Steve Beresford & Anne Marie Beretta - Dancing The Line Steve Beresford & Anne Marie Beretta

British musician, composer and arranger Steve Beresford has been a vital force in the British and international music scene since the early 70s. Starting his recording career in 1973, recording with the Portsmouth Sinfonia alongside Gavin Bryars and Brian Eno, he went on to collaborate with a wide array of leading musicians in the free improvisation field and beyond, including Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Han Bennink, The Slits, Prince Far I, Thurston Moore and Christian Marclay. He was also a member of the groundbreaking quartet Alterations with David Toop, Peter Cusack and Terry Day.

In the early 80s, Beresford started a fruitful collaboration with French producer Jean Rochard repeatedly attending the latter’s music festival in the Chantenay Villedieu village and subsequently recording for his label nato. Rochard himself had a special affinity with the British scene and had started inviting the likes of Beresford, Lol Coxhill, Tony Coe, Mike Cooper to the festival. In 1985, Rochard introduced Beresford to French fashion designer Anne Marie Beretta and, in Spring of that year, the musician came over to Paris with his friend and collaborator, lyricist Andrew Brenner to spend a few days at Beretta’s atelier in order to write songs for an upcoming album themed around the designer’s works. Together they came up with several songs inspired by the fashion ideas, the fabrics, the colours used by Beretta and the emotions they conveyed.

The recording session took place in Chantenay in Summer 85 in a small clothing shop turned recording studio. It featured Beresford on piano, voice, Yamaha DX7 keyboard and RX11 drum machine, David Toop on flute and guitar, Alan Hacker on Clarinet and London-based Japanese singer Kazuko Hohki from the group Frank Chickens, which Beresford and Toop had recently produced.

The album “Dancing the Line” was released in France in October 1985. It is a subtle mix of ethereal pop songs (“Tendance“, “Comfortable Gestures” the latter featured in Music from Memory’s “Uneven Paths” compilation), funkier tracks (“Sand from a Desert“, “Altitude“), a beautiful piano ballad (“Lover of Paradox“) and a couple of free instrumentals (“Horse Tail” featuring David Toop on flute and “Snap” with Alan Hacker on clarinet).