NEO MUSEUM-VOLUME 1, LP, 1985, FRANCE

With several members of fringe avant prog maestros Hellebore, Szentendre and Mick Hobbs' archly nutty Officer! present in its lineup, it's obvious this one's gonna be something pretty jake. And indeed, on the terms it sets for itself, this sole outing of theirs (barring their appearance on the Douze Pour Un Vol. 2 compilation LP) is a definite smoker if more formally avant prog qua avant prog then those previously cited groups in their attack. At its finest moments, their blithely odd angle of approach here swans around similar terrain to that mapped by Chris Cutler and Lindsay Cooper's work with David Thomas on More Places Forever.  Mostly though, like their fellow French underground scene travelers at the time in Virgule 4 and Les I, Neo Museum operated under the substantial shadow cast by iconic R.I.O. avant prog mavens Etron Fou Leloublan and the angular irregularity of their all-knees-and-elbows art rock antics sits right at the surface of Neo Museum's work, though Neo Museum's approach is less delicately reflective and woodily thrumming then Virgule 4's and and less boisterously antic then Les I.

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