“It sometimes takes a foreigner to put together the best critical overview of your own country’s history of interesting and innovative music, placing it in its underlying historical context, which is of particular importance when discussing post-1968 France. Australia’s Ian Thompson has undertaken extensive archival research and conducted many original interviews, adding his own concise critical observations to his study of bands and solo artists ranging from the world-famous Magma and Gong to the lesser-known but very influential Heldon, Etron Fou Leloublan, Clearlight and Lard Free, and the more obscure but no less deserving Ame Son, Crium Delirium and Moving Gelatine Plates. If only a couple of these names are familiar to you, there’s plenty more to discover and I can’t think of a better starting point for this exploration than this great book!”

Aymeric Leroy, L’école de Canterbury, Rock Progressif

“Lively, richly documented, comprehensive and to the point: supported by numerous comments from the protagonists, this is an essential work on a specific era of the French underground!”

Philippe Robert, Agitation Frite I-III

“As a journalist who has covered the European experimental music scene, publishing EUROCK since 1973, I must say that Ian’s new book contains an incredible amount of information about artists and bands in France that I had very little or no information about after all these many years.”

Archie Patterson, Eurock

“Ian’s book takes the reader back to the days when underground really meant underground. To crate-diggers, most of these French bands have attained mythological status, their records, if released at all, confined to very limited pressings fifty-plus years ago. Ian tracks them down, one by one, avant de mourir, and tells their stories. A neglected and fascinated chunk of music history.” 

David Elliott, Neumusik

Synths, Sax & Situationists is now available from The Roundtable.

At the dawn of the ’70s, in a country still reeling from the aftershocks of World War 2, an underground movement of rock musicians resolved to tear it all up and start again. 

Welcome to France, 1968.

Music fans in the English-speaking world are well-versed in the Krautrock scene springing up across the border in Germany, but they are almost totally unaware of the French musical underground. There the radicalism of May ’68 collided with the counterculture, post-psychedelic rock, and free jazz to produce some of the most distinctive and vital music made anywhere in the ’70s.

Synths, Sax & Situationists tells the story of more famous bands like Magma, Etron Fou Leloublan, and Gong alongside almost-forgotten groups like Cheval Fou, Fille Qui Mousse, and Barricade.