France's near-revolution of May '68 was the zenith of that generation's struggle for a new kind of life. It kicked the country's small, but vibrant, counter-culture into overdrive, and birthed a local underground music scene. The bands it spawned made music with much less rock purity than groups from the UK and US. Their musical and cultural influences foregrounded improvisation, disjunction, and genre-blending: Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, free jazz, and radical politics. The introduction of the synthesiser in the early 1970s added fuel to the fire.

This collection of French underground music inaugurates a series to accompany "Synths, Sax & Situationists", the first English-language book to investigate this movement. It focuses on the music of the second wave of bands that emerged in 1972/3, which saw radicalised psychedelic and jazz influences merge with the future-music possibilities offered by new technology. The next volume will investigate the politically-charged bands that erupted in immediate aftermath of May '68.