Harmonium – Les Cinq Saisons

Listen to this with some shrooms and you will understand the cover and the music, completely mind blowing music! It goes well with mind altering substances, preferably shrooms.

Mine is a side-A-worn-out copy. It is NM from the looking! I am so sad it's such a great album……
But judging from the comment here I am not sure now.
Does anyone hear distortion towards high pitch instruments?

Pastoral romantic synthesis between prog rock & folk with some Dixieland & French-styled elements added, oh & no drums. A hippie-inspired ode to nature with French lyrics & challenging yet attractive accessible melodies.
A beautiful album with incredible charm.

Marie Bernard (https://www.discogs.com/artist/774737-Marie-Bernard) played ondes martenot on this.. can anyone add her to the credits ?

Finally got a decent copy of this. The thing just makes me smile (even if I do not speak French). Good music is good music....

One my favorite French pseudo prog/folk bands. Very nicely composed music with vocal harmonies, lush keyboard arrangements, a hint of romanticism and melancholia. Who cares if you dont understand the dialect the instrumental passages speak an amazing aural poetry! This I think was the highlight of their very short catalog.

I bought this album in Montreal when on a grade twelve student exchange in 1979. I have treasured it ever since. Attention prog fans and audiophiles!...This album is a sonic delight; the guitars shimmer, the vocals are crisp without sibilance, and the bass is accurate and big! Great band, great recording.

A hearty recommendation from a smitten Anglophone Canadian...

Second album by this group from Quebec. Harmonium was hugely popular in Quebec, but if you mention an Anglophone Canadian about them, you're more liable to get a blank expression. Thanks to the cultural divide in Canada (French speaking Quebec, rest of Canada English speaking), it's little surprise French singing artists have a difficult time outside the borders of Quebec (Celine Dion realized if she was to be heard outside of Quebec, and perhaps outside Canada, she had to record in English, which she did after 1990, and of course she succeeded big time). Plus my personal experience of running into Anglophone Canadians who never heard of Harmonium. But I'm not surprised. It also demonstrates very well with Harmonium's 1977 live album En Tournée (released in 1980). That album was recorded live in Vancouver, BC, and Serge Fiori chose to greet the Anglophone audience with a "Bon jour" which did not get an enthusiastic response. Luckily the audience was much more responsive towards the music.

Serge Fiori certainly had greater ambitions, he obviously didn't want to think of Harmonium as just a folk group. Along with Michel Normandeau and Louis Valois, he now included keyboardist Serge Locat and Pierre Daigneault making it a five piece. He also included Marie Bernard Pagé (of Et Cetera, who themselves would see an album out the following year, in 1976) guesting on "En Pleine Face" playing an old electronic prototype called the Ondes Martenot (you can hear that on a handful of episodes of the first season of Star Trek during the closing credits, it's the version of the theme song where the female chorus sounds more electronic than usual). Plus Judy Richards providing backing vocals. This album finds the band between the folk music of their first album, and a much more progressive leaning ambitions on the other hand. "Vert" and "En Pleine Face" is more in folk territory. The later even featuring accordion showing the French-influence of their music and Quebecois culture in general. For progheads, "Depuis L'Automne" and "Histoire sans Parole" are totally essential. While still retaining an acoustic feel, these are extended numbers where Serge Locat just loads it with the Mellotron. This is the reason you need this album if you love the sound of the Mellotron! Les Cinq Saisons translates as "The Five Seasons", so one might think of Vivaldi as an inspiration (although you'll hear no Vivaldi on this album, be it excerpt, his music, or in the style of), but then there's that mythical fifth season. "Dixie" has more of a Dixieland influence, particularly with the use of clarinet. "Vert" shows a bit of a progressive influence, particularly the part with the electric piano solo, but apparently this group had stretched this piece to around 20 minutes long live by including extended jams. The original had such a short jam it's little wonder why they stretched it out live.

There is no doubt this is one of the highlights of the prog scene in Quebec, and this is a great album to try if you want to be familiar with that scene!