RIP Starman

Goodbye David Bowie.

Hastings! Mon Amour!

This Friday I will be DJing some vintage French pop, Gallic psyche and musique electronique at >

HASTINGS MON AMOUR
Fri 20 Nov / 7pm-10.45pm / £5 entry
The Observer Building, 53 Cambridge Road, Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 1DT

At 7pm prompt there will be a film screening of Truffaut’s Jules et Jim
This will be followed by dancing (possibly) to my L’Amour Electronique DJ set

TICKETS & INFO VIA THE FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE > https://www.facebook.com/events/1075232929153646/

we stand together

Hastings Mon Amour

This is what I've been coaxed out of DJ retirement for...

FRIDAY 20 NOVEMBER - 7-11pm / £5 entry
HASTINGS MON AMOUR // FILM SCREENING: Jules et Jim
+ L'Amour Electronique DJ set
The Observer Building, 53 Cambridge Road, Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 1DT

I'm excited to have been asked to play some French records at the inaugural Hastings Mon Amour night. Top billing will be a screening of Truffaut’s sublime ménage à trois Jules et Jim, with my questionable DJ skills before and after.

There is a Facebook event page

Quelle Horreur!

I know, I know, it's a real cop-out posting these mixtapes for the umpteenth time, but they're all I've got to offer for now (and they won't be around for long as my file hosting account will self-destruct on the 16th November).

Quelle Horreur! a horrorshow mix of ghoulish Gallic psyche, creepy freakbeat and blood-thirsty femme-pop...

1. Stella - Si vous connaissez quelque-chose de pire qu'un vampire, parlez m'en toujours, ça pourra peut-être me faire sourire

2. Serge Gainsbourg - Docteur Jekyll Et Monsieur Hyde

3. Christine Pilzer - Dracula

4. Les Maledictus Sound - Kriminal Theme

5. Evariste - Connais-Tu I'animal Qui Inventa Le Calcul Integral

6. France Gall - Frankenstein

7. Jany L. - Mon Joli Vampire

8. Gérard Manset - Animal on est mal

9. Les Maledictus Sound - Monster Cocktail

10. Nicole Paquin - Mon Mari C'est Frankenstein

11. Brigitte Bardot - Le Diable Est Anglais

>> DOWNLOAD HERE UNTIL 16 NOVEMBER

Quelle Horreur! vol. 2 is all about sinister synths, creepy claviolines, demonic drum machines, and eerie electronica...

1. Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind - The Shining (Main Title)
2. Kap Bambino - Batcaves
3. Relaxed Muscle - Beastmaster
4. Future Bible Heroes - I'm a Vampire
5. Ladytron - Miss Black
6. John Carpenter - Halloween Theme (Main Title)
7. Zombie Zombie - Walk Of The Dead
8. Broadcast - Evil Is Coming
9. Les Georges Leningrad - Cocktail Vampire
10. Suicide - Ghostrider
11. Mount Vernon Arts Lab – Hobgoblins
12. Stereo Total – Film D’Horreur
13. Lio - Bébé Vampire
14. I Monster - The Blue Wrath
15. The Moontrekkers - Return of The Vampires

>> DOWNLOAD HERE UNTIL 16 NOVEMBER

spanner in the works

And so it goes: I'm convinced that most every time I decide to start blogging again, someone or something comes along that hampers progress.

The proverbial spanner is that a week ago I was asked to finish some paintings for an exhibition at the start of November - a ridiculously tight deadline, but one I couldn't pass up. If you care to know how I'm doing, there may be progress reports on my Twitter feed @neonpainter or on my website www.dominicbradnum.co.uk.

So it looks like you'll just have to make do for now with this mix that I completely forgot I had stuck up on Mixcloud 2 years ago...
 

L'Amour Electronique mix 4 (pt.2) by L'Amour Electronique on Mixcloud

[If you want to hear the first half of the mix, it's over there in the column on the right. Right?]

