WOEBOT

How it's going to work out is that this will be the eighth of the nine posts in my French series, the last (ninth) episode will be on French Prog Rock. There will also be a little post rounding up stuff that people have emailed me about, largely mentioning music which I have no idea whatsoever about. In all probability these final two posts will come after 15th April because I'm going away on holiday for a couple of weeks to, er, France.

Francois Rabbath has cropped up a few times on this blog before. Rabbath was a Syrian born musician who, at a tender age, discovered Edouard Nanny's tome "Contrabass Method" in a Taylor's shop. Not speaking French or understanding Musical notation he nevertheless used the book to teach himself how to play the Double-Bass. Scrimping and saving he raised the money to travel to Paris, where he planned to join the Conservatory and be taught the instrument by Nanny himself. He must have been devastated to discover that his would-be mentor had died years before. With only three days to master the required pieces he nevertheless qualified to be admitted, though quickly becoming disillusioned by the standard of his fellow pupils and the level of the tuition he dropped out. Rabbath wound up as an accompanist to Jacques Brel, Charles Aznavour, Gilbert Becaud and Michel Legrand.

In the early eighties Rabbath ended up working with an American called Frank Proto, however the period which interests us is the fifties and sixties when he released low-profile gems like the LPs "The Sound of a Bass" and "Bass Ball" on the Phillips label. Francois multi-tracked his wistful jazz-inflected stylings into exquisite tone poems immediately evocative of the Beatnik prose of Kerouac and Ginsberg. Sonically the irresistible comparison to Rabbath's works of this period is World of Echo-era Arthur Russell. It's a parallel made indelible by the similarity of their chosen instruments, the Cello and the Double Bass. I believe one can buy a CD of this era Rabbath, "Multi-Bass" (the sequel to "Bass Ball"), here.

Francois de Roubaix (confused, hang in there), was a self-taught Jazz musician who became enamored with electronic music. De Roubaix drifted into scoring soundtracks, famously providing the score for Jean-Pierre Melville's excellent "Le Samourai" (starring Alain Delon). Francois's real passion however was diving, and it became his ultimate ambition to score music for Jacques Cousteau's documentaries. The contents of this disc (allegedly the best of three volumes) were put together by De Roubaix, presumably at some expense, in a bid to convince Cousteau of his eligibility. These recording pulse with the fillibrations of the underwater life they depict, shoals of flickering static are set against the the ocean-current heave of orchestral strings. It's a romance of the deep which at a specially-convened nerve-racking playback left the veteran oceanographer cold and De Roubaix crushed to the core. There are lots of De Roubaix's recordings available here.

Finally, in this micro-celebration of French musical "Auteurs", individual musicians whose work defies easy classification, we have the wonderful Ghedalia Tazartes. I was first hipped to Ghedalia's awesomely original and unsettling work with the "Transports" LP, when the dealer Gwen Jamois sold me an original copy in 1997. It has subsequently been reissued by Italy's New Tone label. There's practically nothing written in English about Tazartes. My colleague Morlu at Fuckulture is planning to reissue Tazartes's 1980s record "Checkpoint Charlie" and he presented me with the opportunity to come and interview Tazartes in Paris for an article he suggested The Wire might want to run. I dropped the ball because I couldn't guarantee they'd be interested, and, to be frank I didn't have the energy to set about convincing them.

In lieu of more information we have to fall back on the remarkable recordings themselves. Key to the proceedings is the character Tazartes presents to us, his is a profoundly Burroughs-ian vision. Like Burroughs's story the talking arsehole, concerning the boundary between matter, flesh and character, Tazartes poses uncomfortable questions about the Western conception of "the human". Distorting his voice into a cretinous rasp, ululating like an animal, wailing like a child, smearing the boundaries between Arabic and French pronunciations and languages he is always engrossing to listen to. In some senses the accompanying electronics, which form the score to his voice, would be of secondary interest were the concrete pile-up of found sound and prehistoric mantra-onics not so equally fascinating. Tazartes adopted the pose of Tibetan Bedroom Buddha decades before the likes of The Aphex Twin and his ilk, and it's a cruel shame that his work isn't more widely admired.

The good news is that much of his oeuvre has been reissued. Although the venerable eggheads at Gnosis rate "Diaspora" (see my vinyl copy above) the most highly, "Une Eclipse Totale de Soleil" is probably his masterpiece. This too is available on CD.

