01	L'oeuf du Serpent						03:40
	02	L'agent Renfield						03:17
	03	Le Voyage de Harker						04:03
	04	Le Matin						01:40
	05	Le Chateau						04:14
	06	Nosferatu						02:42
	07	L'oeuf du Serpent II						03:00
	08	Rumeurs						02:35
	09	Rumeurs II						02:56
	10	Anaphase						04:08
	11	Le Maitre Arrive						02:24
	12	Rumeurs III						02:39
	13	Les Docteurs						02:28
	14	La Peste						03:14
	15	Livre des Vampires						01:47
	16	Anaphase II						04:38
	17	Le Maitre Est Mort						03:31
	18	Marees						08:33
	19	Beffroi						03:35
	20	Sleep No More						05:30

Art Zoyd [France]
Updated 11/23/01
Discography
Symphonie Pour Le Joir Ou Bruleront Les Cites (76)
Musique Pour L'Odyssee (79)
Generation Sans Futur (80)
Symphonie Pour Le Jour Ou Bruleront Les Cites (81, different recording, expanded line-up)
Phase IV (82)
Les Espaces Inquiets (83)
Le Mariage du iel et de L'Enfer (84)
Berlin (87)
Nosferatu (90)
Marathonnerre I (93)
Marathonnerre II (93)
Faust (95)
Haxan (97)
Some albums reissued in various multi-title combinations


