You already knew Alain Gandolfi ?
Yes, we used to play together but we lost contact. Mostly because of me: one night we played together I felt asleep on the piano (laugh)! So at this time when I was a salary man, I did a trio with two American cats and we looked for another drummer, to energize the group. Plus the drummer went back to USA. So I’m in search for this new drummer when I meet Alain in the street, who just left the hospital. I told him that I’m building a band in the Herbie Hancock veine, and that I don’t have any drummer in it.

At this time when you listened Herbie Hancock you already had experimented the electric keyboards?
Not really, I really started with Cortex. Alain and me had begun to listen stuff like Hancock, Chick Corea or Joe Zawinul around 74.

Then Cortex… first is the name of the band. Pretty strange cause the music is definitely not intellectual!
Precisely. The cortex is part of the brain that receipts the external sensations! Gandolfi found this name. But it was more because we just like this word. Nothing philosophical in it, we never thought we were big brains or something… and we never took drugs too!

So in the beginning this is you and Gandolfi…
Yes, and Jeff, the US bass player, was still in it too. We started Cortex with two female singers.
In the beginning we were six, but it was hard to keep people in the band permanently. Viviane, one of the singers used to be a chorist for Claude François, and she left as soon as he went on tour. Jeff ended to went in Taiwan. We started to look after a bass player, that’s how we met Jean Grevet. Finally the core of Cortex is Alain, Jean, Mireille and I. Others were here just for few sessions. I can’t recall all the names, there were so many who just passed, when a guy had the opportunity to went on tour he didn’t have scruples to left us.

That’s incredible, cause when we listen Troupeau Bleu we feel so much alchemy within the band…
Troupeau Bleu was very special. My parents went in holidays for two monthes and lend us their house. So we locked ourselves into, all this time, repeating and writing songs all day long. I personnaly feel the big influence of Sergio Mendes, that I listened during my military service. He’s an artist I really appreciate, especially the album « The Fool On The Hill », I like the orchestrations in it, and bossa is not so far from blues, which I like a lot… I like very much Amalia Rodrigues (notorious fado singer) for example. Then we went in studio.

Precisely, I thought the brazilian influence could come from Guy Boyer, your sound engineer, who mixed and participated to some very brazilian oriented records, such as Les Masques LP. Was he involved into Cortex compositions?
Not at all. Moreover he told me that this album would never work! (laughs) He also thought « Go Round » needed a bass, his notice stayed in my mind for a long time cause I thought I could never do solo piano if I couldn’t manage to do a bass sound with my piano.

In addition to the superb brazilian tracks, another landmark in Troupeau Bleu is the discoid « Mary & Jeff », was it because of the hip of the time ?
Yes absolutely, even in jazz – Alain start looking for another record in his collection, ending sort out Return To Forever by Chick Corea: Where Have I Known You Before – there is a track on this album with almost the same “Mary & Jeff” rhythmic. It’s Lenny White who’s the drummer, and a champion regarding this sort of beat, Alain Gandolfi listened him a lot.

The maxi single version of "Mary & Jeff", released as a medley along with "Devil's Dance", the twin track from the Volume 2 LP

Another main attraction in Cortex are the lyrics, beautifully poetics, not really common in jazz?
Exact. And I worked hard to find lyrics that just fitted. Vocals came from my huge admiration for Michel Legrand, especially « La Valse Des Lilas », that really touched me deep, that mix of esoteric lyrics but speaking of love in the same time. He’s one of the only french artist I really admire. He’s like a headlight for me.

And you never thought to sing yourself in Troupeau Bleu, like in the following albums?
No, but at first we’re looking for a black female voice, more in a soulful way (Note : that would be interesting to imagine the result of Troupeau Bleu featuring Nancy Holloway, Dee Dee Bridgwater or Aretha Franklin !). Finally it’s something very special in this album, this mix of brazilian jazz with white ethered voices a la Michel Legrand…
But when we met the record labels to present the album, we were ignored everywhere, it wasn’t the jazz rock they’re looking for at the time.

About jazz-rock, there was a scene at the time? Did you know other bands?
Not really, we only knew some cats in straight jazz scene. We really created something new where we performed. We teared the place down at the Gibus for example, which is definitly not a jazz club, or at the Caveau De La Montagne, which was more into New Orleans style. We played at Club Saint Germain, headquarter of the Martin Circus (Note: famous French prog rock band)… We just played at club who let us play! Alain and I were never into show business, we didn’t like being with the others, playing with the others… We had far enough time to spend for managing the band.

You’re finally signed on Disques Esperances…
Yes, but with a big misunderstanding. They thought about Cortex as a pop band, they introduced us like that.

Next question may seems commonplace, but is your goal was to make big chart success?
Think that when you make a record, in the beginning you always think it’s gonna be a hit, and you gonna eat with it.

