Jethro Tull - Chateau D'Isaster (1973)

After the financial success of 'Thick As A Brick', Jethro Tull found themselves as tax exiles in France, and so it was at the Chateau D'Herouville that they began work on the highly anticipated 'A Passion Play'. The sessions ended up mysteriously abandoned, due to 'ill health, technical and production problems, and the sudden decision to return to the U.K.'. Ian Anderson would later re-evaluate and re-record some of these songs, but the sessions' original concept seemed to be a construct around man's relationship with the animal kingdom, and one of these themes would later morph into 'War Child's 'Bungle In The Jungle'. The music is progressive rock at its best, but in a more palatable, abbreviated form that on 'A Passion Play', and mostly comes from 1993's 'Nightcap: The Unreleased Masters'. However, while compiling this album I found that some recorded tracks were missing, and a number of others had been incorrectly titled, so there was a bit of work to do, and I've also edited a few tracks so that they segued smoothly, to give a bit of coherence to the individual sides. The track listing has come from Yesstiles over at the www.stevehoffman.tv. site, who has tried to knock the three sides of the proposed double album into some sort of shape. The three recorded sides all have similar lyrical content - Side 1 carries the God and Theatre concept, Side 2 has the Man and Animal concept, and Side 3 has the Man and Critic concept. Side 4 - who knows? It's likely that 'Bungle in the Jungle' was written for this album, but possibly not recorded until the 'War Child' sessions, so may have been placed on Side 4 if they hadn't abandoned the project. Obviously, since it contains the word 'bungle', like two other songs on this album, it must have been meant to be placed somewhere, so I've put it with the other two 'bungle' songs. 'A Passion Play' contains many musical elements of this album, so the final side of the album could be composed of the last 19 minutes of that release (Side 2 following the Hare story), so I've added that as Side 4, but as it's already released material then feel free to delete it if you want. 

Track listing

Side One
01 Prelude
02 Scenario
03 Audition
04 Skating Away On The Thin Ice Of A New Day
05 Sailor
06 No Rehearsal

Side Two
07 First Post
08 Animelee
09 Tiger Toon
10 Look At The Animals
11 Law Of The Bungle Part I
12 Law Of The Bungle Part II
13 Bungle In The Jungle

Side Three
14 Left Right
15 Solitaire
16 Critique Oblique
17 Post Last

Side Four
A Passion Play - Part II

Steven Wilson has recently done a new stereo mix of these tapes, and I was going to use those mixes, but he's removed nearly all the flute from most of the recordings, so as far as I'm concerned they are not worth hearing. The only one I was forced to use was 'Skating Away....' as I couldn't find the original source tape.

Thanks to Willard's Wormholes (R.I.P.) and Yesstiles for information and concept.