Reviews
With a lineup consisting of piano, viola, cello, trumpet, saxophone and such, Art Zoyd makes a music that is really closer to modern classical music than it is to rock, yet the energy level and power are closer to the intensity of Magma, with strong dynamics and atmospheric climaxes. Very beautiful stuff. Only gripe is that they could use a real percussionist at times (rather than sync machine). Le Mariage Du Ciel et de L'Enfer is as good a place as any to start.
First off: I don't know why this is called "rock." To me, it sounds just like 20th-century classical music. I'll try to describe the entire (8 minute) piece called "Masques": The opening is a dissonant violin solo, playing in quarter tones. This moves to sliding string and brass sounds, which provide some tension. Soon, it changes to a plucked bass, joined by the violin, with a lot of minor seconds. A burst of trumpet follows, leading to a VERY virtuosic trumpet solo over a strange violin and bass pad. This becomes a mass of sound, with strings, brass, and moaning human voice. Repeated notes build more tension, and then there is silence. A new theme enters: a bizarre, rhythmic motif, like a weird march. A 4-note figure, based on a tritone, accompanies the next section, followed by a return of the march. This builds to a climax, and the piece ends. Not your typical prog rock, eh? :-) In all, I really liked this piece. I don't think I'd listen to it every day, but I am eager to hear more Art Zoyd.
Superb neo-classical/electronic outfit. A bit like Univers Zero at times (not as dark though). Their early stuff is better I think. Later on around Le Mariage, they start to add electronics and get a bit more repetitive. Still good but not as good as the early neo-classical acoustic stuff. The first three albums are great.
I heard a number of different albums, Symphonie pour le Jour ou... (the remixed version of the first album, Symphonie pour le Jour du...), Phase IV and Le Mariage du Ciel..., plus selected tracks from the Marathonnerre albums. I guess you could classify this as "new music," sort of dark, chamber music type of avant-garde instrumental music with piano, synths, cellos, trumpet and woodwinds. Apparently influenced by such 20th-century composers such as Bartok, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, et al. I can also hear sonic connection between them and Univers Zero, but there are no drums here. As a result, Art Zoyd are much closer to pure classical music in sound. I'd just as soon hear Bartok, but I like Art Zoyd enough, though they'll never be a favourite of mine. I'll recommend that UZ fans listen to at least one of these. -- Mike Ohman
Art Zoyd were early member's of Chris Cutler's Rock In Opposition (RIO) movement. As such, their music has no compromise for popular value. I have their 1980 release, Generation Sans Futur. This work is more honestly approached as a neo-classical chamber ensemble than as a rock band, although some sections do have a building intensity comparable to '73-'74 era King Crimson. Art Zoyd are popular with the same crowd that gets into Univers Zero. The only "rock" instruments I've picked up on are electric guitar (played very cleanly, sometimes jazzy) and electric (?) bass. Instrumentation has included violins, cello, (perhaps a violincello, too), piano, harpsichord, trumpet, sax, French horns, woodwinds, and snare drum. I'm sure I've missed a few instruments, and not all of these are employed on every tune, of course. Art Zoyd make very good use of dissonance, without dissolving into noise. Some of the tone colors employed for the brass reminded me of Stravinsky. The music has a somber, somewhat dark quality, which may invoke Bartok in your mind. If you like Univers Zero, or have a passion for Stravinsky, Bartok and other 20th century classical, you would like at least this album. -- Mike Taylor
I think modern classical fans would disagree with those who say Art Zoyd "sounds just like 20th century classical music." They would point out the constant use of electric bass, keyboards, and guitar and the driving rhythms as obvious aspects of rock music. (I have always been impressed by what an intensely rhythmic band this is, despite having no drummer.) To me, Art Zoyd seems one of the most difficult bands to categorize. They show the obvious influences of rock, jazz, and classical, but I wouldn't put them firmly into any one of those categories. I prefer their earlier records (up to and including Les Espaces Inquiets). The later ones have more synthesizers/sequencers and fewer acoustic instruments. (Those who are into synth music might well prefer the later ones.) My recommendation to start would be the 2CD set including Musique Pour L'Odyssee, Generation Sans Futur, and Symphonie Pour Le Jour.... Another 2CD set includes Phase IV (originally a 2 LP set) and Les Espaces Inquiets. -- Dan Kurdilla
On the 1995 and 1997 releases of Art Zoyd, people familiar with this band will not find surprising new sounds. Typical Zoyd sound, that did not change much since Marathonnerre and Nospheratu. The latter CD is also a good comparison to Faust and Haxan. All three are "soundtracks" to silent movies of expressionist filmmakers from the 20ies: German Friedrich Willhelm Murnau (Nospheratu, 1921; Faust, 1926) and Denmarks Benjamin Christensen (Haxan, 1921). On Faust and Haxan Daniel Denis (ex Univers Zero) joined the band, but did not contribute any compositions. On both releases the amount of pre-recorded and processed sounds and the use of various synth and midi instruments has significantly increased compared to their older works, thus this music gets more and more electronic. Nevertheless they explore further in their typical neoclassical/contemporary sound excursions that are hard to categorize. Apparently one of the two founding members, Thierry Zaboitzeff, left the band after Haxan. Since then nothing new was heard of them, except that I saw some concert announcements in the late 9ties. The line up there included Mireille Bauer (Gong)! -- Achim Breiling
Nosferatu is the kind of nightmarish music that could wake the dead. In this case the dead would be all too willing to oblige, as the album is meant to function as soundtrack to Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's 1921 horror classic "Nosferatu, Symphonie des Grauens", the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula novel. The music works well on its own, and represents a highly electric and electronic version of the neo-classical/new music sound: creepy, metallic keyboard arpeggios, digital tones spiky enough to cut yourself on, sinister violin and cello often processed to the limits of recognisability, dissonant sax honks, subterranean voice samples that sound like Cthulhu's bowel movements ... and on and on. Dissonance is prolific, tonality itself unstable and hummability lies dead in its coffin, but instead of chaotic and cacophonous, the music comes across as rigorously regimented and ruthlessly repetitive, with individual instrumental lines subjugated and blurring together to create a singularly sinister impression. The line between music and sound effects is also blurred by stretches of solely ambient sounds and, on "Rumeurs III", the use of blurted, nonsense vocals of the kind you would most likely to hear in your local pub when a punter has had three drinks too many and one too few. In fact, it's the choice of timbres, the sizzle of sinister electronics, that sustains the music through minimalist episodes and obsessive repetition, and makes Nosferatu more interesting in my ears than Art Zoyd's earlier, predominantly acoustic works that I have heard. The album's high points for me are the Gothic chord progression of "Anaphase" and the "Goldfinger"-like sax figure over an angular synth counterpoint and what is probably the album's most straightforward rhythm on "Les Docteurs". My main gripe is that the music's economy doesn't seem to allow for a full exploitation of the soft/hard dynamic that is so special in progressive rock: the more reflective moments tend to be thin sketches dominated by sound effects, a canon-like section with bass, violin and an oddly sylvan flute sample at the end of "Le Chateau" providing a smidgen of lyricism. Yet in all its undead coldness and unswervingness Nosferatu manages to be an affective album, even if fright and unease are the primary emotions generated.
The CD version (Atonal ACD 3008) includes three extra tracks from a ballet soundtrack, all of them more rhythmically salient. The most interesting is the final track, "Sleep No More", a veritable tumult of weird voices and para-human vocal samples, which a stark, yet stirring synth fanfare cuts through with confidence, perhaps serving as a wake-up call for those who are more narcoleptic than the protagonist of the movie in question, or more likely to remind that art should continue to engage people even after the performance is over.