Jean-Michel Jarre: the first time

In case you missed it, Jean-Michel Jarre was interviewed on BBC 6Music last Sunday. You can listen to him ruminate on the differences between French and German electronic music, and his memories of his first ever synth - the EMS VCS3 'Putney'.

>>Listen here (available until 4th November 2015)

Silence is broken

*TAP*TAP*TAP* Is this thing on? Can anybody out there here me? Or am I shouting into empty (cyber)space?

Sorry if I woke you up, but the time has come to break this silence. I wouldn't exactly call it a re-boot of L'Amour Electronique. A re-visit perhaps. How long will it last? I can't say. How involved will it be? I do not know. How much new content will I post? We'll have to wait and see.

All I can say for now is that I've been coaxed out of retirement for a one-off  DJ set. which has given me good reason to dust off some of my French vinyl and enjoy some old favourites.

Whether I have time to share any such old favourites or new discoveries here remains to be seen...

If anyone is actually reading this and has any desire to know what I've been up to in my long absence, you could take a look here: www.dominicbradnum.co.uk.

Come back soon and I will have more concrete news (and if you're lucky some L'Amour Electronique treats)

Dx

ps. I noticed that I never updated the mixcloud player in the sidebar. I've just changed it to show mix 4 part 1 for a bit. It starts off a bit dark, but bear with it!

Vive le Vinyl

My ears pricked up as Jarvis opened his Sunday Service with Françoise Hardy's Autumn Rendezvous, and what followed fairly had me frothing at the mouth...

Mr Cocker paid a visit to the Radio France vinyl archive and was joined by the Dirty Sound System DJs who plundered the millions of discs for some rare French cuts by the likes of François de Roubaix, Pierre Cavalli, Alain Goraguer, and more.

It's available until 3:59pm next Sunday and it makes for ace listening >>> LISTEN HERE

ghosts of halloween past

Does this look awfully lazy me re-visiting ghosts of halloween past? Sorry if it does, but I just don't have the time to find and compile anything new (and I like to think there are still people out there who haven't come across either of these mixtapes yet).

Quelle Horreur! is my original mix of ghoulish Gallic psyche, creepy freakbeat and blood-thirsty femme-pop...

1. Stella - Si vous connaissez quelque-chose de pire qu'un vampire, parlez m'en toujours, ça pourra peut-être me faire sourire

2. Serge Gainsbourg - Docteur Jekyll Et Monsieur Hyde

3. Christine Pilzer - Dracula

4. Les Maledictus Sound - Kriminal Theme

5. Evariste - Connais-Tu I'animal Qui Inventa Le Calcul Integral

6. France Gall - Frankenstein

7. Jany L. - Mon Joli Vampire

8. Gérard Manset - Animal on est mal

9. Les Maledictus Sound - Monster Cocktail

10. Nicole Paquin - Mon Mari C'est Frankenstein

11. Brigitte Bardot - Le Diable Est Anglais

QUELLE HORREUR! VOL. 1 (40.9mb zip file)

Quelle Horreur! vol. 2 is dripping with sinister synths, creepy claviolines, demonic drum machines, and eerie electronica...

1. Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind - The Shining (Main Title)
2. Kap Bambino - Batcaves
3. Relaxed Muscle - Beastmaster
4. Future Bible Heroes - I'm a Vampire
5. Ladytron - Miss Black
6. John Carpenter - Halloween Theme (Main Title)
7. Zombie Zombie - Walk Of The Dead
8. Broadcast - Evil Is Coming
9. Les Georges Leningrad - Cocktail Vampire
10. Suicide - Ghostrider
11. Mount Vernon Arts Lab – Hobgoblins
12. Stereo Total – Film D’Horreur
13. Lio - Bébé Vampire
14. I Monster - The Blue Wrath
15. The Moontrekkers - Return of The Vampires

QUELLE HORREUR! VOL. 2 (57.1mb zip file)

Lou Reed RIP

(I've been trying to upload this mp3 for the past two days. Better late than never....)


