantle and seems to go all-out cinematic, with the film in question being a horror movie. It’s so unlike anything else Clearlight have done that it’s something of a shock. The piano is unsettling throughout, the vocals are eerie, and there is some sublime sultry sax work to really nail the atmosphere. Finally, a bit of meat to get your teeth into!
There are a couple of shorter tracks with only Indian instrumentation, and there’s a little piano piece in the style of Chopin. This is certainly an album that doesn’t lack variety – so much in fact that it’s likely to leave most listeners bewildered – but apart from the originality of Au Royaume Des Mutants, it’s lacking in any real inspiration. If New Age music is your cup of tea then it might well appeal to you, but prog fans are likely to be disappointed.
The good news is that there are seven bonus tracks. It’s not clear if they were recorded as part of the same Visions sessions or later. The first bonus track, Guitare Elevation, sounds quite brilliant after what has gone before. It begins with piano doodling that doesn’t bode well but then the guitar comes in with a stirring theme and it just gets better and better. I was astounded. The remaining six bonus tracks return to New-Age-business-as-usual which makes Guitare Elevation even more remarkable. Still, I’d buy the CD for that one track.
One of the oddities of this compilation is that it is entitled ‘Symphonies’. It includes the first four Clearlight albums, even if only one was actually called a Symphony. It does not include the next three releases (which include two called Symphonies!), and then it includes the final release from 2014 entitled Impressionist Symphony. This last one is probably the most interesting of Verdeaux’s concept albums since it consists of eight pieces of music, each inspired by a French impressionist painter – seven painters in total since Monet gets two tracks. As a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Clearlight Symphony, Verdeaux also pulled together the same three members of Gong that contributed to that debut album. Forty years on and Verdauex’s sound is nicely modernised although the music maintains the slightly unstructured feel of his earlier albums. The music does not appear to have any obvious relationship to the painters (at least based on my limited artistic knowledge), although the dreamy soundscape of the Gauguin piece does sound like an attempt to represent Gauguin’s Tahitian hideaway.
The album is fundamentally split into two types of music. One is an updated / modernised version of Verdeaux’s usual band-based rock music. These are decent pieces marked by some excellent guitar work. The other type is a full-blown attempt to write something close to pure symphonic classical music and it’s this latter group which represents something new and interesting in Verdeaux’s output.
Time Is Monet is perhaps the highlight. Its opening of piano with flute and then violin gives an initial impression of yet another New Age composition but the symphonic elements grow as the track progresses. The main theme is sinuous and melodic and very well suited to an orchestral development. You might expect a wishy-washy orchestrated piece of New Age music to be the result, but the orchestration is tremendously good and the music is as lush as anything by Rachmaninov. It’s almost as if Verdeaux had decided to go back to his classical roots and shed his rock leaning altogether. If so, it was a good decision.
The closing Monet Time Duet is a reworking of Time Is Monet as a Violin Sonata format (i.e. just piano and violin). The meandering violin line reminds me of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending. It highlights the beauty of the melody which really would have made a perfect film score (a nice film, not the horror film of Au Royaume Des Mutants!). The two Monet tracks combined last for over twenty minutes making this the most substantial piece in the box set after that debut album.
It’s difficult to sum up this box set. Musically, Verdeaux has been all over the shop during his career. Hence, fans of ‘70s prog will find parts to enjoy, as will fans of New Age music or fans of Classical music. It’s unlikely that anyone will love all the tracks on all the albums here, but I suspect most rock fans would find enough material to their liking to conclude that the box set was worth the purchase. There’s certainly something quite unique about Clearlight, and in these times of regimented musical styles, surely that alone merits investigating this set?
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