french music

Post-rock Mondays: Post-rock français avec samples

/ Tony / 8 Comments

Bonjour mes amis et bon retour! As I stumble blindly forward with posting here I find myself once again starting off the week working from home and enjoying a post-rock soundtrack thinking “hey, it’s time for another one of those Post-rock Monday’ posts I used to try and do frequently”.

Given my affinity for our friends over the channel and the amount of time I’ve spent / spend there, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I love exploring their additions to the genre either. While I’m not as immersed in their output as I am of that of, say, Spain, I’ve found plenty to love.

Oh, and, as per, here’s another ‘handy’ definition of that most beard-strokingy type of music: “Post-rock incorporates contamination that covers the entirety of the music spectrum, from Krautrock to heavy metal, to contemporary classical and free jazz, often blended together in unique ways that bring new sounds to life; in fact, one of the most crucial features of post-rock is its ability to embrace a wide range of musical influences and combine them all into a coherent soundscape.” If that doesn’t put you off…

Post-rock bands love a good sample and poached dialogue, film quotes or specifically written interludes have popped up in tracks way back to the genre’s earlier days – whether we’re talking Iggy Pop’s interview snatch on Mogwai’s CODY or Godspeed You Black Emperor’s immense ‘Blaise Bailey Finnegan III’. Aside from the intended message or reason form the band’s point of view, from a listener’s perspective it can provide a little anchoring in a genre in which actual vocals are predominantly absent as well as lend a cinematic element to the tuneage. And sometimes they’re just there to make you fucking laugh (Romanian band Am Fost La Munte Și Mi-a Plăcut do a bang up job of this). The French are no exception to employing a good sample so here, in a few smatterings, a some of my favourite from the rich post-rock scene in France.

Lost In Kiev – Mirrors

Parisan band Lost In Kiev’s Nuit Noire is one of the first international post-rock albums I added to my collection. Its dark, looming epic post-rock intertwined with a spoken word narrative continues to hit every one of my tingle buttons some seven years on. Rather than lift from anything existing they write their own spoken-word pieces that are then used to give their work a massive, cinematic effect.

GrimLake – Everything Everywhere

GrimLake is Paris-based Mathieu Legros’s solo project. I’ve featured on of his tracks before in these pages and will no doubt again at some point as I’m a big fan of both his albums. JFK’s manner of speaking and the substance of his speeches make for a rich vein in terms of sampling and his address on Civil Rights is a pretty heady one to tackle but I reckon Mathieu pull’s it off.

Féroces – Qu’est-ce qu’on va devenir nous deux

(What will become of the two of us?)… Féroces are another one that use the odd slab of written dialogue to drive their thumping brand of post-rock forward. They’ve released a handful of EPs over the years, each named after, presumably, a character – but seem to have vanished of late, sadly.

As The Stars Fall – No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I think there’s a rule, probably written down somewhere in Impact font, that sampling Christopher Walken automatically elevates your song to a higher level.

Have the Moskovic – L’inflexion des voix cheres

As part of one of the precious few New Year’s resolutions I’ve ever stuck with I’ve thrown myself into improving my French this year with daily lessons. Perhaps because of that but probably also down to the fact that it’s a bloody fine album, I’ve really been enjoying Have the Moskovic’s 2018 album Papier Vinyle.

Thursday now, that’s such a crazy, lazy day…. current spins

/ Tony / 13 Comments

A whole month between posts…. this is getting pretty sporadic to say the best.

Thursday is a pretty good day really – the weekend is just a nad hair away and it’s time to load up on caffeine and hit up Mr Fyfe’s weekly quiz. It also feels like a good moment to cast an eye / ear over what I’ve been enjoying of late.

Pearl Jam – In My Tree (Live at Melbourne Park)

Record Store Day this year was a bit of a non-starter for me. I spent a couple of weeks of this last month barely able to walk thanks to severe knee pain – caused by what turned out to be something called a Baker’s Cyst* – so the notion of getting up at a dirty time of the morning and standing for hours was ruled out. Thankfully the one thing I had my eye on wasn’t this year’s big draw – seems like Pearl Jam aren’t as popular with RSD crowds as Taylor Swift or The 1975 – and I was able to wander down at a much more human time of 11am and find plenty of them left.

