Vortex: 1975 - 1979

Co-founded by brothers Jacques (bass) and Jean Pierre Vivante (keyboards), Vortex began as a quintet fleshed out with sax, flute and drums. The writing was almost entirely collaborative between the two brothers, with Jean-Pierre creating basic structures and Jacques providing melody and arrangement. While there's no shortage of idiosyncratic compositional constructs on the group's self-titled debut, there was also plenty of solo space, largely from saxophonist Gérard Jolivet (the only other charter member to stay on until the group's 1980 demise) and flautist Jeff Trouillet. Early Vortex, it seems, owed much to middle period Soft Machine, although its approach was generally lighter and avoided the free jazz trappings of Elton Dean-era Softs. Still, it's not a big surprise, given that one of Jean-Pierre's early bands was, in fact, a Softs cover band.

As good as Vortex is, it's Les Cycles de Thanatos that's the set's knockout disc. By the time work on this album had begun, the Vivante brothers had discovered 20th Century classical composers like Bartok and Messiaen, and Les Cycles's more through-composed material reflects an expanding scope. Vortex was now an octet, with another saxophonist, two percussionists (tuned and untuned), and an oboist/English hornist who also played Fender Rhodes, at times lending Vortex the same swirling, minimalism-informed feel as twin-piano Soft Machine, especially on the jazz-tinged "God is good for you, John."

Both extended pieces—the nearly 12-minute, rhythmically propulsive "Prolégomènes" and the texturally dense, long-form, dark and classically-informed 25-minute title track—are remarkable achievements that stand alongside some of Univers Zero's best work. These pieces combine seemingly disparate styles into a whole not only greater than the sum of its parts, but into innovative compositions that deserve to be considered as repertory sources for forward-thinking 21st Century chamber groups.

While Vortex's evolution would lean it more towards the classical, it was still a group with undeniable allegiances to the progressive rock and jazz worlds, as the two bonus tracks from Les Cycles demonstrate---the quirkily funky "Hipopotalamus Negrus" and Canterbury-tinged "Ivanoe." 1975 - 1979—with extensive French liner notes and abbreviated English ones by Aymeric Leroy—sheds light on the kind of important music being made beneath the radar that simply proves there was—and still is—often far more going on than any of us can ever really know.