Asylum Party

Memories of Thierry Sobezyk and Asylum Party

Thierry Sobezyk, bass player and co-vocalist of Asylum Party sadly passed away aged 57 on the 11th July 2019. This very sad was announced on social networks and tributes were paid by his former Touching Pop fellows and friends Little Nemo, Mary Goes Round and Babel 17. I have personaly known Thierry and want to tell you about him and publish some Asylum Party documents.

Thierry created Asylum Party with Philippe Planchon, they both wrote and sang the songs. Their story has been written in French by David Sanson for the 2006 anthology of the band issued by Infrasition. His text for the leaflet of the two double CDs "The Grey Years" can be read here.

Originally a guitar player, Thierry switched to bass guitar when the band in which he played with his childhood friend Philippe Planchon shrinked to the two of them. A drum machine was bought... and Asylum Party was born. Thierry has always kept an original way of approaching bass playing, assuming beneath a sound coming from his two models Peter Hook and Jean-Jacques Burnel his taste for 60s and 70s rock and pop (of course The Beatles but also Tom Petty, Blue Oyster Cult, Motorhead, not to mention the new wave scene discovered on the radio with The Police, XTC, Men At Work, and the Joy Division, The Cure, Magazine, Killing Joke...). His typical bass sound can be heard on the very first demoes (a demo tape called Univers Clos, never published until the "Grey Years" reissues) as well as his original bass solos interlinked with the guitar (The wind will blow, Le voyage immobile..).

His style and music have been recognized and appreciated through the decades and the distance, as Asylum Party is the Touching Pop band most covered on the internet (Borderline beeing a cult album for young generations of fans all over the world) and Thierry's bass parts are being analyzed, played and are the subject of many videos on You Tube. He He was a model for many musicians and his comments on You Tube under the videos showing young musicians playing his bass parts of Asylum Party songs reveal how much he was touched by the tribute and admiration of a wider, more international and younger audience than the actual Touching Pop-aera fans.

A rare video of 'Asylum Party live (the sound comes from another bootleg tape, hence the time gap)

Thierry was able of being very at ease live, talking with the audience, in a easy-going way, contrasting with the dark mood of the music. He was also very approachable after the concerts. That's how I could met him after a 1991 gig at the Student Hall of Residence in Antony, very close to Paris (concert with a live performance of a visual artist painting a huge human face on a sheet, upon which the musicians oversized shadows were projected, as in a 1930s expresionnist movie). Outside the stage, he was friendly and humourous.

He had brought a poppier and lighter touch to Asylum part's second album "Mere" (Mother in french), whose topic touched him very personnaly, as his mother died when he was twelve years old. Besides his english and american musical taste, he loved French music, being a great admirer of Alain Bashung and able to love songs far from his usual style, such as Louis Chedid's "Ainsi soit-il" (which he covered in a very personal way, as he once had the idea to cover another 60s French pop song, "Les marionnettes" by French singer Christophe).

It's so natural that after his band's split he had written and recorded a solo album almost entirely in French, recorded in 1992 at studio Val d'Orge with Jean Taxis (producer and sound engineer for Little Nemo). This album named "Voyeur" should have been released by the Single KO label (Louis Thevenon's following project after Lively Art) whose bankrupcy brutally brought an end to this project.Thierry had recently published all of his unreleased album on You Tube, allowing the curious and opened ears to discover this personal piece of art, certainly the most serene and happy he ever recorded (Album to listen in this playlist).

Thierry playing the acoustic guitar (Picture by Fushia)

The ruthless music business world was not made for naive and idealistic people like him, he never had the opportunity to publish anything else but kept on writing and recording demoes, sometimes collabrating with others (including Mandala with Jean Franceschi of Babel 17). He was also found of picture movies and books (particularly Jim Harrison, Hubert Selby Jr...), as the wordplay on "Vingt mille feux sous les nerfs" (untranslatable wordplay on " Twenty thousand leagues under the sea" a Jules Verne novel and "twenty thousand inflamed nerves") and the reference to the esoterical book "Le Matin des Magiciens" in "La Tourmente" are clues... He had been selected as a radio-listener member of France Inter radio literary jury in 2014.

Thierry on bass duties with Mary Goes Round (picture put on line by Jerome Avril)

He had written with Olivier Champeau "Tribes are meeting", the Teepee song, at the end of which you can instantly identify his low backing vocals and typical bass on the last chorus. After Asylum Party's demise, he also played bass live with Mary Goes Round.

Recently, he had published on You Tube two tribute covers of his former Touching Pop mates, close to the original song (Little Nemo's New Flood but with a rockier guitar solo) or in a different musical style (the epic Mary Goes Round's "Promised Land" slowed down in a touching nonchalant bluesy version blues). His disappearance sadly leaves these musical postcards without continuation.

My thoughts are going to his wife and two sons, his family, friends and particularly Philippe and Pascale his former Asylum Party bandmates...

"Le rêve sans fin, le show doit continuer..."
("The endless dream, the show must go on..." from "Le rêve sans fin" a song from his 1992 solo album "Voyeur")

An incomplete Asylum Party press review

The first introduction to the band in French magazine " Best" in 1988 before the release of "Picture one"

An interview for the French Ad Vitam Aeternam in 1989, juste after Pascale Mace joined the band and before recording " Borderline"

An interview for the ephemeral French rock magazine "Worst" to promote the just released "Mere" album.