"Substunce Sans Scrupule" is a dream. A hazy dream born in the emptiness between the words of "Igitur ou La folie d'Elbehnon" by Stéphane Mallarmé. A dream that sought Marcel Proust's lost time and constituted the light and the black void between the single frame of Gregory Markopoulos. It is the birth and the destruction of the work of art, primitivism and science.
"Substunce Sans Scrupule" is as much Georgios Karamanolaki's automatic writing on the work of Jean-Marc Foussat as Jean-Marc Foussat's on the work of Georgios Karamanolakis, imagined and recorded in 2017 in Paris and Athens. The ultra vivid dialogue and communication between the artists creates a completely spontaneous work of 43 minutes that constitutes an immersive ritual of shocking sound, illusionary image and complementarity.
In "Substunce Sans Scrupule" we witness the union of musique concrète ideas with noise, of field recordings with vocal delays, of electroacoustic music with drone. In "Substunce Sans Scrupule" the faraway splinters of jazz fuse with japanoise, the dreamy with the real, the Magical-Religious with the Scientific. Α fragment of time documented in 140g 12" vinyl record format, in an edition of 300 hand numbered copies.
Jean-Marc Foussat, born in 1955, is a French-Algerian composer of electroacoustic music who lives and works in France. He began his career in the mid-70s by playing guitar and synthesizer on various underground French experimental prog rock bands. His interest quickly moved on into analog synthesizers and musique concrète tape collages, a fact which led to the gradual conception and recording of the masterful debut LP "Abattage" in his own Pyjama Records in 1983. The ingenious use of EMS Synthi AKS, VCS III synth, field recordings and vocal points all signify "Abattage" as a highly original and influencing work of French avant garde and musique concrète music. Since then, Jean-Marc Foussat has been living in his own improvisational universe where he has recorded dozens of records with various projects, collaborating with Jac Berrocal, Evan Parker, Bill Laswell, Jamal Moss and Joe McPhee, and also keeps his own Fou Records while co-maintaining Potlatch label. As a sound engineer and in situ recorder he is responsible for the feature and release of a huge number of free improvisation recordings, part of which have been recorded over the past 30 years by various companies of the genre. Nowadays, he is particularly active both in discography and live appearances. In "Substunce Sans Scrupule" Jean-Marc Foussat used EMS Synthi AKS, EMS Phase Frequency Shifter, Toys, Vocals, Jew's Harps, Bird Calls, Ableton Live, Boss SE50, Mix Table.
Georgios Karamanolakis, born in 1982, is an experimental artist and composer-improviser who lives in Athens. He continuously records a wide range of sounds that originate from monolithic drones and end up in noise walls, using many -modified and not- analogue synthesizers, field recordings and tapes. He is influenced by the culture of mysticism, experimental films and the aesthetics of the past, which at any given age can breathe again and become the future. He is the leading mind behind the post-apocalyptic ΟΔΟΣ 55, a band entirely responsible for the revival of post punk / synth wave in Greece. With the noticeable difference that their intense dystopic character and their extensions of minimalism give them a special depth of sound, to the point where you can perceive the musical incidents as distant shivers behind an industrial wall where everything is fluid, primordial and unexplored fields of effect. He is a member of underground urban intervention team OMIO, a group active in outdoor interventions in the urban fabric as well as in film recordings of hidden locations such as train cemeteries, underground tunnels, and war shelters. He runs the record label Ηρακλής, home of his few releases, most of which are in very limited copies. He is the producer of the Athens Inner City Broadcast program at the London Resonance FM experimental radio station. His performance with Hiroshi Hasegawa (Astro) in 2011 has been one of the most important concert events ever held in Athens. In "Substunce Sans Scrupule", Georgios Karamanolakis used EMS Synthi AKS, Roland Space Echo, Vocals, Max Steel Toy Vocoder, Yamaha Vector Synthesizer TG33.
