France has always made its own thing when it comes to progressive rock. In the seventies, it was Magma that took an otherwise rather whimsical genre to new dramatic dimensions, and these last few years, bands like Chromb, Poil, Ni and many more have created their very own niche of progressive music that really has nothing in common anymore with the pioneers of the genre.

Youpi! is still a new band from the south of France. The three-piece is playing mostly instrumental music with guitar, bass and drums. They used to play in Tracteur, which was a quintet, and the musicians have separately also been active in other bands like SEC, Cordcore, tust and others.

Their debut album Offre spéciale contains eight songs whose first impression is of nervous prog rock with a heavy dose of math noise. Repeated listening will reveal how subtle differences within the different tracks make this a surprisingly varied effort. The opener Samossa Nova is probably Youpi! at their most typical: hyperkinetic instrumental music with a certain undefinable ethnic approach, and vocals that are mostly reduced to monosyllabic utterances. The following De l’Or somewhat continues in that vein, although halfway through the guitar reminds me strongly of the eighties incarnation of King Crimson. The vocals limit themselves this time to asking the question if you want gold, with replies coming from a crowd that sounds utterly demented. Comme la Vanille has a very quiet opening before giving the second half over to the band’s brainy math prog again. Quand j’écoute mon cœur… is at two minutes a shorter track, but also the catchiest one. The first half has the guitar playing a motive, repeated by the bass guitar, while the second half again winks back at King Crimson, although this time actually with a seventies nod to their Red album.

The album’s second half begins with the extremely varied Tsu Tsu Tsuru, which comes with a mellow intro, before turning into heady math prog and ending with a technoid finale. Trou normand is a weird twenty-four-second-long interlude with strange percussion and barn animal noises. The title track Offre spéciale has this radioactively shimmering ethno touch that feels like the lovechild of film composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer and Ultra Zook, another one of those weird yet incredible French prog bands. The album ends with Tintin chez les Rastas, at ten minutes maybe overstaying its welcome for a few moments. The intro feels like a radio drama. The actual song starts one minute into the track, and sees the band experimenting with dub elements, which also works rather well for them. Not much is happening though for the final ninety seconds except for some animal sounds.

As debut albums come, Offre spéciale is quite an excellent introduction to Youpi!. The three musicians don’t play the most accessible music, but their brand of progressive rock has enough ideas, twists and turns to keep the sophisticated listener engaged for quite some time. I am convinced that they are also a mighty fine live band, as this is exactly the hypnotic kind of avant prog that keeps people dancing despite the very knotty rhythms involved.

8 songs

39:54 minutes

***** ***

Genre: progressive rock / math noise

(self-released)

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