The Robert Bensick Band’s French Pictures In London, a previously unreleased art rock magnum opus, is a studio project from 1975. In 2016, forty-one years after its recording, it is finally seeing the light, and features extensive and carefully researched liner notes, placing Bensick back into the Cleveland underground music history he was essentially written out of.

“In the summer of 1975,” as explained by music writer and researcher Nick Blakey, “Cleveland multi-instrumentalist, sculptor, and artist Robert Bensick brought together the best of the Cleveland underground and recorded an album at Agency Recording, a studio favored by such recording stars as Todd Rundgren.”

The studio band assembled by Bensick — himself a veteran of legendary Cleveland bands such as The Munx, Hy Maya and Peter Laughner’s Fins — included such luminaries as Tom Herman (Pere Ubu), Scott Krauss (Pere Ubu/Cinderella Backstreet/Home & Garden), Cynthia Black (Cinderella Backstreet/Peter & The Wolves), Albert Dennis (Cinderella Backstreet/Wolves), and Michael Hronek (a collaborator of Cleveland proto-punk legend Peter Laughner). Bensick was attempting through this record to bring music and art together into a brand new experience.

Today, premiering at VerbicideMagazine.com, is the ninth track from French Pictures In London, “After The Ball.” You can stream it above. The album sees its release on June 24, 2016 via Smog Veil Records.

Nick Blakey, French Pictures in London album liner notes researcher and author, adds this:

“What appears to be a rather straightforward 70s art rock tune reveals itself to be dragging bits and pieces of the late 60s into the present with Michael Hronek’s distorted electric piano strongly showing the influence of Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea’s work in Miles Davis’ band. It also reveals a bit of the future as Tom Herman’s lead guitar is strongly reminiscent of what he would do on the first three Pere Ubu albums. Also, stranger still, due to Robert Bensick’s vocal approach “After The Ball” sounds uncannily like the material Wire would compose as they were evolving out of Pink Flag and into Chairs Missing, much of which can be found on the collection Behind The Curtain. That Bensick wrote French Pictures in London while under the influence of Roxy Music only becomes more serendipitous when reminded that Wire supported Roxy Music on their 1979 European tour (where they were not well received, but that is another story).”