Here we have a veritable feast of experimental sounds from French rock avant-gardists JEAN-JACQUES BIRGE, FRANCIS GORGE and SHIROC: Defense De, first released on vinyl in 1975 (later featured on the legendary Nurse With Wound list), reissued in this staggering CD + DVD version in 2003, which includes a 40-minute film these guys composed the score for, plus an additional FIVE HOURS of music. The CD features the original album and four bonus tracks, while the DVD includes the extremely weird film La Nuit du Phoque plus the rest of the music. Jean-Jacques Birge and Francis Gorge began to play together in 1970 and produced the first rock concert at their high school, Lycée Claude Bernard in Paris. Gorge was composing the music and playing guitar, Birge was writing the words and singing. Defense De was their first album, done before founding Un Drame Musical Instantane in 1976 with Bernard Vitet, one of the top experimental acts ever to emerge from France. The music here is mostly spacy, moody improvisation leaning hard on the electronics, sure to appeal enormously to fans of Sun Ra, Nurse With Wound, the more abstract side of Krautrock, musique concrete composers such as Bernard Parmegiani, Francois Bayle and Pierre Henry, as well as Pink Floyd's less structured moments. We suspect a truckload of drugs were involved in this music's creation, and will no doubt contribute to your enjoyment when listening. It's a glorious document of "revolt and freedom," to quote Jean-Jacques Birge's liner notes, ready and waiting to light up your head. Both discs are near mint.