Retrieved from long-forgotten reel-to-reel tapes and cassettes, this collection of prehistorical traces 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.
A bildungsroman of sorts, the story begins in 1969, when 19-year-old 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, in which further threads which will make up the fabric of Aksak Maboul’s music are explored.
In the course of seventeen tracks and 80 minutes* of music nurtured by the fertile upheavals of that era, we are taken for a stroll through moments of free rock, improv, quasi-kraut, modular and ambient electronics, piano pieces, percussion and various experiments and sketches, which hint at what Aksak Maboul later became, and at what it has not (but could have) become…
*on the digital and CD versions. Two tracks, as well as the two additional excerpts of a 1969 live set by Here and Now, are left out of the vinyl format.