Posted by WOEBOT at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Legendary Record Dealer Gwen "Slip Me an Absinthe" Jamois drops by with a link to a record he's currently enjoying.

See it's not just mildly dysfunctional London media freelancers who get hooked on Gallic Romance, Callender was a Leroy Hutson-era Soul singer who under the influence of LSD recorded "Le Musee de L’impressionisme" with lyrics like this:

“He was a guiding light but did not pretend to be
Lived on loans
Lived by the grace of God and the aid of a friend
Lived, evolved and created new themes of cause and effect
Yes he was a guiding light, for all to see
Monet, Monet, Monet
I'm singin' 'bout Claude Monet
Monet, Monet, Monet
A visionary of Time and Space and the Light
He died in 1926,
He died spiritually a success,
He died leaving behind a legacy of heavenly bliss,
And a son and mistress
Monet, Monet, Monet
I'm singin 'bout Claude Monet
A visionary of Time and Space and the Light”

Little man, little man, born an aristocrat
Little did you know at your time of birth you'd become an Invalid?
Little man, little man, born an aristocrat
Alcohol didn't do you no good,
just a mental breakdown, paralysis, and death
Petit homme, petit homme,
Out, Je chante au sujet de Toulouse-Lautrec
How were you able to paint the world you live in as miraculous as you did?
La Danse de la Gouloue et de Valentine Desosse, La Clownesse
Cha-U-Kao, La Femme au Boa Noir et la Toilette et Femme Tirant Son Bas
In the Paddock at Longchamps by day,
And in the Moulin Rouge by night,
Drinking Absynthe and Cognac and sketching everything in sight"

You couldn't make it up. There's a couple of mp3s you can peruse at popsike.com (follow the earlier link).

Posted by WOEBOT at 06:14 PM | Permalink

I liked this. I came across it down a tube escalator on a Monday but wasn't quick thinking enough to take a snap. The following day I was ready with mobile in hand. I only hope it wasn't a promotional gimmick for some Indie band.

The next day I tore it off the poster, damaging the sticker. Stupid. I regretted interfering. I had half-planned to try and stick it back on the Thursday but by then my attention had wandered.

As I've mentioned before I used to exchange pleasantries with Joe circa 1989 on the Portobello Road. I have no idea what he'd do if he was in Frank Sinatra's shoes.

Posted by WOEBOT at 06:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I go to thinking the other day that disc for disc more electronic music has emerged from France than Germany. Even ignoring the massive output of the INA-GRM axis (which dwarfs that issued from Stockhausen's axis) this would still be true. While Kraftwerk are synonymous with German music, before the year zero of Acid House there are actually very few purely "electronic" German groups, the classic canon of Krautrock is largely "straight-up" rock music. Even in the NDW-era when German groups were playing electro catch-up, there was a healthy brace of French Electro, albeit at the poppier end. Britain? Don't make me laugh. This supposedly proud nation of techno boffins only ever produced Delia Derbyshire, Basil Kirchin, Trevor Wishart, Dennis Smalley, Miller/Leer/Rental (those three virtually counting as one) and practically no Electro. Cabaret Voltaire only qualified very late in the game and don't say Throbbing Gristle cos they don't count most of the time. (wipes froth from mouth) OK, silly cartoon battle over.

I can't produce much information about these records all of which I bought blind in France. The Zanov in a boutique in Paris, the Space Art in Cannes in an open market and the Szajner just last summer in Marseilles. Zanov is a curiously fish-faced character (rolls on floor laughing- now resorting to character judgements on the basis of rear-sleeve portraits in lieu of Google snapshots). This is a superb suite of mesmerising bass-heavy synth mantras with stained-glass window melody lines. Very Belbury Poly.

The Space Art, even though this pleasantly barmy guy reassuringly describes the groop as "...unquestionably the greatest electronic music group that ever existed", is faintly rubbish. But still, it remains one of those records I return to from time to time to check if it has improved (the Zanov was excellent this time round) I always imagined Dominique Perrier had something to do with Space's "Magic Fly", though it appears that hunch is unfounded. I suppose he belongs in the league of French second-string electronic gurus like Serge Ramses and Didier Bocquet all of whom, like Perrier, probably ended up in Jean Michel Jarre's live support synth garrison.

