Bästard

First the Deity Guns and then Bästard who had an important role among the independent French musical landscape of the 90ies are at the origin of what on this side of the Atlantic could be considered as the late echo of the no wave movement in New York. These rigorous pioneers from Lyon (France) had no rivals when in was question of setting up tormented musical atmospheres.
During the years their influence became more and more important even if the modest group leader, Eric Aldéa, did not seem to realise this success. He would rather notice that if a few people started playing music after having listened to them then it would be extremely rewarding.

After "Trans lines appointment", recorded by Lee Ranaldo, Aldéa and his band wanted to invest new territories. Becoming more mature but not less entrancing than their little brother, Bästard were born.
"Two persons although very musically opposed took part in what was left of the Deity Guns. The first one had no musical notions, everything was just "scrrrrr" and "frrrrr" with whatever could make noise, the other one could easily play all sorts of musical instruments and followed a classical education. We suddenly spread our musical field by adding machines and strings and then shut ourselves up until it came out!"

The big adventure lasted five years. From 1992 to 1997 four albums were released. But the last one, "Radiant, Discharged, Crossed-Off" reaches a high point that still is considered by a lot of people as the beginning of what was going to be post rock.

However Eric Aldéa has fond memories of Bästard's great standing on stage:
"It was short but unique. Even with machines, we still were a group who played and gave its all: The human standing came out even more during concerts and the versions that we played on stage were often better".

After having improvised an album with Yann Tiersen, rather than keeping on playing the same things all the time, the band stopped nearly at the top at the end of their creativity cycle.

Nearly 10 years later, while the members of the group have followed different musical ways (the 3 albums of Narcophony, Eric Aldéa's band, and recently the excellent "Highway to jail" of Spade&Archer, the new project of the drummer Frank Laurino are all available on our division 0101) and while we already had the chance to produce a fantastic anthology of the band, here comes the live album that shows this incredible feeling with the stage.