Retrieved from long-forgotten reel-to-reel tapes and cassettes, this collection unveils some of the meanders which eventually led to the inception of legendary experimental pop outfit Aksak Maboul, founded in 1977 and still active in 2025. The story begins in 1969, when Marc Hollander and Paolo Radoni form a band to play a strange mixture of psych rock and free jazz. Called Here and Now (no connection to the later UK band of the same name), the band soon becomes a wild tentet and, after winning an amateur contest and being involved in the whirlwind around the mythical Amougies festival, lands a record deal with then-prestigious French label BYG Records (but ends up not releasing anything). More musicians join the collective (including future Aksak Maboul members Vincent Kenis and Denis Van Hecke), which dissolves in 1972. From 1973 to 1977, Marc Hollander engages in a series of solo recordings and collabs, where the threads will make up the fabric of Aksak Maboul's music are explored. This collections' moments of free rock, improv, quasi-kraut, modular and ambient electronics, piano pieces, percussion and various experiments and sketches, hint at what Aksak Maboul later became, and at what it has not (but could have) become.

Tracklist:

Here and Now, A Free Rock Tentet
Riot In The Solbosch
Abstract And Concrete
Five Sketches For A Short Film
Lost In The Farmhouse
Modular Excursions at John's
Kosmischer Afternoon
The Big Slide
Gyrovagations
Imaginary Travels With Chris
Proto-Kef
Didn't Make It 1: Balinoid
Didn't Make It 2: Angeloid
Java Ney
Didn't Make It 3: The Missing Dance
Freeform Rock / Captain Crab / Softly Sometime

UPC: 0876623008637
Label: Crammed Disc Us
Release Date: 12.12.25
Format: CD

Aksak Maboul - Before Aksak Maboul (Documents & Experiments) (CD)