Ophiucus - Ophiucus
Ophiucus - Salade Chinoise
I read a review a while back that kind of stuck with me. I think it was in one of the Clearlight Mantra reissues and was either an album review or concert review of Clearlight from a very anglophile perspective, but what it basically said was that in terms of rock music, the French were behind the eightball by the mid 70s. While I don’t agree with that by any means (the word Magma kind of obliterates the theory), it does say something interesting about French rock at its very earliest, particularly that late 60s/early 70s era when it was clear that most efforts were influenced by the British and US groups. A good example of this would be the French band Alice, a pop/rock group without a great deal of ambition (especially if you compare them to Magma or Ange of the same time period). I think you can file Ophiucus there as well.
I used to use a battered copy of the old Musea French progressive rock tome, before it was updated and released in the red cover. Groups with names like Ophiucus (a constellation whose name means serpent holder) used to fascinate me, apparently, sometimes more so than the description of the music. Because Ophiucus basically didn’t have much of an identity on either of these records and for a group with a European/mythological name, they’re strongly influenced by American music.
It’s best to talk about both albums at once, as it accentuates what’s generally genre hopping. For the most part Ophiucus stick to a pop/folk/songwriter type of style that ranges anywhere from the early Eagles to Crosby Stills and Nash without the harmonies. However bizarre divergences occur, such as the Achim Reichel-esque echo guitar instrumental on the first album. Towards the end of the second album I swear I’d walked in on a French Canned Heat cover band. The listens were so maddening in this way that I ended up playing them both a few times. And never was there any coherency among the albums, it was as if a bunch of youngsters enamored with the earthier more Americana end of pop (Grateful Dead, NRPS etc) decided to make a go of it. Both albums come off as very limp efforts and I’d say it’s mostly because they were part of the era that they were included in a progressive rock book. A couple rarities you can avoid.