Il n'y a plus rien
Il n'y a plus rien (English: There Is No More) is an album by Léo Ferré, released in 1973 by Barclay Records. The general mood here is dark, both exasperated and desperate. History. After having inserted two symphonic songs ("Ton style", "Tu ne dis jamais rien") in his mostly pop rock oriented album "La Solitude" (1971), after having re-recorded his 1950s oratorio on Guillaume Apollinaire's vast poem "La Chanson du mal-aimé" (""Song of the Poorly Loved"", 1972), Ferré feels now ready to establish himself as a complete artist, author and musician, who  will do without any arrangers' services from now. So here he goes completely symphonic with his own material for the first time (he had gone orchestral before with arranger Jean-Michel Defaye but it was mostly on renowned material by French poets from the 19th century - see "Verlaine et Rimbaud" and "Léo Ferré chante Baudelaire" albums) and he often replaces singing by intense spoken-word and declamation. This very cohesive album opens with the straightforward manifesto "Preface", a reduction of a much longer text that precisely prefaces "Poète... vos papiers!" ("Poet... your documents!"), a collection of his poems formerly published  in January 1957. As Ferré says, "the most beautiful songs are songs that demand justice". The discipline of poetry is meant to teach us how to fight so we can free our mind: The album ends with the radical, pessimistic yet epic and fighting "Il n'y a plus rien" ("There is no more"), that deals with libertarian and revolutionary utopias disappointment from the 1960s and May 68. This anarchist outburst is an example of one of the first uses of whale vocalization in popular music. Track listing. All songs written, composed, arranged and directed by Léo Ferré, except "Ne chantez  pas la mort" whose text is written by Jean-Roger Caussimon.