This is for Lou Reed who has been with me ever since I bought a cassette of the best of The Velvet Underground when I was 17 and no-one in my year at school could understand what I could hear in it.

I love this photo of Lou and Nico, I like to imagine they're working out Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams.

Here is my own tiny L'Amour Electronique-esque tribute to the man: a melancholy 8-bit cover of Stephanie Says by one of my favourite bands Stereo Total.

[image source]

Stereo Total - Je Rêve Encore De Toi (We Love Taxigirl Mix)
[nb. until I can work out a way of embedding a player through my new file hosts, you'll need to click the link to listen and download the mp3]

Jane & Serge photobook

This grainy and evocative image is taken from a new book of photographs of family life chez Serge and Jane, taken by Andrew Birkin.

I've not seen the book Jane & Serge, but here is a Guardian review, and here is the publisher's blurb.

I can say nothing more except that the candid photos look enticing and entertaining, and that I'm not keen on the cover (but you can't judge...)

apologies for tardiness

So sorry to have been so tardy with this business of keeping you all in the market for sweet French fancies and electronic goodness. I have been busy with life and art/music, and it looks likely to continue that way for a while.

If I were to sit down and list all of my passions in order of preference, I fear that, at present, L'Amour Electronique would come right down towards the bottom of a rather long list. It's not that I don't enjoy finding and sharing this music any more, but more that the rewards I get from doing it don't really add up to enough to make all the work worthwhile right now.

If I think of all the things I would like to get done, the creative pursuits - such as music and art - which I scarcely have any time for anyway, are really the things I should be prioritising. Rather than faffing around trying to find a link to an image of some obscure French dollybird, or the biography of some decommissioned European synth-nerd...  (Another factor that has contributed to this general feeling is that my current file-hosting service seems to delete files faster than I can post new ones to replace them.)

So, my intention is to strip any L'Amour Electronique posts I make back to basics, and probably for the most part I will just be continuing the, curiously popular, L'Amour à la Chaîne feature.

And for the rest of my time I will be working, spending time with my wife and baby daughter, and putting my energies to good creative use with projects such as this.

L'Amour à la Chaîne pt.21

Greetings Chaîne fans, for link 21 you just need to take the title of the last song 'Metal Horse' and drop the equine noun, and you get...

'Metal'.

By Gary Numan.

Metal is taken from Numan's 1979 The Pleasure Principle album, his 1st 'solo' album after two under the collective Tubeway Army guise. It sees Gazza dropping the guitars completely and embracing full electronic/synthetic instrumentation throughout. And on the cover he appears to be trying to divine 'Pleasure' from a small red pyramid.

Hmmm, nice conceptual cover Gary, wonder where you got the idea from?

According to the wikipedia entry (your only trustworthy site on the interweb kids!*), 'Metal' is sung from the "perspective of an android longing to be human". Which leads me to ponder once again: Is Numan Human?**

Gary Numan - Metal
[you can buy The Pleasure Principle from all yr usual online outlets. Or you can go to a real shop and buy it for real from a real person.]


*joke
**I used to have a badge with a rather crude Numan drawing on it and the legend "Is Numan Human?" in a hi-tech digital typeface

...................................................................
L'Amour à la Chaîne: what will be the next link in the chain? Join in...
Please leave your suggestions and any reasons in the comments.
Jacques Dutronc - L'Amour à la Chaîne > Françoise Hardy - Je Changerais D'Avis > Les 5 Gentlemen – Cara-Lin > Add N To (X) – Monster Bobby > Serge Gainsbourg – Le Poinçonneur des Lilas > Les Shades – Orage Mécanique > Gillian Hills - Rentre Sans Moi > Zombie Zombie - Psychic Harmonia > Michel Polnareff - Qui a Tué Grand'Maman? > Christine Pilzer - L'Horloge De Grand-Père > Violaine - J'ai Des Problèmes Décidement > Dutronc - Dodecaphonie > Fabienne Delsol - Ce Jour La > Johnny Hallyday - Son Amour Pour Un Jeu > Miss Kittin & The Hacker - L'Homme Dans L'Ombre > Andre Popp - L'Homme Invisible > Future Bible Heroes - Love Is Blue > Sandie Shaw - L'Orage > Ars Post Tergum Introet - Ford Mustang > Simon Bookish - Metal Horse > Gary Numan - Metal > ?

