Composer/ drummer Patrick Forgas has been hailed as “the French answer to the Canterbury scene” ever since his debut 1977 release Cocktail (recorded with members of Magma and Zao). Since the late 1990s, as leader of the Forgas Band Phenomena, he has helped ignite interest in Canterbury-infused jazz-rock among a new generation of young French jazz musicians and fans.

Originally released only in France on the Cosmos Music imprint and out of print for 20 years, this sophomore release by the Forgas Band Phenomena shows that the quality of their debut, Roue Libre was not a fluke.

Patrick first came to prominence when in 1977, aged 26, he released his debut album Cocktail. The album only sold moderately in the context of dwindling interest in progressive rock and jazz-rock, and a band assembled for live work was dismantled after a few months of one-off engagements, leaving a composed follow-up album unrecorded when his the label declared bankruptcy, canceling the band’s nationwide tour; the Forgas Band soon dissolved.

Patrick mostly retired from music during the 1980s, later happily surprising most watchers of the jazz/rock scene by re-emerging with seemingly all of his compositional and performance strengths still intact, when he set about assembling the Forgas Band Phenomena’s debut release in 1997.

In keeping with Patrick’s long-standing interest in early 20th century Paris, this album was inspired by the atmosphere of the fun-fairs that frequently took place at the bottom of the Grande Roue de Paris, a 315 ft tall Ferris wheel built in 1900 for the Exposition Universelle world exhibition at Paris, only a few blocks away from the Champ de Mars and the Eiffel Tower. It was the tallest wheel in the world at the time of its opening. It was disassembled between 1920 and 1922. Each of the five compositions corresponds to one attraction on the fairground: Such were some of the events that contributed to the fascinating atmosphere of that time. It is long gone now, of course, yet the casual streetwalker, wandering through the capital’s 15ème arrondissement, can still catch a fleeting glimpse of this not so distant past...

Extra–Lucide, as well as all the work of this unique musical figure, can be very safely recommended to fans of Jean-Luc Ponty, Ian Carr’s Nucleus, Frank Zappa’s instrumental works and Billy Cobham’s early bands, as well as British Canterbury bands like Soft Machine and National Health.