In October I asked the excellent Zeuhl / Progressive group XAAL for an update on what they have been doing since the story of their first three years was last documented by Cyrille Beerens and Alain Juliac in Ork Alarm! #5 and Notes # 35.
"Hello, I'm Jad, guitarist of XAAL. You asked me to bring you up-to-date with our activities since 1989... Well, Laurent Imperato left the group when we were recording the demo tape. He was insisting on changing the style of the group into a more commercial style with vocals etc.
After that, the three of us rehearsed together for several months before we considered keeping the name of Xaal and playing a set of new pieces. We played our first gig in April 90 but it took a long time before we were happy with the results. On October 27th we performed as support for the Christian Vander Trio and things really started to move from here. We were contacted by Musea, who were interested in releasing an album from us. We started recording it (but since it was self-produced, it took quite a while to achieve). In 1991 we played a few fairly good gigs and finished mixing the record in May. Then Keith Turner of Progressive Records (and also the leader of the interesting British group QUASAR - ed.) proposed a deal to us, which was much more interesting than Musea's and we therefore signed with Keith's label in July. In the winter of 91, Patrick Boileau (drums) broke both wrists, which led to a very long enforced holiday - we eventually played again in the spring of 92, and it proved that the break was beneficial to the group. As the music improves, more people are coming to the gigs. We have played as support act for PAGA (Bernard Paganotti's group featuring Klaus Blasquiz). Finally the record 'EN CHEMIN' was released in August 92 and it is slowly being distributed in Europe."
K7 XAAL XAAL 01 1988 CD EN CHEMIN PROGRESSIVE 004 1992