Popera Cosmic – Les Esclaves (LP)

For the few people lucky enough to have heard the entire album in the five decades since its release, the mythical Popera Cosmic LP is now considered to be France’s first dedicated psychedelic album and the shrouded blueprint for the hugely influential Gallic concept album phenomenon that followed – including Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire De Melody Nelson and Gérard Manset’s La Mort D’Orion.
Subtitled Les Esclaves (The Slaves), this street theatre/rock opera (influenced by the work of Julien Beck’s Living Theatre) now celebrates its 50th birth-day standing firmly as a sonic tome to the birth of the no-no era (that rebuked France’s yé-yé hamster wheel) leading directly to the thematic progressive network of Wakhévitch, Manset and Magma while comprising an inter-Gallic intergalactic super group from the early annals of France’s pop psych revolution. Imagine a rock opera where the cast of Mister Freedom perform Clash Of The Titans at the foot of The Holy Mountain – then pinch yourself…