How many LPs of Troupeau Bleu did you sold at the time?
Around 7000 LPs. And thirty years after the reissue sell for around 15000 copies!

CORTEX - Troupeau Bleu (Disque Esperance)

The first Cortex album, Troupeau Bleu, is one of the most plain, rich and interesting you could ever found in France during the 70s. The album start foot on the pump with "La Rue", probably the most compiled track from the band, and showing straight the great piano/drums alchimy between the two Alain. Then

"Automne", cover of the french folk song "Colchiques" (title is different cause Cortex didn't had the right to use it), a brillant youth cure brought by the relentless rhythmic of Gandolfi and the modern vocalizes of Mireille Dalbray, between jazz scat and 70s pop.

"L'Enfant Samba", the only single release from the album, is the first real travel through the brazilian countries, with its hypnotic theme by Alain Mion on Fender Rhodes backed up by subtle samba percussions, and the superb sax solo delivered by Alain Labib. On this title like all the others, you can notice the excellent lyrics composed by Alain Mion.

With "Troupeau Bleu", the band definitly go far beyond his influences to establish his own landmark, the "Cortex touch": jazz funk bordered with prog rock, hypnotic piano melodies, tensed and melancolic, and of course the ethered voice of Mireille supported by the always super tight rhythm section.

With the following track "Prelude à Go Round", a luscious jazz funk ideal for your sunny lazy afternoon, we had a sort of european respons to Roy Ayers, an artist Alain never heard about before the interview!!. Aside ends with "Go Round", with Alain on solo piano, show us that melancoly, the kind of mood we could find in the portuguese fado, really is inside this band.

This magical odyssey continues with the more abstract tune of the album: "Chanson D'un Jour D'Hiver" is a slow dramatic crecendo ignited by a dark piano theme, then the baroque lalala of Mireille Dalbray adds some more mysteries, then to the final high pick, with Alain Gandolfi in top form on drums, adding some great phasing effects, a track DJ Shadow would appreciate for sure.

Following track is the famous "Mary & Jeff", discoïd jazz with binary rhythmic. But even with so-called dance music, the sound stay dark and melancolic, the musicians seems to run after a soft feeling they can't find, prisonner of a run they can't stop.

"Huit Octobre 1971", after an intro that show once again the great part given to the voice arrangement, give space to a huge mid-tempo groove , totally mastered by Alain Mion on keyboard. With taste for surprises, the band speed up the rhythm and finish the work with an overpowered jazz funk a la Headhunters.

"Sabbat" then, is an ambitious three parts track, where jazz funk meet battucada, where crazy vocals replies to instruments, like a final short version of the whole album.

Finally, like if it wasn't enough, the album close with "Madbass", a monster jazz funk tune ready to warm up the dancefloor. YOU NEED THIS RECORD.

There are two years between the first and the follow-up Cortex album…
Yes, with two singles including « Les Oiseaux Morts », where I start singing, cause our singer just left. Well, I’m not always proud of what I did in vocal, but I like this tune. Then with Alain we did a soundtrack. But the problem is everything burnt! All the reels, the movie rushs, so the film never came out… I still have a mono DAT of the soundtrack.

Then the second album, simply called Volume 2. It sounds more like a compilation than an album, right?
In fact we weren’t involved that much. We were bothered to be on Disques Espérance cause they didn’t do their job, we were badly represented, but we owed them one more year of contract. So we make that so-called album pretty fast, that didn’t really represent our style at this time. We gave them the tapes, and didn’t deal with at all after that. We only told them that we wanted a cover with Cortex written in the Phillie Love Monument style. Well, they did a cover more in a 10 Commitments way!

When we speak of the second and third Cortex albums (without title, released on Crypto) everybody seems to think there are much less interesting than Troupeau Bleu, what’s your opinion?
Troupeau Bleu was more innovative, it has this « unplugged » feeling on it, (well, it’s not exactly the word cause the electric guitar was a big element in the album) we never reproduced this sound after. Plus Nicolas, the bass player on the second album, was so gifted that we feel forced to over-use him, that was not a good idea. We would like to do more mainstream.