Give Way – the sign used in place of Yield in most places outside of the States especially Australia – is a live album that’s long been sought after. It was originally prepped for CD release as a freebie for early purchases of their ‘Single Video Theory’ but minds were changed at the last minute and 55,000 copies were ordered destroyed. Some escaped the cull and became massively valuable. Twenty five years later as part of Yield‘s anniversary (one of their finest and ranked fourth in my list way back when) and the concert – recorded March 5th in Melbourne Park – was unleashed for RSD.

A live Pearl Jam album is always worth wrapping your ears around and this one is another brilliant addition to their already strong selection – it’s a real showcase for Jack Irons’ drumming and the vibe his looser drumming style bought to the band. Sadly the run in Australia would be Jack’s last as he was battling a lot of mental health issues behind the scenes and would soon announce his decision to part ways with the band following the tour – he’d be replaced on the Yield tour by Matt Cameron, documented on Live on Two Legs.

Paul Westerberg – Mannequin Shop

My son is building up a Spotify list of his ‘favourites’ – though this is more any song that takes his fancy. We recently caught ‘Waiting for Somebody’ in the car and it made me dig out Westerberg’s 14 Songs for a spin – it’s still a solid listen but it’s the delightful take on the plastic surgery of the early ’90s that has been stuck in my head since. Much in the same way as I wonder how the writer of ‘Answering Machine’ would feel about today’s lack of real communication I’d have to wonder how Mr Westerberg would feel about the state of enhanced vanity in 2023. Unfortunately though, Paul seems to have gone to ground again.

Adé – Insomnies

I popped over the channel again this weekend past for a couple of days and have been keeping an ear to RTL2 since both to assist with the language learning and the variety of music – it seems hard to find a station here that plays as genuine a variety (though their obsession with Harry Styles and Ed Sheeran gets annoying) . Last summer I heard Adé’s ‘Tout Savoir’ a lot and, this trip, it seems that her song ‘Insomnies’ is the current radio player and another I’ve been enjoying.

Daughter – Be On Your Way

Daughter’s new album Stereo Mind Game is bloody good. Gorgeous sounds and arrangements with Elena Tonra’s vocals breathing through an album of lush shoegaze / moody indie-rock vibe.

Slowdive – When the Sun Hits

Speaking of lush shoegaze… I picked up Slowdive’s Souvlaki recently and have spent many a glorious spin lost in the warm blanket of sound it generates.

Silver Moth – The Eternal

One of those albums I hit pre-order on as soon as it was announced – Silver Moth are a band formed out of a few online conversations during the pandemic. Only members Stuart Braithwiate (of Mogwai) and his wife Elizabeth Elektra had met before they hit the studio on a remote Scottish island and recorded Black Bay in just eight days. It’s a bloody strong album – a multilayered beast of slow-burning yet immediate songs that combine its members’ shoegaze** and post-rock dynamics with two vocalists who’s vocals find a place between Kate Bush and Elizabeth Fraser.

Faith No More – Epic

Another one of those ‘hey, if you like this one, check this out’ conversations with the cub after picking up a 7″ of ‘Easy / Be Aggressive’ recently. There’s very little like this and it remains a fucking awesome tune some (gulp) thirty four years later.

Stevie Ray Vaughan – Texas Flood

Texas Flood is forty years old this year, which is as little a reason as I need to have been giving this one some attention.

*whether this is something first experience by a chap called Baker or those spend their time kneading dough develop the issue I don’t know.

**third and final mention.

Out of Europe: A French Top Five

/ Tony / 19 Comments

So as the news arrives that France has decided not to vote in a fascist president* (even if 11 million of them did vote for one –  what the fuck mes amies?) I thought that I’d revisit the Top Five / Out of Europe format with a quick list of those songs – a sort of “this is what we’re saying goodbye to” from those countries that will remain part of the EU long after our pathetically ego-driven and pig-ignorant leader has ripped us from it.

