Robi

  • Posted on 08/02/2015
  • /Under Musique

20150208 Robi ArtworkChloé Robineau’s debut album “L’hiver et la Joie” – a stunningly atmospheric and at times dark and brooding, minimalist indie-pop album populated with synth keyboards and throbbing basslines – deservedly featured amongst 2013’s year-listed albums. And now a couple of years later Chloé – or Robi – as she is better known, is back with a brand new album “La Cavale”, that from the opening bars of “L’éternité” reveals a collection of songs which share the same dark and brooding themes as its predecessor and is again populated with minimalist synthesiser keyboards, stark bass lines and Robi’s deliberately monotonic yet hypnotically seductive vocals.

Yet you also start to notice the subtle changes that Robi manages to convey to the song with just some deft inflections to her voice, added guitar, cello and what sounds like orchestral horns (but which I suspect is just programmation) that provide both added substance and an analogue mellowness; the inherent coldness and unforgivingness of industrial synth-pop is replaced by a yielding warmth. Indeed, while the overall tone of this album is decidedly melancholic there are also some very clever touches displayed here -an unexpected sensuality to Robi’s voice on “Nuit de fête” that is expertly framed by the song’s melody, while “Danser” oozes romance and passion – a solitary spotlight following two dancers as they pirouette across a deserted dance floor.

The more that I’ve been listening to this album over the past week, so I’m convinced that “La Cavale” shares a kindred spirit with La Féline’s “Adieu L’Enface” and nowhere more so than with the haunting “A cet endroit” with its heavily reverbed guitar, analogue synths and melodic chorus.

“La Cavale” is a totally captivating and assured album, perfect for driving along a desolate two-lane flat top, searing headlights illuminating the dark, waiting for the moment daylight rescues us from the night’s grasp…

Petite Meller

  • Posted on 04/02/2015
  • /Under Musique

imagesA French artist that’s gaining attention in Holland (and beyond) right now is Petite Meller (real name Sivan Meller). She makes nouveau jazzy pop, wears heavy lolita-make up and sings like a young Vanessa Paradis. In fact, she covered VP’s Joe Le Taxi. Before going solo, she was part of Terry Poison, a band that was under my radar during their existence. Dirty electropop song Comme Ci Comme Ca was a hit, apparently.
To quote The Guardian:
“Don’t be fooled by the cutesy hiccup or the flirtation with Lolita chic, though – Ms Meller is a philosophy postgraduate currently studying for her masters. She’s a big fan of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and his theories on the libidinal subconscious (who isn’t?) as well as Deleuze and Guattari and their exploration of the rhizomatic principle. A reality TV dunce she is not. She’s into French New Wave cinema and the Italian masters (Pasolini, Fellini, Visconti) and she even based the video to her single Backpack on Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou and L’Enfer d’Henri-Georges Clouzot. In it, she says, she and the director “were trying to capture aesthetic recollections of my childhood… [when] I was discovering my sexuality for the first time.”

Somehow I feel Petite Meller is stealing Yelle’s shine in making babypop electro, but current single Baby Love is undeniably infectious AND has a great video with giraffes:

If only she sang in French

  • Posted on 04/02/2015
  • /Under Musique

What a cool song. What a great voice. As if Françoise Hardy recorded with Velvet Underground, produced by Joe Meek. Shame it’s not in French….

RIP Rod McKuen

Singer Rod McKuen passed away recently. So we’re reposting this ode to Rod, written by Sky, posted earlier on this blog:

There probably will be no music at my real funeral. I’d rather prefer a reading of the last three pages of Pierre Drieu la Rochelle’s Le feu follet. However, at my fictitious funeral this All Saints’ Monday, my future ghost will engulf in the kitsch grandeur of the English version of Le Moribond. Jacques Brel’s 1961 original is a bit too snappy for my tastes, and Terry Jacks’s 1974 smash hit adaptation – originally to be recorded by the Beach Boys (!) – well, let’s put a shroud over it. The ultimate version is undoubtedly by Rod McKuen, close Brel friend and translator of many of his lyrics. His rugged-voice US version, adapted first by the Kingston Trio in 1964, sentimentalizes Brel’s chanson for sure, and simultaneously transforms it into big-scope American death disc drama. Paradoxically, the starfish on the beach granted him a nice bit of immortality.

Fanny Bloom

  • Posted on 29/01/2015
  • /Under Musique

Our favorite kooky Quebecoise just released an EP with music she composed for a ‘pièce de théatre’ called Constellations. Read more here. The title track is the only real song:

2015 Année Erotique

  • Posted on 25/01/2015
  • /Under Musique

stellaSebwax is one of the regulars of formidable bootlegger hideaway BootlegsFR who also participated in La Masheillaise; the guy has a quite rewarding website as well. His amalgam of French hip-hoppers NTM and Gainsbourg’s „Je t’aime“ is as fresh in 2015 as it was when released two years ago.

Sebwax – Serge est encore là (93 vs 69)

Always in for a soixante-neuf, fellow mash-up artist DRA’man fuses Serge with Missy Elliot … Jeez, that sounds like an awful lot of fucking, just like bro-in-mind Serge intended it to be.

DRA’man – 69 Lick Shots

Talking Gainsbourg, how about a splendid instro version of La Javanaise you always wanted to hear, but were afraid to ask? French classical guitarist/ composer Roland Dyens makes an intimate song an even more intimate experience.

Roland Dyens – La Javanaise

For adepts of The Order of the Fragile Vocals: A no less inspired Javanaise version by stunning blonde Stella Le Page (see b&w pic), including an equally ravissant cello and Cinemascope arrangement. Eat your heart out, CdP.

Stella Le Page – La Javanaise

Quite more mundane is Harry J’s fairground loop Je t’aime version from 1969’s Liquidator album, probably the incentive for Serge to try again reggae-style with Sly & Robbie on Aux Arms et Caetera. Caution: Rrralph’s Vomit Bag required after three rounds of listening.

Harry J All Stars – Je t’aime

Last not least for the Sixty-Niner’s nephew. Serge’s nephew Alain Zaoui, but record-wise, Monsieur Alain Ravaillac for you. In 1982, SG produced Ravaillac’s sleaze funk epic La Discométhèque with Goblin-like synth sounds and the immortal opening: „La queue à la main, joint au bec, la Discométhèque“. An overdose of testosterone poetry that Serge commented with a single word: Brill.

Alain Ravaillac – La Discométhèque

Ariane Moffatt

  • Posted on 23/01/2015
  • /Under Musique

20150122 Ariane Moffatt PortraitAriane Moffatt is one of this blogs favourite artists,although apart from last year’s (wonderful) single “Soleil chaleur” things – at least on the musical front – have been quiet since 2012’s “MA” (although to be fair Ariane and partner Florence Marcil-Denault recently became parents) – but now she’s back – not only with a new single “Debout”, but also a new album “22h22”, scheduled to be released in March.

It’s only January, but I suspect you’ll have to go some to find a better example of dreamy, synth-pop as will be released this year. “Debout” is a stand-out dance-floor filler that brings to mind Fanny Bloom’s “Pan”, and is beautiful and heartfelt song to the power and triumph of love and relationships… Welcome back Ariane!

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