The other albums were less sincere?
No, cause I’ve always been sincere in my music. But the second album is always a hard step. On the first one you throw everything you got, no matter if you have unity in it or not. On the second one you ask yourself how to start: Are we making another « Mary & Jeff ”? Are we making it in the same style than « Sabbat ”? Are we making a totally different style?… And of course it depends a lot of the success. If we had a huge success with Troupeau Bleu we would have kept the same crew, the same alchemy. In opposite we had constantly changed of personel. In two years we had countless different bass players, female singers…

How did you stop Cortex?
After the Volume 2 we splitted. Alain and I stayed together to make the third album. We only used session players and we recorded in Antibes (south of France, on the Riviera), in the Jean Pierre Massiéra studio. Then we decided to create a studio with Alain Gandolfi, AA Musique, that we make in a country house I just bought near Melun, and we make enough tracks to make an album, with the help of many former Cortex members, but we never released it. Next Music (Note: who released the Cortex Best Of) should released it, but I have no news from them. Then we worked in advertising and radio station with Gandolfi, creating jingles. Then we splitted, Alain left to work as a sound engineer and I continued to compose: PhenoMen around 84, which appeared to be a a big hit on radios in 86. Then I did NoMad in 88, it didn’t work so well beacsue of its bad distribution. The problem is, at one time, producers became business men who know nothing about music. We have no more guys like Eddie Barclay who know what they’re talking about. Anyway I created a vocal jazz band. We were two pianists and three singers. And finally I went back to the basics with straight jazz trios.

It’s the start of Alain Mion solo
It’s a link period. I went back into jazz little by little, first with cover of classics with Alain Mion In New York, then with my own compositions in 90 with Some Soul Food.

With the passing, what do you think of your band period, your period in studio for more pop compositions, more mainstream radio?
It was a very positive experience. I have a strenth many others don’t have: I touched every style. I’m able to understand binary AND ternary music. Few people have both knowledges in pop, few people have both in jazz. The more experiences and culture you have, the more possibilities and ideas you give. For example to deal with mainstream stuff, it brings power in my compositions, it allows me to go straight to the essential. I can’t stand intellectual music, I perfer to listen variety music.

During the 90s, Cortex go back into light with the first rare groove compilations and the acid jazz movement, were you surprised people talked you again of your band?
Yes that was a big surprise. And even a big chock cause when you create something and it doesn’t work at first you think it’s buried forever! Plus I did other things after Cortex, and you always think, sometimes you’re wrong, that your very last album is the best, until next one!

Were you proud to be recognized, at last?
Of course, plus it was the first time my name was linked to Cortex. During the 70s we were pretty well known but it was only under name Cortex, people didn’t know Alain Mion. With the reissues and compilations people was able to make the connection: it was Alain Mion, the one who made Cortex. So things tended to be reversed and it helped for my solo career. Notice that it’s pretty unfair cause people never speak about Alain Gandolfi, I would never done Cortex without him and he was as important as me in the band. We both made the artistic direction. Cortex was Alain and I.

Are you interested about sample based music or electronic music?
Not at all. There must be some interesting and honest people in the scene but I think there’s a lot of copycat guys, which is the same problem in jazz, and I can’t stand that (Note : Alain has been upset by the swindler called Bob Sinclar, who robbed an entire loop without clear it and refused to pay any euros for it. He’s been prosecuted and Alain won the lawsuit). In the same way, I don’t understand why music industry give so much importance to a guy who make compilations with tunes he didn’t made.

But you told me before you were proud to be on those compilations
Of course I’m proud to be on the same comp. than Quincy Jones, but I don’t understand why the guy who did the selection has his name written bigger than Quincy Jones one!

It’s the whole debate about DJs starring, it’s interesting to talk about that with you, cause it’s a culture we’re so much involved with, we don’t have enough passing sometime, we admire certain DJs and we forget what they owe to the records they spin.
Of course. When you see a DJ who put Miles Davis in his compilation and then gonna make a « tour » with his name written phat on the flyers… you can’t compare DJ bla bla and Miles Davis.

Yes but you can’t deny the fact these compilations allow to put the artists on the map, especially for foreign listeners, like Japanese people for example who don’t have access to the original records.
Compilation, as a promotionnal platform don’t bother me, I just say the guy who realize the compilation have to « shadow » himself in front of the artists he compiled.

Your point of view is legitimate. Talking about Japan… you told us you like to travel and play in foreign countries?
Yes, I try to create a worldwide network. It allowed me to play in Poland, where I had some success few years ago, also in China, thanks to a Japanese friend. I’m curious about aliens, I’m not afraid to go elsewhere, being in China without speaking a damn word, in a train in the middle of nowhere ! You discover incredible things, like this habit in China: people reunite in the street to sing, at the fullest. You’ve got a core of people, then people who don’t know each other, a woman doing her shopping, a guy with his dog, join themselves and sing together. It blowed me away! You surprised them too, cause they don’t know jazz music like western people..

If you have the opportunity to leave for playing in the other side of the planet..
Oh, I’m leaving right now !

ITW led by Bobwall and Fisherman Price.
Recent photos are by Fisherman Price. Vintage photos were kindly transmited by Max from Underdog label, who released the unreleased CORTEX '79 tracks comp.
Big Up to J’M Irie for the connection with Alain Mion.

Web site de Alain Mion : www.alainmion.com