Barney Wilen Zodiac LP

TAS Rated 4/5 Music, 3.5/5 Sonics in the October 2022 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

We Are Busy Bodies announces the first officially licensed reissue of the 1966 cosmic, free jazz album Zodiac by French saxophonist and composer Barney Wilen. The album's astrological theme and Robert Crumb-esque comic book-style cover art, illustrated by the renowned cartoonist Siné, marks it as a European parallel to the burgeoning countercultural happenings of the same period in the USA.

The reissue also offers tantalizing glimpses of a projected animated tie-in film that never was. Wilen's friend, the experimental artist and photographer Jean Larivière, who during the 1960s would share projects with Salvador Dali and assist Chris Marker, had concocted a surreal superhero screenplay featuring living landscapes and abominable monsters which he wished to create as an animated representation of Zodiac. A synopsis of the screenplay survives along with sketches and photographic inspirations which have been lovingly compiled by We Are Busy Bodies as an insert to the vinyl edition.

Originally released on the Disques Vogue label in 1966, the album has been restored and remastered from Barney Wilen's personal copy of the album.

The album was recorded a few years after Wilen performed on albums and European tours with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis.

This quality pressing by We Are Busy Bodies is the first legitimate issue since the record's original release and was made in collaboration with the Wilen estate and Barney's son Patrick. In the absence of master tapes, this record was sourced from an original pressing, but the results suggest that great care was taken to avoid either an excessive midrange focus or the period-incorrect exaggeration of very high and low frequencies that undermine many such projects.