Description
After the legendary French Ethno-industrial group Vox Populi! faded into obscurity in the early 1990s, members Arash Khalatbari, Ariel Kyrou, Axel Kyrou, Chester Harlan, Mithra, Pierre Jolivet and Francis Manne all embarked on new artistic adventures in their own way. Some, like bassist Francis Lafont aka fr6 Manne, aka Kosa Nostra, aka Kosa and Friends, left Paris to make a profound change in his life. He settled in Lyon and traded his job as a graphic artist and musician for that of a landscape designer. From his pure artistic universe, he has never stopped making music. Alone or with others, he follows his sound inspirations, multidisciplinary, already present on the label Vox Man records, founded in 1982 with Axel Kyrou. Together, as early as 1984, they started publishing the famous “Audiologie” compilations, an audio fanzine presenting a contemporary point of view on the experimental, noisy and avant-garde electronic music scene of the time. In particular, the three “Alterntative Funk” compilations that have become collector’s items for fans of weird and ambitious electronic music.
Today, Notte Brigante presents “Kosa and Friends 1987/97”, twelve previously unreleased recordings that illustrate Francis Laffont’s ongoing musical creation following the dissolution of the group Vox Populi! With the music and video collective “Kosa and Friends,” he welcomes attentive listeners into an eccentric world of pop and poetry, experimentation and groove. Kosa blurs the lines between proto funk and post punk, indus and cold wave, all steep and intriguing sonic territories among which Francis and his collaborators navigate endlessly.
The cover of the record is an “action painting” by fr6 Manne. A collage which underlines the experimentalism of the music by a crossed and unique composition. This cover reminds us of fr6 Manne’s graphic work, which has appeared on many album covers (Vox Populi, Bain Total) and compilations (notably Audiologie, released in 1988, accompanied by his fanzine named Ethniques Urbaines).
Through an audacious collection of sounds and visions, this album testifies and documents the unexplored universe of a visionary musician of the French avant-garde and his peer group.
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