And finally Bernard Szajner! This one is funny cos, as I mentioned elsewhere, while he was taking the mick out of me for my French adventure, Reynolds was mooting what would form the next in the series and postulated that perhaps Bernard Szajner might get the WOEBOT once-over. I have this Szajner record, which came out on a tiny British label Initial, which I didn't know anything about so I did some research on him and voila, there's lots to know. Apparently the best records are Zed's "Vision of Dune" (1979), and "Some Deaths take Forever" (1980), which Carl Craig allegedly described as his favorite electronic record of all time in Time Out, neither of which I own. "Superficial Music" is obviously some Eno-styled experiment created thus: "Superficial Music is compiled from selected tapes previously used as the basis of my recording Visions Of Dune. The tapes in their present form have been replayed in reverse at half speed without any re-recording and are enhanced only through the discriminate use of digital and analog devices." It's pretty groovy in places, segues nicely out of the less low-key strobing grooves of the Zanov.

Posted by WOEBOT at 06:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I just discovered a great break-out of the BYG releases here. As you can see most of the releases are Afro-American Free Jazz, recorded beautifully and respectfully. It might even be the greatest collection of Free Jazz records! There are more sought after labels, like the ridiculously rare Jihad Records and one can't rule out the Free Jazz output of Blue Note, but there's something very vibey about BYG. I have Mu parts 1 and 2, Gracan Moncur's "New Africa", Sonny Sharrock's "Monkey-Pockie-Boo" and The Art Ensemble's "Reese and the Smooth Ones"~ that's probably enough to be getting on with.

However, eight of BYG's releases weren't Jazz, and they're all very interesting records. Michel Puig was an unassuming-looking bloke who I know nothing whatsoever about. "Stigmates", which I found in Bristol when mice were men, is unintentionally silly "whistle-burp" Contemporary music. Other Avant-Garde records BYG released include Terry Riley's "The Germ", recorded in Sweden with schoolchildren (if memory serves) and MEV's allegedly magnificent "Leave the city" which (to quote Forced Exposure): "...features floating, droning free music freakouts of the finest cosmic quality..." Jim Backhouse swears by it and apparently there's a photo on the back of them riding naked on horseback! Ooh la la!

(tears the Puig from the turntable)

This by Brigitte Fontaine may even kick "Comme A La Radio" into touch. Wistful, drugged-out, echoated folk music sporting the most exquisite 'rainy-streets' songs with Areski's North-African instrumental inflections. Love this, and very proud of my Paris-purchased original.

There were other Rock records on BYG, I've seen a Gong record and recently discovered a heavy blues-based band called Freedom who recorded for the label (crap). WOEBOT regulars may remember me mentioning this Ame Son recording way back when. I should have bought it at the time, but this is a Get Back label reissue and, fuck it, it'll do fine. Really stunning LP. The geezers at Gnosis remark on its similarity to Can, and they're not mistaken. The drumming, though it pedals backwards, and doesn't rocket off into the stratosphere, is the split of Jaki Liebezeit. The sound is identical to that of "Father Cannot Yell"-era Can, that raw garagey psychlike squall. Your notice Can's name dropped so often, it's a real shock to hear something which does actually bear some resemblance to them. I suspect it may be a case of both Ame Son's honed chops and, duck all you Jazzophobe Rock-crits, a strong Jazz influence. That's a much-ignored factor to Can's sound. People forget Liebezeit was an alumni of Alex Von Schlippenbach's Global Unity Free Jazz Big Band. Elliptically wasn't Mitch Mitchell an Elvin Jones groupie? That Ame Son, who have a Gong connection via Bananamoon, have such a righteous connection to Jazz (being on BYG'n'all) well it stacks up.

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

FACT 10’s “The Twenty Best…” column gave Andy Votel the opportunity to focus on Prog Rock. His breakout was awe-inspiring, adopting as it did an almost unfettered globalist approach to the genre. Offerings from Sweden, Yugoslavia, Wales, Greece, Korea, Turkey and Australia rubbed shoulders. The subsequently released, Votel-curated Prog is Not a Four Letter Word collection on Delay 68, was my favourite compilation of last year, an unmissable romp.

However, I confess I took issue with Votel’s thesis. His argument, albeit one made in the face of what he perceives to be hipster disdain, was that the exotic bounty of Global Prog made irrelevant the vile excess and cultural tepidity of Brit Prog. Remaining suspicious of Prog, it seems we’ve yet to overthrow Punk’s depressing orthodoxy. I’d relish a world when these ten fabulous Brit Prog records cropped up as regularly as Never Mind The Bollocks or London Calling in people’s favourites.

