| Clearlight | |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Delired Cameleon Family |
| Origin | France |
| Genres | progressive rock |
| Years active | 1973–1978 |
| Labels | Virgin, Isadora, Celluloid |
| Website | www.clearlight888music.com |
| Past members | |
| Cyrille Verdeaux (and many others) |
|
Clearlight are a French progressive rock band from the 1970s, although their best known work was produced in England, and released by a major British record company. While progressive rock is an appropriate overall genre for the band, much of their work delves into other genres including psychedelic music, jam band music, symphonic rock, space rock, jazz fusion, and new age music.
"Clearlight" did not become the group's name until their third album; their first was Clearlight Symphony which is an album with a title but no artist name. Before choosing the name Clearlight they were briefly called Delired Cameleon Family, taken from a humorous "franglo" pun, "delire raide camé Léon". This being an English language name for a French group, it contains, perhaps unintentionally, two words that do not exist in the English language: delired as the adjective form of delirium ("delirious" would have been correct), and cameleon is a mis-spelling of the lizard species chameleon (probably confused with the French spelling, caméléon).
The group's large and continually changing membership featured a mix of French and British musicians, including pianist and synthesist Cyrille Verdeaux who was regarded as its leader, Gilbert Artman of Lard Free and Urban Sax (although he does not play saxophone here), and several members of Gong: Tim Blake, Steve Hillage and Didier Malherbe. Violinists Jorge Pinchevsky (also of Gong, but he does not appear on any Clearlight albums)[1] David Cross of King Crimson, and Didier Lockwood of Magma were also members at various times.
The band was managed by Jacques Reland, now a lecturer at the London Metropolitan University and Head of European Research at the Global Policy Institute. The Rennes born manager negotiated the band's first four album deals.
Cyrille Verdeaux later recorded one or more solo albums under the name Clearlight, which are outside the scope of this discography.