Aksak Maboul - Before Aksak Maboul (Documents & Experiments) [LP]

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.