Already covered: Sweden

France is, of course, our closest neighbour. Living down in Kent I’ve always been aware of that proximity and, when I worked down by the coast I’d see it on a daily basis, the rising of the North’s cliffs and coast on the horizon, often pulling up for lunch, looking at it across the Channel and wondering about the culture that dwelt over such a small stretch of water and just how close, within reach exploring it was. It was my first taste of wanderlust.

As it would happen, I ended up spending a large amount of time in France and Paris a few years later as my wife was still living there for the first year or so of our relationship. As such, while you end up with mixed feelings about any country / place you spend a lot of time in, I hold many a fond memory for the place and most of these songs are tied up in that.

So…. in no particular order and trying to cover as good a spread of genres as possible….

Noir Désir – Lost

Yeah…. so; this kind of enters into the whole separation of art from artist and whether you a) can and b) is the art more important than the artist. Given that everything Noir Désir recorded preceded Bertrand Cantat’s violent and fatal assault of his girlfriend** it should be the case that one of France’s biggest rock band’s work remains free to stand alone but it’s a heavy shadow that’s been cast over it. Still, as I’ve said before – I wasn’t aware of this when I got into the band and I still enjoy the music as it reminds of me of my time there, having discovered them while sat in traffic in Paris and listening to the radio. This one comes from their final album des Visages des Figures, a more brooding affair than previous efforts but a successful one.

MC Solaar  – Nouveau western

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSG2qHBm7WM

A genius recasting of Serge Gainsbourg et Brigitte Bardot’s 1968 classic French song ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ – that song itself reportedly based on a poem Bonnie Parker had written moments before she and Clyde Barrow were gunned down. MC Solaar – or Claude M’Barali to give him his full name – was one of the first to get rap through to the mainstream in France. ‘Nouvaeu Western’ tackles racism and colonialism, is catchy as hell and features an absolutely brilliant video.

M83 – Kim & Jessie | Air – All I Need

If we’re talking French electronic music (and not discussing Jean-Michel Jarre) there’s got be three bands that will come up: Daft Punk, Air and M83. I like a bit of Daft Punk but couldn’t really say I listen to any of it enough to warrant a place for it here. M83’s ‘Kim & Jessie’ had me hooked from the opening with those monumental electric drum hits. There’s something so surging, nostalgic and warm about this song that’s irrefutably good. Air’s ‘All I Need’ from their first album Moon Safari (nearly 20 years old ffs) has a similar effect on me, just bliss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTHjFeXmnHs

Yann Tiersen – “J’y suis jamais allé”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf6vSnlbEaQ

Man I could probably fill another post with rambling about French films and their soundtracks and may well do at a later date when you know… procrastination allows.  I’d have to talk about Eric Serra’s soundtrack work and give off gas about Subway or how addictive I find from Enae Volare from Les Visiteurs and….  Let’s get this list finished first though.  Probably the most well known soundtrack and most obviously ‘French’ of the lot though is this piece from the mighty Yann Tiersen’s second album Rue des cascades as it would go on to feature in his soundtrack for Amelie five years later, catapulting it and Tiersen to a much greater audience. I still love it though, cliché as it may be.

This is, of course a quick list – ie; those that came to me first. If I sat down and gave it more thought then a) this would never get finished and posted and b) I would likely swap a few but then….

Honourable mentions:

Yael Naim – Paris

Alain Bashung – J’écume

Charlotte Gainsbourg – 5:55

Eric Serra – Guns and People

*I’m trying (clearly not completely succeeding) to avoid politics on this blog but I will say that while I celebrate any victory over far-right, holocaust-denying fascism I don’t believe Macron is a strong result either and the thing with his wife….. forget about it.

**Cantat was sentenced to 8 years in prison for Involuntary Manslaughter and was released on parole having served 4. During his time in prison his house was burnt down. After his release – much protested by the band made a brief attempt at returning but the guitarist called it quits citing  “emotional, human and musical differences” with Cantant and the band announced it was done. Cantant has continued in music though this remains a controversial discussion point in the musical press and community.