Alpha du Centaure -

Alpha du Centaure was a French jazz-rock band that released the album Contact on Spirales in 1979.

Members: Jean-Pierre Richard (electric guitar), Olivier Koechlin (acoustic bass), Jonathan Dickinson (drums), Gilles Robert (drums, 1973-75)

Background

Alpha du Centaure formed in 1973 in Paris by guitarist Jean-Pierre Richard and drummer Gilles Robert. Both musicians came from the French underground jazz-rock circuit that coalesced around post-1968 countercultural collectives and university art circles. The group aligned early with the Front de Libération de la Rock-Music, a Paris-based artistic protest movement launched by members of Lard Free and Maajun to promote experimental rock as a legitimate art form within France’s academic and cultural institutions.

Guitarist Jean-Pierre Richard (b. 1948, Paris) studied fine arts before moving into composition and guitar improvisation, developing a tone rooted in both psychedelic rock and the emerging jazz-fusion idiom. Drummer Gilles Robert (b. 1950, Neuilly-sur-Seine) trained in classical percussion during his lycée years and performed in several left-bank ensembles during the early 1970s. He briefly auditioned for Komintern before joining Richard to form Alpha du Centaure, named after the nearest visible star system, as a symbol of avant-garde exploration.

Initially, Alpha du Centaure operated as a collective ensemble with rotating members drawn from the same experimental network that produced Pataphonie and Red Noise. Their performances combined free improvisation, multimedia light shows, and spontaneous poetry, often staged at cultural centers in the Paris suburbs and small provincial festivals. Early appearances at spaces such as the Théâtre Mouffetard and the Sorbonne’s Semaine du Rock events positioned them among the more radical exponents of France’s early fusion underground.

By 1975, internal turnover led to Robert’s departure. His eventual replacement, British-born drummer Jonathan Dickinson (b. 1949, Manchester), had recently settled in France after appearing on mid-1970s recordings by American jazz players Clint Jackson, Byard Lancaster (Mother Africa), and Saheb Sarbib (Evil Season). Bassist Olivier Koechlin (b. 1952, Lyon) joined the same year after studying acoustic bass at the Conservatoire de Paris and playing in various leftist theater troupes.

The stabilized trio of Richard, Koechlin, and Dickinson spent the late 1970s refining a stripped-down electric sound that merged psychedelic textures with loose jazz phrasing and funk-like rhythmic accents. The group performed at community arts venues such as Le Forum in Saint-Gratien, where they developed material that would form their sole album.

Contact

Alpha du Centaure released their singular album, Contact, in 1979 on Spirales.

The album captures the Parisian trio’s free-form fusion of electric jazz, psychedelic improvisation, and abstract rock textures. Guitarist Jean-Pierre Richard leads the ensemble with sustained fuzz lines and wah-driven runs over the shifting rhythmic interplay of bassist Olivier Koechlin and drummer Jonathan Dickinson. Recorded live in one session, Contact embodies the trio’s unfiltered approach to performance: extended instrumental explorations rooted in technical precision and spontaneous exchange.

Richard composed all four tracks and wrote the accompanying texts. The pieces unfold as long-form instrumentals with open structures that merge amplified guitar dynamics, upright bass improvisations, and loosely metered percussion.

The album’s two extended works, “Contact” and “Maxima,” stretch past ten minutes, combining rapid rhythmic bursts with reflective passages. “Petite Fée” and “Fusion – Meringue” temper the abstraction with more concise interplay, the latter introducing brief Latin-tinged rhythmic accents before closing in a controlled fade.

A1. “Contact” (12:10) — recorded live with no overdubs; Richard’s overdriven lead tone cuts across Koechlin’s walking bass figures and Dickinson’s scattered snare accents, creating an impression of dialogue between three equal voices.
A2. “Petite Fée” [Little Fairy] (9:50)

B1. “Maxima” (18:05)
B2. “Fusion – Meringue” (4:30) — contains rhythmic inflections derived from Afro-Latin jazz phrasing.

Sessions occurred on May 12, 1979, at Le Forum in Saint-Gratien with Richard producing and Françoise Decremps handling design. Jean-Marie Fastier took the cover photograph, depicting the trio during rehearsal.

Pressed in a limited run of 500 copies, Contact stands as Alpha du Centaure’s only recorded document and final activity before the group’s dissolution later that year.

Discography: