Art Zoyd
Génération sans futur

"Schönberg is one of the greatest masters of all time, one of those who cannot be surpassed because within them are embodied both the musical knowledge and sensitivity of an era"*

_{* Alban Berg (Austrian composer), his student and friend.}

Schönberg, revolutionary composer and brilliant innovator, was the one who in the early twentieth century, driven by the need to lead music to an extreme limit (for the time) required by the same "modernity", conceived compositions characterized by strong drama, atonality, and angularity; works full of tension and impetuous contrasts. Atonality, dodecaphony, dissonance are undisputed "ingredients" of a (musical) language among the most radical, "subversive" ever experimented by the so-called musical avant-gardes of the early twentieth century.

This musical language, the expressionism (musical).

1912. "Pierrot Lunaire" (Schönberg), manifesto of musical expressionism.

1968. A flight of fancy.

Maubages, France.

In this small town north of Paris, the Art Zoyd were born in 1968, an excellent "chamber" ensemble, promoters of a remarkably "nervous" rhythmic and sonic blend, dramatic, dark, and saturated with tension.

Sounds and sonorities of harsh chromaticism dripping with atonality, discordance, disharmony; pure expressionism comfortably resting on a musical "carpet" soaked in Progressive, avant-garde, chamber rock and zeuhl.

1980, Art Zoyd "birth" "Generation Sans Futur", compositional peak, artistic paroxysm, and evident paradigm of the band's colorful and multifaceted sound.

Generation Sans Futur, point of no return.

Majestic, haunting, delirious, "La Ville" (open track) is "soaked" in the peculiar stylistic canons of Art Zoyd; sinister violins screech, whispers from the shadows turn into cries of apparent meaninglessness, bizarre wails explode à la Magma, fleeting and illusory instrumental pauses are overwhelmed by abrupt viola drones, frenetic woodwind forays, and piercing piano incursions.

Convulsive moods, instrumental violence, cacophonic sonorities, dissonance, and a funereal suspense as salient features of a homogeneous, granite-like sound amalgam with ephemeral "episodes", pale flashes in a dark and stormy night, characterized by a more "airy" and lively sound ("Divertissement", "Speedy Gonzalez").

"Generation Sans Futur" "dripping" free jazz, improvisation, and minimalism also boast diverse influences and classical-contemporary influences (impossible not to mention composers like Bartók, Stravinskij, and Schönberg) but also nonsense, atmosphereswith a carnival flavorand grotesque Zappaesque fanfares ("Generation Sans Futur").

More or less veiled references to the Canterbury Sound/Jazz Rock in perfect Henry Cow style (both prominent members of the mythical R.I.O movement) and to the "chamber" ensemble par excellence (Univers Zero) further enrich the "copious" artistic content of the work.

What else to add? ... Highly recommended. 

"Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to sculpt it."*

_{* Quote by Vladimir Vladimirovic Mayakovsky;
present, among other things, on the back cover of "In Praise Of Learning"(Henry Cow/Slapp Happy)}