Chocolat Chaud

Blimey! The Tindersticks have gone synth!

Anyone who came across our sister night Tonight We Fly will know that we have a great fondness for Tindersticks and their stock in late-night-music-to-drink-red-wine-in-dingy-bars-whilst-dressed-in-a-shabby-suit to.

They have occasionally put out music that has crept into the L'Amour Electronique remit - the odd French language version and a number of film soundtracks for French film director Claire Denis (Nénette et Boni is a particular favourite at L'A-E HQ).

So it is pleasing to report that they have just put up a teaser for their latest soundtrack (For Denis' Les Salauds, or Bastards to you non-Francophones).

The big surprise, as alluded to before, is that it is purely electronic and sounds like a slurred and seedy Giorgio Moroder tragi-disco comedown. It gets stranger: it is a cover of a Hot Chocolate song. Only Stuart Staples and co. could get away with this...

You can download a shorter edit of the full song for free from the Tindersticks website.

And some helpful wag has already posted it on soundcloud



The film is screening in French cinemas now (hopefully a UK release soon?), and the soundtrack album is due on 16th September (LP & CD from the Tindersticks shop), and is already available on iTunes.

L'Amour à la Chaîne pt.20

Looking at my blog stats the other day, I was heartened, yet slightly baffled, to see some of the most visited posts are those from my ongoing L'Amour à la Chaîne sequence. So with that knowledge under my hat, I s'pose it's time I added another link to the ongoing chain.

Previously on L'Amour à la Chaîne it was a Portuguese cover of Serge's 'Ford Mustang'...

The Mustang was named after the free-roaming horses descended from those brought to the Americas by the Spanish, and now regarded as "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West, which continue to contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people."

Each and every Ford Mustang has a metal horse emblem affixed to the radiator grill (unless it's been half-inched), so in tribute to this iconic hunk of chrome, here is METAL HORSE!

"Glittering horse, you were sold, in a shady shop on the Edgeware Road"

[image source]

I still love this hefty slab of cutandpaste 8-bit reductivist electro pop by Simon Bookish, hope you like it too!

Simon Bookish - Metal Horse
[Metal Horse was originally released in 2005 as a limited seven-inch on Tomlab Records. You can still buy it direct from Tomlab's European and US online outlets. There was no mp3 release.]

...................................................................
L'Amour à la Chaîne: what will be the next link in the chain?
Leave your suggestions and reasons in the comments.
Jacques Dutronc - L'Amour à la Chaîne > Françoise Hardy - Je Changerais D'Avis > Les 5 Gentlemen – Cara-Lin > Add N To (X) – Monster Bobby > Serge Gainsbourg – Le Poinçonneur des Lilas > Les Shades – Orage Mécanique > Gillian Hills - Rentre Sans Moi > Zombie Zombie - Psychic Harmonia > Michel Polnareff - Qui a Tué Grand'Maman? > Christine Pilzer - L'Horloge De Grand-Père > Violaine - J'ai Des Problèmes Décidement > Dutronc - Dodecaphonie > Fabienne Delsol - Ce Jour La > Johnny Hallyday - Son Amour Pour Un Jeu > Miss Kittin & The Hacker - L'Homme Dans L'Ombre > Andre Popp - L'Homme Invisible > Future Bible Heroes - Love Is Blue > Sandie Shaw - L'Orage > Ars Post Tergum Introet - Ford Mustang > Simon Bookish - Metal Horse > ?

L'Amour Electronique mix 4

!!!NEWSFLASH!!! Part 2 of this mix now added below!!!

