When in 2004 the first Infrastition re-releases are issued the souvenirs rises up again. Teenagers bedroom parties, fanzines bought months after the interviews recordings, night radio shows, gigs advertised by few posters and word of mouth, bootlegged tapes trade at the college between connoisseurs without musical blinkers, dressed in black lone men joining at ecstatic parties where everything was done at dawn. Bands ideals rubbed to almost careers, reputations were beyond album sales but the few real fans became friends.
A French scene was growing its stalk between punk, indie, rock not that puffing or pop (and not French mainstream) ; fertilizers were of English, Belgian, Basque, Italian, Swiss or German brands. America was far away, still is.
Samplers bloomed, studios were exchanging their sound makers, just out of school, buut that their feeling characterized from the previous generation. Fruity lives. Imagination was breed with multiple nectars, nightly drinking and daylight hallucinations, experimental movies and acid paintings, futuristic graphic arts and poetry of the worth. As a society was jumping with happiness into mass-marketing, some micro-groups were breaking free ; enjoyed counter-culture. In spite of the support of some elders that sustained our dark feelings, joking sometimes with softness, because also of the monkey tricks of comics and singers that caught the tics and gimmicks and not the attitudes and uncertainties, our music (and the culture of these years) started to smell naphthalene.
Nowadays, Infrastition dares the priest of sold out collectors ; Infrastition fortifies the susceptibilities offended by a refusing success. Resurrection and share. This back to sources is trimmed with richness (unreleased, demos, rare tracks,...) because the label relevance is to have caught that these yesterday's music are an astonishing sounds breeding ground but also of atmospheres for our today's life. The retro-futurist look of the 80's telescopes two eras. As a proof, these band names that play with ruptures and ellipses and talk to us, for ever young and smart... L'An III, Pro Memoria, Les Provisoires, Rise And Fall Of A Decade, Parallèles de Montsegur: our present will also live of musical madeleines.
Sylvain Nicolino (Obskure.com)