Releasing THE THE & Alphonse Mouzon
THE THE and Alphonse Mouzon are now available on master tape. THE THE album Ensoulment is their first release in 25 years and combines rock, pop and post-punk into their unique style. Alphonse Mouzon Jazz-Rock fusion can be heard on the MPS recording In Search Of A Dream, beautifully showcasing his work from the late 1970s.
The The - Ensoulment
Ensoulment, THE THE’s first studio album in a quarter century. Co-produced by Matt Johnson and Warne Livesey, the album encompasses characteristic topics ranging from love & sex, war & politics, life & death – to the meaning of what it is to be human in the 21st century. It contains echoes of THE THE’s multifaceted musical past, however it is richly representative of the mercurial band’s here and now. Johnson is characteristically unafraid to tackle the emotional complexity inherent in the human condition – intimacy in an age of alienation; democracy in a post-truth age; empire and vassalage; and the inexorable rise of AI – yet the album is equally shot through with hope.
About THE THE:
THE THE was formed by Matt Johnson in 1979 and the music inhabits a genre of its own: music of long shadows, high hopes, channelled anger, feverish passions and sweetly disturbing poignancy. It is pop and rock, blues and folk, soul and polemic. It spans alienated electronics to twisted cinematic soundtracks, guitar tumbling swing to crimson ballads, rants and prayers to diaries and hymns. In over four decades, THE THE have released just five studio albums of original songs – Soul Mining (1983), Infected (1986), Mind Bomb (1989), Dusk (1993) and NakedSelf (2000). But always unpredictable, during this time THE THE have also made diversions into cover albums, such as Hanky Panky; film soundtracks including Hyena, Tony, Muscle and Moonbug; art installations; a podcast series, Radio Cinéola; a beautiful and moving 84-minute documentary, The Inertia Variations; and various book publications, including biography Long Shadows, High Hopes: The Life and Times of Matt Johnson & THE THE.
Alphones Mouzon - In Search Of A Dream
Before they recorded Nothing but a Party, his fellow musicians sang Happy Birthday to You; Alphonse Mouzon celebrated his 29th birthday during the November 1977 MPS session in Stuttgart, Germany. The American drummer is one of the originators of jazz-rock, the fusion of jazz and rock music; “Incest is best” was German rocker Udo Lindenberg’s comment on the coupling. No one had a better understanding of this melding of jazz polyrhythms with rock’s pulsating beat than Mouzon; with his furious propulsive style, he was welcome in both camps. Weather Report founders Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, and Miroslav Vitous brought him into the premier edition of the band. Mouzon and bassist Vitous made up the rhythm section. From Prague, Czech, Miroslavhad also played in Miles Davis’ band. As he had already shown with Weather Report, he demonstrates how well he could integrate acoustic bass into a jazz-rock concept. In duo with Mouzon, Vitous bows the deep tones on his composition The Light; he grabs the electric bass on the other compositions. Vitous as well as saxophonist Bob Malik and keyboard player Stan Goldberg were all part of the 1977 version of Mouzon’s touring band. Pianist/keyboarder Joachim Kühn and guitarist Philip Catherine joined the troup for the recording of In Search of a Dream. Thus, the session was a sort of summit meeting of the jazz-rock elite of that time.