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Forgas Band Phenomena

Forgas Band Phenomena is a French instrumental progressive rock and jazz fusion band. Inspired by Soft Machine and the Canterbury scene, composer and drummer Patrick Forgas has created the band and is still leading it. Since 2005, his albums are edited by the American label Cuneiform.

For over 40 years, Parisian composer and drummer Patrick Forgas has been working and creating a distinctive take on progressive jazz/rock, and he has been leading Forgas Band Phenomena for over 20 years. We are really happy and pleased to once again be working with this eclectic, electric fusion / progressive rock band on their sixth release and fourth for Cuneiform.

The ensemble’s many long time fans certainly know what to expect, as the group’s base of ‘Canterbury sound’ stylings in a orchestrally arranged setting with jazz solos continues here, stronger and with even more maturity than ever.

Helping to contribute to the great confidence in the performances is the fact that the majority of the band has been stable and rehearsing for over a decade, with only two changes made in the last few years. In 2013, new guitarist Pierre Schmidt made his debut with FBP in a 20-minute live in the studio segment filmed for the Romantic Warriors 3 - Canterbury Tales documentary. Work on new material was halted when Forgas suffered a health setback (vestibular neuritis) which inspired the album’s title.

Another personnel change occurred in 2015 when the band’s long-standing bassist Kengo Mochizuki had to return to his native Japan. Thankfully, an ideal replacement came in the shape of Gérard Prévost, a legend on the French progressive and fusion scene through his work with the likes of Zao, David Rose and Rahmann alongside appearances on albums by Heldon, Jean-Philippe Goude and Forgas’s own 1977 album Cocktail! Rehearsals then resumed until the new line-up was finally ready to enter the studio in late 2017.

L’Oreille Électrique can be safely recommended to any fan of exhilarating, electric jazz!


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3
Album Review

Forgas Band Phenomena: Acte V

Read "Acte V" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Drawing comparisons to a pro football team, this band would most assuredly make the playoffs every year. Highly acclaimed, the French unit led by drummer Patrick Forgas looms as a proven commodity within the upper echelon of progressive rock. The album presents a potpourri of fusion and jazz-rock that translucently incorporates the blitzkrieg improvisational segments of familiar persuasions, yet the artists' bring much more to the table. One of the trademark components of the septet's sound is attributed ...

589
Album Review

Forgas Band Phenomena: L'Axe du Fou (Axis of Madness)

Read "L'Axe du Fou (Axis of Madness)" reviewed by John Kelman


There has been a relatively short gap between Forgas Band Phenomena's L'Axe du Fou and Soleil 12 (Cuneiform, 2005)--four years, as opposed to the six between Soleil and the out-of-print Extra Lucide (Cosmos, 1999)--but plenty has happened. Drummer Patrick Forgas' longstanding group has been almost completely revamped--only bassist Kengo Mochizuki and keyboardist Igor Brover remain--and with the departing altoist Denis Guivarc'h, his octet has trimmed down to a septet.

With Soleil's captivating material dating back a ...

271
Album Review

Forgas Band Phenomena: Extra-Lucide

Read "Extra-Lucide" reviewed by John Kelman


While Soleil 12 (Cuneiform, 2005) was the first album from French drummer/composer Patrick Forgas' Forgas Band Phenomena to receive international distribution, the group had in fact already released two records in the late 1990s on France's Cosmos Music label. Sadly, Roue Libre is out of print; but the group's sophomore effort, Extra-Lucide, is still available and bears revisiting, if for no other reason than providing a different perspective on the nearly twenty-minute “Pieuvre à la Pluie" that can also be ...

162
Album Review

Forgas Band Phenomena: Soleil 12

Read "Soleil 12" reviewed by John Kelman


Although it emerged in the late 1960s concurrent with American counterparts who were also investigating a fusion of jazz with a rock sensibility, the British Canterbury scene has always retained a distinct complexion. American artists like Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea tended to approach fusion from the jazz side of the equation. By contrast, many of the Canterbury scene's leading lights, including Soft Machine's Hugh Hopper and Mike Ratledge, came from a background in pop and were influenced ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Acte V

Cuneiform Records
2012

buy

L'Axe du Fou (Axis of...

Cuneiform Records
2009

buy

Soleil 12

Cuneiform Records
2005

buy

Extra-Lucide

Cosmos Music
2005

buy

Roue Libre

Cosmos Music
1997

buy

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