Votel approaches the genre from the perspective of the Hip-Hop break-hunter, which method though, it yields great music in the terrains of Library and Soundtrack music, fails to do justice to the knotty arrhythmia of the best Prog. A record like The Egg’s Civil Service might tick the appropriate boxes, Votel himself singling their eponymous debut for praise amidst foreign offerings, but Van Der Graaf Generator’s quite awesome Pawn Hearts, the quintessential “difficult” UK Prog LP by merit of its preposterous cracked brooding soundscapes won’t gain acceptance.

Furthermore much of the music on Prog Is Not a Four Letter Word in the strictest terms isn’t Prog, but Psych. It’s a difficult to distinction to make, but Prog makes an unpeggable leap into the future, while Psych builds on the whimsical, cosmic, LSD-addled legacy of 60s Psychedelia. So Henry Cow are Prog and Gong are Psych. A record as self-consciously curious as Quiet Sun’s Mainstream by the pre-This Heat Charles Hayward is clearly Prog, but Family’s exquisite Music In a Doll’s House, even though it forms some strange shapes of its own and cleaves to a theme, by merit of Roger Chapman’s bluesy vocals, might just be a Psych record.

Votel rightfully discharges Genesis and Yes without the slightest consideration for some reason Caravan get caught in the friendly fire. Perhaps a victim of the “breaks” aesthetic which dictates that all offerings must be obscure, otherwise they’d not be respectable Akai fodder? But I wonder how many people have actually heard Caravan’s In the Land of Grey and Pink, a really splendid record? If it’s Canterbury records you’re interested in, Kevin Ayers’ Whatevershebringswesing is worth investigating, the drum breaks on which in fact might even find favour with Hip-Hop producers.

Prog’s calling card might be its strangeness. Comus’s First Utterance and The Third Ear Band’s Alchemy represent some kind of benchmark for the weird. Both records are talismans for both the Avant-Folk movement and latterly the oeuvre of Current 93 and Nurse with Wound. This is a folk music so true to folk music’s spirit of blasphemy and the unheimlich that they sidestep the clichés which bedevil even the best of it.

If there’s one thing which people, even the “fat, boring, smelly and socially inept” Prog fans who Votel mercilessly parodies in his piece, won’t tell you about is how majestically beautiful and blissful some of this music can be. I’d always assumed all King Crimson would be somehow violent, brutish and ugly. Theorist Mark Fisher once nicely caricatured what was so off-putting about Prog thus: “that jabbing masculine jerkiness, that anti-plateau jumpiness”, but strange to tell Court of The Crimson King is at once gentle and awe-inspiringly gorgeous. Curved Air’s Second Album is another example of sheer loveliness in Prog.

With all sense of the possible imminence of a new revolution in music ebbing away, the attraction of Prog is that it represents a sense of an underlying tradition in opposition (rather than, like Punk, a false sense of revolt through rupture). Votel’s excellent compilation represents a nascent interest in this music. With some of today’s brightest lights revealing an empathy with Prog’s overwrought involuted textures, the Black Prog-lite of Sa-Ra, the Disco-Prog of Jackson and Delia and Gavin and the Sampladelic-Library Prog of the Ghost Box label, then perhaps it’s about time to confront it on its own terms? Global Prog is one thing, but whether it was France’s Heldon or Italy’s Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, in fact almost everywhere with the exception of Germany’s Krautrock scene, back in the day all eyes were on the UK.

Originally published in FACT magazine.

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Advisory Circle: Mind How You Go (GhostBox.co.uk)
Former King of Woolworths delivers a mini masterpiece of what the critics are branding "Hauntology". Expect to be teleported back to the site of your eeiriest childhood memories.

Trim and Roachie: Pen'n'Paper (White)
Fresh from his 9' high breakdancing opus "Trim and Scratch", Roll Deep's sleepy-eyed boy wonder teams up with Roachie, drops sly rhymes and rides a backward-slanting beat on this instant classic.

Danny Weed: Cloud Nine (White)
Grime's genius producer here with a quite exquisite, almost Detroit-ish sounding riddim, which sports his usually seductive Middle Eastern Accordian Cubase preset.

Ruff Sqwad and Wiley: Together (White)
Ruff Sqwad, the crew who can do no wrong team up with uncle William (our most underrated MC) for what almost scans like a paen to their heart-breaking love affair with Grime.

