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 over 20 years, this excellent debut by the Forgas Band Phenomena shows that their sound was firmly in place right from the beginning and who, after their two releases on Cosmos in 1997 and 1999, signed with Cuneiform for 2005’s Soleil 12, where they have remained ever since and have released a total of 4 albums since that time

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.

Forgas mostly retired from music during the 1980s; the music here is a twenty-year-old dream finally come true, and the result of four years of hard work. Patrick wanted to return to the group format of his celebrated debut LP. With this aim in mind, he resumed drumming after years of not playing, and composed two lengthy suites, Rumeurs (later retitled Roue Libre as the album’s title track) and Sérum De Vérité. Then the search for suitable musicians began; this proved the most difficult task ! Litterally hundreds of players came and went until, almost three years later, the line-up had stabilised to the one assembled here. In the meantime, both pieces had been premiered at a one-off gig in Montrouge (a suburb of Paris) in March 1995. In many ways, this album has been a crazy endeavour for everyone involved, from the musicians to the producers and, of course, Patrick himself who spent months composing and arranging the music in his tiny home studio.

Roue Libre, 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.