The laughing Buddha is one of the great symbols of modern-day record company artwork. It is a perfect blend of reverence and irreverence, a nod to religion and philosophy that is playful as well as earnest. It captured the counter-cultural, rebel spirit of BYG, the label with three large letters taken from the second names of its visionary founders: Fernand Boruso, Jean-Luc Young and Jean Georgakarakos.

Launched in the late ’60s in Paris, a city then in the throes of great social upheaval, BYG became the home of music that was uncompromisingly new. The label issued a batch of seminal recordings by Americans who were creating a school of jazz that became known as ‘avant-garde’ - Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Archie Shepp, Alan Silva, and Don Cherry to name but some – as part of a series called Actuel (‘Current’). A hugely ambitious Actuel festival in Amougies, Belgium also brought together iconoclasts such as Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Pink Floyd, Gong and Soft Machine, who were all taking rock into excitingly fresh areas by way of a maverick marriage of improvisation, surreal imagery and technology.

BYG subsequently championed artists who pushed the envelope in terms of lyric writing, such as the legendary French duo Areski & Brigitte Fontaine, or experiments in sound, such as the international ensemble, Musica Elettronica Viva. Decades after its inception, the label remains a key repository of ground-breaking music of the second half of the 20th century that still informs the first half of the 21st.

Tracklist:
A1 Daevid Allen– Time Of Your Life
A2 Coeur Magique– Le Cocotier Part 1 & 2
A3 Aynsley Dunbar– Willing To Fight
A4 Alice – Le Nouveau Monde
A5 Art Ensemble Of Chicago– Rock Out
B1 Tribu– I'll Take The Next Train
B2 Hypto Facto– Florting
B3 Coeur Magique– Wakan Tanka
B4 Alice – Je Voudrais Habiter Le Soleil