Fou has struck again. Jean-Marc Foussat has volunteered so much of his time to collect all this free improvised music in its most explosive, confusing and emotionally charged moments that his litany becomes infinite! Summary of A Century (in Memoriam Annick et Fred). The musicians: the career of Antwerp pianist Fred Van Hove is so special (and ultimately little known to cognoscenti) that it seems to me to be a symbol of openness, a quality intrinsic to this “kind of musical practice. In the mid-80s, he began a rich collaboration with the “inhabited” singer-actress and force of nature so unlikely for such an “intellectual” of the piano, an instrument of which he mastered every possible color beyond human comprehension. If Fred left us in the twilight of an intensely fulfilled life, Annick Nozati, an unusual personality, left us too soon. She embodied the violence of the fullest feelings, a delirious fury capable of screaming and modulating her voice irrepressibly, a true revolutionary at heart. 

At the height of the free improvisation explosion, there was a sorority of vocalists, each as daring and creative as the next (Julie, Maggie, Jeanne Lee, Dorothea, Tamia, Ute much later), but they were the most furious, the most improbable, the most unreasonable, the most intensely popular, the craziest - stage “craziness” being an inescapable quality in this milieu of improvisers, dixit Van Hove et cie. So when you've got Daunik Lazro and his hallucinatory alto sax, his baritone buzzing in loops and his attentive listening to the extraordinary percussion imp that was Paul Lovens, you can be sure that you're going to be transported to another world.Two long improvisations focused on the singer (we owe her that much):Facing the Facts 29:57 and Consequences 20:58, with Fred's accordion sequences to smooth the flow and open the proceedings.The year is 1999, as if to close the century that saw the development of this musical utopia.It's impossible to define this ever-changing music made up of nothing, bright ideas, moments of waiting and listening, lurching, shouting and meditation.Daunik's biting, borborygmatic baritone, Paul's whistling musical saw, Annick's unreal voice on the verge of silence or her repeated calls, her bickering
It's impossible to define this ever-changing music made up of nothing, bright ideas, moments of waiting and listening, lurching, shouting and meditation.

Daunik's biting, borborygmatic baritone, Paul's whistling musical saw, Annick's unreal voice on the edge of silence or her repeated calls, her exacerbated bickering...Fred's pearls...all these exchanges. The restrained, controlled cataclysms of the percussion... Unhoped-for portions of research, discoveries and metamorphoses that come to fruition in the astonishing second part, where the group becomes one with each other and all together in a joyfully or dramatically anarchic way.Thank you, Jean-Marc, for unearthing these essential moments that escape the scale of aesthetic values because they embody the meaning of real life.