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:25 PM | Permalink

HASSLE HOUND
LIMELIGHT CORDIAL
STAUBGOLD

Hassle Hound are a makeshift trio of journeymen, one Pole with a background in New York Improv, and a painter and radio producer based in Glasgow. “Limelight Cordial” is, unsurprisingly given the geographical and occupational tangents they convene from, at times an ill-fitting collage of elements.

The central raft of the Hassle Hound sound is a wood-shed detente between hick folk instrumentation and the usual artillery of electronica. Jew’s harp and banjo duel with loops, samples and patches. Sometimes as on “Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”, “The Farce of Dusty Knee” or “Hazel” the results are sublime and unexpected. One can afford to delight in their unusual sonic concoctions. Mandolins cavort, violins spool, samples chatter and 808s clop. Unfortunately quite often the mismatch is jarring, “Star Lantern and Two Mice”, “Tahtian Sideshow” and “Poppy Bush” all strain the equation, victims of a vainglorious eclecticism. If these elements aren’t cohering in the name of musicality, then what is inspiring their fusion? The most pointed folktronica connects with the intimacy and suffrage of traditional music. Where the form attempts to enter into folk’s queasy spirit of mirth, the results can be embarrassing.

Hassle Hound don’t seem to offer any pointers as to why they’ve chosen to engineer this particular collision, historical or otherwise and touches like the painfully thin vocals on “White Roads” and the inclusion of tracks like “The Night of the Great Season”, an uncharacteristic cheesy pile-up of Italian Soundtrack strings and snatches of spoken-word comedy further undermine their project. It’s a shame because there are some lovely moments on “Limelight Cordial”. Perhaps with more time invested together in this project a true synthesis will occur.

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:24 PM | Permalink

Heavy Muckle: A Grime DJ Mix by Sheen and Matt Shadetek. Hosted by Ears. (Shadetek)

Grime-obsessed New Yorker and his girlfriend Sheen are “Heavy Muckle”. Like DJ/Rupture they’ve locked on to the sound of the UK Pirate Radio phenomenon in spite of living thousands of miles from its signals. Such is the schizophrenic Glocal nature of the scene that no one bats an eyelid, even when their great mix CD succeeds in delivering the solid Greatest Hits package (albeit with a twist) that the UK scene has failed to produce. They’ve somehow managed to enrol “road” MC Ears in their scheme with even the mighty Jammer lending his support to proceedings. However, even when I hear the legendary Mac 10 produce a Grime “mix” on London’s finest Rinse FM, I remain unconvinced that this music is supposed to be manipulated by a DJ.

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

All the man and the likkle pickney dem know about "L'Histoire de Melody Nelson". Weirdly the default Movabletype username is "Melody" and the default password is, you guessed it. What you mean you don't know it! My my, even David Holmes is hip to that record. Amusingly in France it's accorded something like the stature of Lloyd Weber's "Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat", the schoolkids knew and loved it. That's something special for a record so sparse and powerful, so undeniably funky. This is probably Gainsbourg's other great long-playing achievement, crewed with the same gang of UK Library music hotshots (the Alans: Hawkshaw and Parker) and like Melody Nelson recorded in the UK.

Taughter and more presciently Nouvelle-Vague than MN's loping grooves which have been sampled by hundred of dudes wielding Akais, including Massive Attack, "L'Homme A Tete de Chou" (1976), the man with the Cauliflower Head (named after a sculpure Serge owned), is a song suite centred around a mythical "chick", Marilou. The instrumentation sunk relatively deep in the sound-scape, Gainsbourg's own erotic rasp riding roughshod on top, spouting poetry "cool". Highlights include the fantastic "Lunatic Asylum" with its jew's harp loop, tympani and aboriginal precussion. Simon was remarking recently of the ignored pre-genealogy of reggae interfusion present in things like Eric Clapton's cover-version of "I Shot The Sherriff" and the Eagles' cod-Reggae of "Hotel California", well add to that selection: Gainsbourg's "Aux Armes et Caetera" recorded in Jamaica in 1978 with Marley's Wailers and the i-Threes, notable for Gainsbourg's Reggae cover-version of "La Marseillaise". What was it he said to a shocked Whitney Houston on that talk show before millions of viewers? "I want to ferk you"? Burning money years before the KLF.

