Fluence - s/t

Beguiling piece of cosmic Franco Krautrock (yep, such a thing exists) by Pascal Comelade, and featuring the indomitable Richard Pinhas on the opener. The first and only record made by Comelade under the Fluence name, it was originally released in 1975 on the Pôle imprint run by Paul Putti, who subsequently sold the label to Tapioca to become a pornographer of all things. The Pôle association offers telling conext, placing Fluence alongside the work of Phillippe Besombes, Jean Louis Rizet and Phillippe Grancher, all leading lights in long form experimental electronic minimalism. The parallels with Frose, Schulze et al are obvious, though there's a distinctly pastoral quality to Fluence and indeed many of their French peers not necessarily evident in their German counterparts - less town, more country. Comelade would later go on to collaborate with Faust and Robert Wyatt, and the kinship is obvious, the shared nod to endemic musics/folk traditions, and the reimagining of those ideas into new languages. A strangely under the radar record certainly deserving of wider exploration.