Forever Blowing Bubbles is a

progressive rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog) is a broad genre of rock music that primarily developed in the United Kingdom through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early-to-mid-1970s. Initially termed " progressive pop", the ...

album An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track cartridge, 8-track or Cassette tape, cassette), or digital distribution, dig ...

by Clearlight, released in 1975 on

Virgin Records Virgin Records is a British record label owned by Universal Music Group. They were originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman (musician), ...

in the UK. Its predecessor ''

Clearlight Symphony ''Clearlight Symphony'' is a progressive rock album released in 1975 on Virgin Records in the UK. It is the first in a series of albums by a project led by pianist Cyrille Verdeaux with the participation of other musicians, including in this case ...

'' having been released earlier in 1975, Cyrille Verdeaux was offered to record a follow-up effort. This time, he decided to work with a full band, using several musicians he had played with on the one-off Delired Cameleon Family project, most notably bassist Joël Dugrenot (formerly of Zao), and during the summer of 1975 studio time was booked at Virgin's Manor studio in England. English musicians sat in alongside their French counterparts, including former

King Crimson King Crimson were an English progressive rock band formed in London in 1968 by Robert Fripp, Michael Giles, Greg Lake, Ian McDonald (musician), Ian McDonald and Peter Sinfield. Guitarist Fripp remained the only constant member throughout the ...

violinist David Cross and two of Hatfield and the North's occasional backing vocalists The Northettes. The album covers many contrasting genres including psychedelic,

new age New Age is a range of Spirituality, spiritual or Religion, religious practices and beliefs that rapidly grew in Western world, Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclecticism, eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise d ...

, folk, rock and

jazz fusion Jazz fusion (also known as jazz rock, jazz-rock fusion, or simply fusion) is a popular music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric gui ...

jamming, and the closing track of abstract

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

experimentation. Only two songs have vocals, and are sung in French. Following the release of the album, Clearlight embarked on a UK tour supporting

Gong A gongFrom Indonesian language, Indonesian and ; ; zh, c=鑼, p=luó; ; ; ; ; is a percussion instrument originating from Southeast Asia, and used widely in Southeast Asian and East Asian musical traditions. Gongs are made of metal and ...

, with an altered line-up comprising Verdeaux, Dugrenot, Jeanneau, D'Agostini, and new members Coco Roussel (drums, ex Heldon, and later in Happy The Man), Jorge Pinchevsky (violin, later in Gong) and Francis Mandin (synthesizers).

Cover art

The cover depicts connections with previous albums, which became a trend in Clearlight album covers from this point onward. On the cover of ''Clearlight Symphony'', cables connect an electrical box to a head, with one cable leading off in the distance, over the horizon. On the cover of ''Forever Blowing Bubbles'', the same cable comes over the horizon, and ends in a disconnected DIN plug lying in the grass, blowing bubbles. The grass appears to be a redrawing of the

marijuana Cannabis (), commonly known as marijuana (), weed, pot, and ganja, List of slang names for cannabis, among other names, is a non-chemically uniform psychoactive drug from the ''Cannabis'' plant. Native to Central or South Asia, cannabis has ...

leaves from the back cover of '' Delired Cameleon Family'', but are now just ordinary lawn grass.

Track listing

Side one

#"Chanson" (Joël Dugrenot) – 4:50 #"Without Words" (Cyrille Verdeaux) – 7:30 #"Way" (Dugrenot) – 8:00

Side two

#"Ergotrip" (Verdeaux) – 6:35 #"Et pendant ce temps la" (Verdeaux) – 4:10 #"Narcisse et Goldmund" (Verdeaux / Beatrice d'Eaubonne) – 2:30 #"Jungle Bubbles" (Verdeaux) – 2:40

Personnel

*Cyrille Verdeaux –

grand piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

harpsichord A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a musical keyboard, keyboard. Depressing a key raises its back end within the instrument, which in turn raises a mechanism with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic that plucks one ...

synthesizer A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

organ Organ and organs may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a group of tissues organized to serve a common function * Organ system, a collection of organs that function together to carry out specific functions within the body. Musical instruments ...

glockenspiel The glockenspiel ( ; or , : bells and : play) or bells is a percussion instrument consisting of pitched aluminum or steel bars arranged in a Musical keyboard, keyboard layout. This makes the glockenspiel a type of metallophone, similar to the v ...

Mellotron The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which causes a length of magnetic tape to contact a Capstan (tape recorder), capstan, which pulls i ...

gong A gongFrom Indonesian language, Indonesian and ; ; zh, c=鑼, p=luó; ; ; ; ; is a percussion instrument originating from Southeast Asia, and used widely in Southeast Asian and East Asian musical traditions. Gongs are made of metal and ...

conga The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest ...

s *Joël Dugrenot –

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Wood * Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in th ...

, lead vocals *Jean-Claude d'Agostini –

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external electric Guitar amplifier, sound amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar. It uses one or more pickup (music technology), pickups ...

12-string guitar A twelve-string guitar (or 12-string guitar) is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in ...

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

in C ''In C'' is a composition by Terry Riley from 1964. It is one of the most successful works by an American composer and a seminal example of minimal music, minimalism. The score directs any number of musicians to repeat a series of 53 melodic fr ...

*François Jeanneau – saxophones, flutes *Bob Boisadan –

electric piano An electric piano is a musical instrument that has a piano-style musical keyboard, where sound is produced by means of mechanical hammers striking metal strings or reeds or wire tines, which leads to vibrations which are then converted into ele ...

*Chris Stassinopoulos –

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

s * David Cross –

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

electric violin An electric violin is a violin equipped with an electronic output of its sound. The term most properly refers to an instrument intentionally made to be electrified with built-in pickups, usually with a solid body. It can also refer to a violin fi ...

*Christian Boulé – cosmic guitar *Gilbert Artman –

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

maraca A maraca ( , , ), sometimes called shaker or chac-chac, is a rattle which appears in many genres of Caribbean and Latin music. It is shaken by a handle and usually played as part of a pair. Maracas, also known as tamaracas, were rattles of d ...

vibraphone The vibraphone (also called the vibraharp) is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using Percussion mallet, mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone ...

*Amanda (Parsons) and Ann (Rosenthal, of the Northettes who are mentioned in the thank-yous; see Hatfield and the North) – celestial choir *Bruno Verdeaux –

, aquatic

s *Brigitte Roy – vocals (on "Narcisse et Goldmund") produced by Cyrille Verdeaux and Mick Glossop {{Authority control Clearlight (French band) albums 1975 albums Virgin Records albums Jam band albums