WOEBOT

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.