"Haxan", Benjamin Christensen's extraordinary film about witchcraft through the ages, appeared a year later than "Nosferatu"; it took Art Zoyd eight years after Nosferatu to get around to scoring it. The line-up on Haxan (Atonal ACD 3023) includes the Univers Zero drummer Daniel Denis, and perhaps this helps to give the album a more rhythmic character in comparison to Nosferatu, though he is still hitting mostly sample triggers rather than conventional drums. You can hear this immediately on the half an hour "Glissements Progressifs du Plaisir" which is largely built on overlayed ostinati of metallic synth sounds, over which alternatively stark and semi-pastoral textures are developed; the final eight minutes become a slow, harrowing crescendo with doomsday organ and machinegun-like rhythms punctuated by sinister whispers and crashing percussion stabs, truly a chilling piece of music. The following "Nuits" is another standout, almost mediaeval with its jarring tympani-like percussion accents, brief heraldic synth fanfare and demented towncrier-like vocal samples, but offset by a number of incongruous motifs that keep coming and going, including a thumping bass line and another nonsensical, scatting-on-hallucinogens vocal episode (this kind of techno-medievalist fusion of past and future has often been used in progressive rock, but here the scene is not that of an idealised village pastoralism but of some feudal plague pit). Four more compositions develop the bleak minimalist vision from an oddly lyrical voice/violin/piano moment to moribund choir refrains and musique concrete-like trips to torture chambers. Relief comes only at the end with the brief but resolutely tonal "Marche", whose plain piano figures, synth pads and frightened, panting voice heard on the background create a soothing sense of fragile humanity against the ominous, unrelenting bass ostinato, a flicker of warmth in the absolute zero of space. As a whole, Haxan is a bit more drawn-out than Nosferatu but also more gripping.

Both these albums offer an intriguing listening experience, but it must be pointed out that fans of melodic music (and I quite readily count myself as one), or even those neo-classical/RIO fans accustomed to the more acoustic and rock-influenced works of say, Univers Zero, may find them off-putting. -- Kai Karmanheimo



Art Zoyd - "Haxan"
(Atonal ACD 3023, 1997, CD)
Mike Ezzo:
Despite Art Zoyd's consistent member roster, it is worth nothing that, like classical composers, they rarely collaborate. This soundtrack (their third, not counting commissions for ballet) comprises seventy-two minutes of music divided into roughly two sections: a thirty-minute opus composed by Gerard Hourbette, and a series of six shorter morsels by (the now estranged) Thierry Zaboitzeff. The first segment is based largely around strings and thickly layered orchestral bursts, depicting director Christensen's disturbing visceral imagery. Cynics would call it Art-Zoyd-by-the-numbers; the stoic work doesn't really tread any boards they haven't already firmly walked upon in their twenty-year-plus career. Perhaps the film's narrative didn't allow it to develop as an independent creation - always the hazard when working in soundtracks. Dramatically it builds to an almost oppressive climax, but lacks the shadings that a dash of percussion or cello could have imparted. Thierry, on the other hand, never seems to have repeated himself once. His "Epreuves D'Acier" astounds for its sheer audacity and ability to juxtapose headspinning rhythms at breakneck speed with contrasting moods, all couched in a daring post-atomic miasma. Noisy sound events and bizarre non-verbal chanting (Art Zoyd's trademark) heighten the tone of blasphemic turpitude with the demonic subject of the film will concur. Denis' stupendous percussion does wonders - one can only shrug at why they score so scantily for him at the kit. For richness of musical heritage, compositional depth, and originality, what other French group can compete, even with this sub-par effort? "Haxan" should be a must have item then for those sympathetic to the Zoyd ethos.

Steve Robey:
Art Zoyd's instrumental palette has been downsized in recent projects from its historical acoustic and electronic diversity, now relying primarily on samplers and synthesizers along with some occasional. The group's uncanny ability to portray emotion with seemingly limitless nuance, however, has adapted itself quite well to the new set of sonic tools. On "Haxan" the ensemble's music, as always, engenders stark, disturbing visions in its gothic moods. Collages of mechanical effects bleed into atonal clusters of digital tones, occasionally parting to reveal somber melodies or dreamy textures sprinkled with alien sounds. Yet the effectiveness of this music lies not much in its surreal atmospheres as in its structural detail. The refined compositional abilities of Thierry Zaboitzeff and Gerard Hourbette, who each contribute about half of the album, are what give this otherwise rather amorphous collection of macabre aural imagery its subtle sense of direction and purpose. Over the 70 minutes of this disc, diverse textures and varied sampled source materials are blended craftily into a coherent emotional progression, shrouded in, but not subdued by the minimalistic instrumentation. Unsettling and at times downright chilling, "Haxan" is another engrossing musical journey from this unique French ensemble.

Dan Casey:
Art Zoyd's last release "Faust" established a high water mark in the genre of neo-classical chamber-rock for the latter half of the '90's. Combining the performances of four talented electronic musicians (including Thierry Zaboitzeff and Univers Zero album Daniel Denis), it was also the "soundtrack" to the classic silent film of the same name. The music was composed and performed in sync with the film in a large theater. "Haxan" is the sequel, if you will. Using the same fundamental approach, and many of the same sounds and instruments, Art Zoyd have pushed themselves into more abstract territory this time. The music is far less concerned about harmonic content, and instead favors minimalism, voices, percussion and samples as the primary drivers. Where "Faust" was an emotional and powerful piece of multi-layered music, "Haxan" is the antithesis, despite being built from the same principles. For those who loved "Faust", there is plenty here to make it worth your while. But, for those new to Art Zoyd, stick with "Faust". Evidently it was a better movie, too.