And this, which I posted last year at Dissensus (excuse the repetition). Jean-Claude Vannier orchestrated "Melody Nelson" and then went on to make this impossibly barmy piece, truly a one-off, too bizarre to be either a Progressive Rock record, a Jazz record or a Library record. Vannier here most appropriately viewed (perhaps) as a Gallic David Axelrod, with a Bollywood string quartet in tow, "L'Enfant Assasin des Mouches" comprised in part of off-cuts from the Melody Nelson sessions. I bought a copy of this from a dealer a few years back for an absolutely exorbitant sum. In fairness in those days we were certain a reissue would never materialise, but now thanks to Finders Keepers it's available on vinyl and CD once more. Don't pass it up.

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:02 PM | Permalink

I'm playing a wee gig on Sunday evening at Hoxton haunt The Old Blue Last (on the decks between 8.30 and 10). Equal billing with Sacha the Flasher. It'd be well cool to see you there!

Posted by WOEBOT at 05:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A conveniently French intermission. DJ Gilles LeGuen, who you may remember from this old post emailed me to say that tomorrow night (Jeudi) he's DJ-ing for the first live re-union of veteran French Synth-Waver Charles de Goal and his original band at La Fleche d'Or, Paris.

I think it must have slipped his mind that the mysterious de Goal first established contact with Gilles, googling his own name, finding WOEBOT and that post and mistaking me for the mastermind behind Gilles's compilations. Sacre blue!

Posted by WOEBOT at 04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So what's this unfolding French thing of mine all about? It ought to be clear that the Avant-Yob/Lumpen axis of music is weaker than it's been at any time since since 1997, that time before Speed Garage had mutated into 2-Step, just as Jungle had stopped delivering the goods. That year I remember listening to Mouse on Mars's "Autoditacker" and a whole raft of obscure Avant-Garde classical music.

While there was plenty of music last year that spoke of the full ripening of many genres (especially Grime) there was precious little that pointed the way forward. One of the aspects of music generated by the collective, rather than the individual, is that when the full range of inherent possibilities are exhausted by design there's no space available for innovation. The collective centres upon a unity of aim; people breaking away aren't seen as innovators to be followed, but deserters. At times like these I always feel the time is right for the more erratic impulse of Bohemian culture to pick up the slack.

However, Bohemian culture is hardly in fine fettle either! Don't get me wrong, I'm not like Mark claiming that the modernist impulse in popular culture has died, there will be new music but it may take a year to rear its head again. So why do I think the posthumous exhumation of old records is going to help? These past weeks (months...) WOEBOT has looked like UNCUT for the freaks! I believe there's a distinction between Mainstream Retro culture and inquisitively rooting around the past. I wonder why those with a Marxist bent so valorise the Modern in the light of Marx accusing Capitalist production of the‘murder of the dead’. Maybe it's alright to listen to old records as though they were new ones, but not alright to make old records pretending they were new?

I always think certain old music throws up new potentialities, and in the leanest times, checking them out is like going back to to school. If we are looking at a time when Bohemian music could make some cultural power-moves, then it's worth re-examining those junctures in the past in the UK when Bohemian music has really mattered. One of the factors that has always signified the visionary expansiveness of British culture has been when we've made the psychological leap past our wretched island mentality. It's that chimerical mixture of humility and loftiness which is often signaled by, not just the easy adoption of of our internal factors (like the absorption of Reggae through the presence of the Afro-Caribbean community) but the gentle reaching beyond our own immediate borders. (shuffles nervously).

What French/British currents are there in music? Stereolab for one. Nurse with Wound's love affair with Jac Berrocal and Luc Ferrari. Weekend. Francophile Robert Wyatt and his "Machine Molle" (Matching Mole). Recommended records and Etron Fou Leloublan. Richard Pinhas's proximity to Fripp and Eno. It's all happening in a small rarified zone that you couldn't quite label but you can feel instinctively the delineation of.

Just the usual ragged selection of records, because, as it ought to be very clear I've not been producing anything in the way of a comprehensive or authoritative breakout. I'm not a huge fan of Library records generally, but these three are quite fun. I'd refer the reader to Johnny Trunk's lovely "The Music Library" for more on the subject. France, like Italy, Germany and the UK was big for Library labels. I've never figured out why so little of this stuff comes from the USA. Probably something to do with union regulations or some other occult music industry sheaningans.

Metamorphoses is off the Uni Disc label. Quotes from Trunk: "Paris-based label specialising in ballet and avant-garde dance music." Not a Library record in the purest sense then but a gorgeously ambient collection of pellucid analogue 'tronics originally designed for the interpretative Dance massive. Thanks to Sacha the Flasher, le grand fromage, for sorting me out with this.

