Honeyelk - En Quete D'un Monde Meilleur... (Reissue) (1979/1995)

Honeyelk are a jazzy zehul band hailing from the city of Toulon in France, they were led by the Blanc brothers, Gerard playing both electric and bass guitars and Christian playing the drums. During the early and mid 70's they were involved with several bands mostly playing covers of other progressive rock bands. They first started composing original material as Honey Dream, then consisted of 5 musicians, adding 2 guitarists and a keyboard player to the brothers lineup. As they wanted to keep evolving and started touring, one by one the members left to pursue other careers, leaving the brothers alone. But dedicated to their project they continued by going to London to recruit english musicians, but unfortunately came back empty handed when the auditioned members found out the brothers intentions were to go back to France. By now they have changed their name to Honeyelk and started recruiting what would become their final lineup. By mid 79' after a few lineup changes, they added Pierre Yves Maury playing Clarinet and Saxophone, William Grandordy playing Piano and Synths, and Frank Lovisolo playing guitars. Financing it by themselves, over a space of two days and two nights the band have recorded two songs in total of 26 minutes, which was supposed to be their album's first side. Although writing more material, they didn't record anything else since they felt it was too out of date for the time, and not fully representative of their sound. The album was released with only those two songs and titled "Stoys Vi Dozévéloy", only 1000 copies were pressed and sold that time. On December 2nd 79' one memorable concert took place and recorded in front of 1000 enthusiastic people, featuring their entire repertoire. After the show and the release of their album, which both got very favorable reviews, the band felt they could make it on a national scale. But when contacting a few studios for the recording of their second album, they found out the costs were too high. Those high hopes turned into a string of disappointments, when a chance for them to open for Magma didn't came through when the gig was canceled, and other unsuccessful gigs also took place. in addition to that their promotion and distribution was too confidential, causing the brothers to put the band on hold for a while.

In the early 80's, after the departure of Lovisolo, Grandordy and Maury, the band still haven't gave up their dream to record a second album. Inspite of building a recording studio next to their house, and having a good and steady lineup, a second album was never recorded, though they did manage to record for themselves three more pieces that made it onto the reissue of their first album/EP. By mid 80's after adopting a more accessible style singing in french and english, they still weren't able to fully interest any of the record labels, naturally the Blanc brothers gave up and the band came to full stop.

Honeyelk's music is a fine cross between Magma, Zao and VDGG, playing in a typical Jazzy Zehul style. Their sound is mainly derived from the excellent playing of Gerard Blanc on bass, Maury's howling clarinet and saxophone and Grandordy's piano and keyboard work. Feeling French and English were not sufficient enough and wishing to be more original Gerard Blanc was singing his own made up lyrics.
In 1995 Gerard Blanc remixed the two tracks from their 79' album, offering a better sound quality and a balanced mix, and added 4 more tracks. The album "En Quete D'un Monde Meilleur" was released that year by Musea with a detailed booklet, making it a worth while package.