Unpredictably rangy, legendary french poets of industrial noise, VP! are captured in ’86 - a year prior cult salvo ‘Half Dead Ganja Music’ - on this low-key definitive artefact of the decade’s DIY thrust towards disrupting, upending conventions, all remastered and reissued for 1st time by Dark Entries. Playing deep into the wildest ends of DE’s wave obsessions, far away from the ‘floor, ‘Sucre De Pastèque’ wraps heads in a labyrinth of tape loops and spuming electro-acoustic wizardry with an approach that can be roughly classified somewhere between lo-fi concrète, psych-folk, avant-ambient and proto-cyborganic machine music. Under the lead of Greek-French-Palestinian Axel Kyrou - credited with synth, organ, tapes, flutes, cornet, even “reel scratching” - and with Franco-Persian partner Mitra, plus her brother Arash Khalatbari, on everything from acoustic guitar to santour (hammered dulcimer), the unit fluidly concoct 18 richly satisfying, if fleeting, dervishes and earthbound but sidereal-inclined visions on what has become a firm fan fave over the years. As the precedent to ‘Half Dead Ganja Music’ - perhaps their best known release, judging from the fact it’s been kept in circulation via reissues from likes of Spencer Clark’s Pacific City Sound Visions in recent decades - ‘Sucre De Pastèque’ surely crosses imagined paths with fellow tape scene legends such as Zoviet France or Nocturnal Emissions, and even the outlandish juxtapositions of László Hortobágyi or passages of Dariush Dolat Shahi, in the way it zig zags from possessed incantation to bezonked rhythmelodic treks. Start to finish they’re guided by a real wanderlust as the route opens out from regression session drones and vocal loops in ‘Yarom Lalou’ thru the sublime drift of santoor and swaying vox on ‘Opium’, to palpitating pulses redolent of Z*F in ‘Ovan III’, passages of sublimated woodwind wist on ‘Be Mafu’, and down eeriest ginenls of drown with ‘Gutta Percha II’, into ludic industrial rhythm with ‘Glassy Stare’, even reminding of Aksak Maboul on the peppery strut of ‘Atal Matal Toutoule’, and glimpses of ambient pop a la Teresa Winter in ‘Yek!’, or punk-funk in ‘Alternative Fresh’ or the tangy swag of ‘Djostodjou.’ Trust there’s many good reasons why this one’s become a cult, sought-after gem.