There are lots of highly regarded French Library labels, Telemusic, Sonimage, Neuilly, Freesound; but L'Illustration Musicale seem to have a particularly high cachet. Anyway I notice people tend to sigh when I tell them I paid 50 pence for this in a second hand store in Glasgow. It's not bad.

Finally this absurdly baroque almost Zappa-esque Disco record. It'd be sample-able if it wasn't so ridiculously restless. I bought this from man like Gwen Jamois (another Froggy Strange Attractor), who thought it was probably a demonstration record of some kind for the completely unheard-of Lancios. Kind of like a showreel and calling card rolled into one. Fascinatingly awful.

Posted by WOEBOT at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Celluloid records have a quite mixed rep. There are, I would contend, three degrees of attitude to the label depending on how hip the critic is, each peeling back another layer in appreciation and understanding. The Celluloid neophyte believes that their supposedly hallowed, and oft-repackaged collection of 5 Old Skool "Lightning Swords of Death" (Futura 2000, The Smurf, Fab Five Freddy, Phase II and Grandmaster D.ST) qualifies the label for reverence, this person might even believe Laswell to be some kind of genius, might be delighted by the mid-period Last Poets botch up "Oh My People", the clumsy Fourth-world fumblings of Mandingo and Material's ham-fisted Punk-Funk.

The next tier of appreciation is occupied by those who contend that, yes as Laswell himself admits to David Toop of the Hip-Hop connection in Rappattack: "It came about as an obligation to a label to produce really quickly five rap records." That three of the tracks were quite brazen cash-ins on a trend. Laswell was the New York-based gopher for one Jean Karakos, who had in a previous incarnation been Jean Georgakarakos, one third of the Bisceglia/Young/Georgakarakos partnership that was behind the legendary French Free-Jazz imprint BYG. In a sense Celluloid was like a bucket-shop version of BYG, like that mighty label their existence centered on repackaging foreign music, though this time without the principled and presumably costly nurturing with which the likes of Archie Shepp had been treated. A nurturing which resulted in oddities like former Cecil Taylor percussionist Andrew Cyrille's solo LP, a solo free percussion LP, ye gods! Rather Celluloid would to keep the catalogue numbers cycling, as Genesis P'Orridge reportedly complains to this day, by adopting tactics such as bootlegging Throbbing Gristle's first two LPs. It should come as no surprise to know that Karakos was the financial brains behind BYG, and that when left unrestrained..... However, that may be being unfair to him, surely his interest in Jalal Nuriddin and The Last Poets (Celluloid did a very handy reissue of their early Douglas-era masterpiece "This is Madness") and his prescient grasp of Hip-Hop came from his background in Free-Jazz?

The third and final tier of the appreciation of Celluloid records, that Elysian fields of hipsterdom in which we frolic here at WOEBOT, believe that Celluloid's strongest and most interesting releases were not the works of foreign artists repackaged, but their domestic releases. In a sense this post will closely parallel my forthcoming one on the BYG label, which focuses on three strictly French records on that label, not the admittedly wonderful works of Gracan Moncur and Don Cherry.

Mathmatiques Modernes consisted of Edwige Belmore and Claude Arto. Production on the awesome staccato-funk of "Disco-Rough" with it's one finger synth riffs (like a brazenly gay, playful version of the DAF of "Die Kleinen Und Die Bosen") came courtesy of Jacno, formerly guitarist with French Punk hopefuls "The Stinky Toys". Jacno, who is allegedly something of a cult figure, went on to partner in 80s stalwarts "Elli et Jacno". I have heard other stuff by him, "Rectangle" which also came out on Celluloid, and sadly it's rubbish.

As for Nini Raviolette, well I know next to nothing about her! This fascinating slice of stripped-to-the-bone Electro-Pop is practically a one-track distillation of everything that is wonderful about the Laetitia Sadler-led Franco-pop stylings of Stereolab. Coming on like a austere bleepier version of their masterpiece "Music for The Amorphous Body Study Center" it should be more widely known. Tigersushi claim of this record that: "Her songwriter is none other than Alain Burosse the man behind landmark cyberpunk TV shows ‘Haute Tension’ & ‘L’Oeil du Cyclone’, but really I'm sure that means as little to them as it does to me.

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)