Sucre De Pastèque (LP)

Legendary French industrial pioneers Vox Populi! arrive on Dark Entries with a reissue of Sucre De Pastèque. Vox Populi! was founded in Paris in 1981 by Axel Kyrou, a multi-instrumentalist of Greek, French, and Palestinian roots. He soon recruited his future partner, Mytra, and her brother Arash Khalatbari, who were second-generation immigrants from Tehran, as well as bassist Fr6 Man (Francis Manne). Their sound was motley, combining elements of musique concrete and early industrial with horns, flutes, and traditional Persian instrumentation. Improbably prolific and ceaselessly divergent, Vox Populi! found their way onto dozens of cassette compilations during the heyday of the 1980s DIY tape music scene, including releases on era-defining labels like Insane Music, Cthulhu Records, and their own Vox Man.

Sucre De Pastèque, the band's sixth full-length release, came out in 1986 on Unlikely Records, the cult outlet of Rimarimba's Robert Cox. Like most of Vox Populi's output, Sucre is a scattershot endeavour, encompassing psychedelic dirges, cosmic drones, hypnotic chants, and fractured machine-funk. The mood is understatedly bleak, but Vox Populi's genre agnosticism and curious sense of wonder prevent things from feeling oppressive or heavy-handed.