viima, Jan 22, 2004
BYG Records was founded by Jacques Bisceglia, Jean-Luc Young and Jean Georgakarakos in the late 60's. The now legendary status of BYG is mainly based on some fifty excellent free jazz and experimental records by mostly American artists released under the Actuel-series.
As the 60's progressed towards the seventies the interest of major labels in free jazz started to fade away, creating a need for a new output for many American artists and their music. As a result many leading musicians visited or moved entirely to Europe, where it seemed that free jazz and jazz in general, were more appreciated than in the USA. Paris was often the place of action for the ex-patriate free jazzers, where there was always demand for live performances and people running labels willing to record your music for a release. BYG was one of these.
Most of BYG's Actuel-records are excellent free jazz discs, but they did release something else too: a couple of MEV's improvised electronic albums, some progressive rock albums and a record by Pierre Marietan and Terry Riley.
There are other BYG records around, apart from the Actuel-series, but they are mostly reissues of pretty straight forward jazz discs.
