By the time of recording their debut album, simply entitled GILBERT ARTMAN'S LARD FREE, the group had stabalised as a quartet. Guitarist François Mativet had been around since Lard Free's inception, and had taken great steps on from Robert Fripp influences, in blending fraught chaos with dynamics and feeling. With the line-up completed by a saxophonist and bassist, I imagine it could easily have been mistaken as just another French jazz-rock album. Yet, this couldn't be further from the truth. This piece of vinyl offered a stark, often very bleak and eerie music, sometimes vastly understated music and at other times numbingly raw and abrasive. In hope of gaining a contract with Island Records, Lard Free ventured to Island's London Studio to record it. Apparently, much to the engineer's surprise, the basic tracks were laid-down in under half an hour, with complete mixing and overdubbing being completed in 36 hours!From my Gilbert Artman "The Eternal Spiral" article in Audion magazine #24 (Feb. 1993)