Ferdinand, En Avant (side A)

Etron Fou Leloublan bassist Ferdinand Richard's 1984 solo album En Avant claims to be eight songs in eight languages.  Calling the tracks here "songs" feels like a bit of a stretch.  The vocals tend to be more cut-up and poetic than melodic, they're often speed-adjusted, and they rarely follow any recognizable structure.  The music is built around Richard's excellent bass playing.  The bass is always recorded direct, which, as the foreground instrument, pulls it away from a rock context, and it also sounds very different from the vocals, cello, and drums that are recorded with microphones.  The playing is excellent, the structures are weird and interesting, and the manipulated vocals (in different languages) give the album a distinctive character.  The cover painting is memorable, but the bold colors don't exactly match En Avant's subtlety