I felt I should commemorate the fact that a whole year has passed since the final L'Amour Electronique soirée on 26 May 2012, so I dug out a mix I had sitting on my hard-drive and dusted up for your listening pleasure.  This one was mixed live at one of our nights on 26 February 2011. Hopefully it'll keep y'all entertained while we wait for the mp3s to come back...

Here is some blurb that I spewed out to introduce it on mixcloud:

You want an epic prog-electroni-folk lament from Air? CHECK! You want a seriously DEVO-lved Toni Basil space-oddity? CHECK! You want to swoon as Gillian Hills makes dragging on a cigarette sound like the sexiest thing EVER? *PUFF PUFF* You want naked thighs and leather boots? CHECK! You want the Kili-watch rush of a surf-guitar instrumental? CHECK! You want early J-J Perrey Moog-pop? CHECK! You want Da Da Da en Français? CHECK! You want Christophe to leave behind his blue-eyed years and get on a grinding, motorik groove? CHECK! You want obscure pre-beat orchestral pop from Tienou; electro-pop from The Knife and Future Bible Heroes; Françoise Hardy, Liz Brady, Adèle (not that one), Polnareff and Brigitte Bardot? yé-yé! yé-yé! yé-yé! THEN HIT PLAY NOW >>

L'Amour Electronique mix 4 (pt.1) by Lamourelectronique on Mixcloud

tracklisting for mix 4 (pt.1)

Air – Sex Born Poison

Stereo Total – Cannibale

The Knife – Kino

Toni Basil – Space Girls

Brigitte Bardot – Le Diable est Anglais

Adèle – J’ai Peur Parfois (acoustic version)

Gillian Hills – Ma Premiere Cigarette

Françoise Hardy – Pas Gentille

Serge Gainsbourg – L’Homme à Tête du Chou

Philippe Nicaud – Cuisses Nues, Bottes de Cuir

Liz Brady – Palladium

Léo Petit et Ses Guitares et Ses Rhythmes – Kili-watch

Jean-Claude Vannier – L’Ours Parasseux

Michel Polnareff – Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta

Jean-Jacques Perrey – Porcupine Rock

Toss – Da Da Da (Est-ce qu'on s'cherche ou est ce qu'on triche?)

Christophe – Rock Monsieur

Tienou – Tu N’Peux Pas T’Empêcher de Rire

Future Bible Heroes – Love Is Blue

Jean-Michel Jarre – Equinoxe (pt.4)

Françoise Hardy – Le Premier Bonheur du Jour

And now for PART 2! 

Allez-Allez! The mix continues >> obscure indie-poppers do Serge > pure synth-pop > moody French disco > sugary & soulful femme pop > In/Out > lo-fi electro-pop > analogue synth abuse > filthy dirty freakbeat > a hefty dose of road rash > proto-electronica > sounds of summer > psyche-noir. And all for your listening pleasure.

L'Amour Electronique mix 4 (pt.2) by L'Amour Electronique on Mixcloud

tracklisting for mix 4 (pt.2)
Addictive Larsen – Bonnie & Clyde
The Human League – Open Your Heart
Kraftwerk – Airwaves
Michel Polnareff – La Mouche
Mareva Galanter – Les Filles C’est Faites Pour Faire L’Amour
Bébé Suong – Mine De Rien
Elizabeth – Madame Superman
Les Roche Martin – Les Mains Dans Les Poches
Serge Gainsbourg – Qui est ‘In’, Qui est ‘Out’?
Sue Wilkinson – You’ve Got To Be a Hustler
Stereo Total – Baby Ouh
Add N To (X) – Ann’s Eveready Equestrian
Jesus – L’Electrocuté
Christophe – Macadam
The Normal – T.V.O.D.
Mathématiques Moderne – Disco Rough
Bertrand Burgalat & Robert Wyatt – This Summer Night
Johnny Hallyday – Noir C’est Noir

Tour de France, Tour de France

Huge congratulations and much awe and respect for Chris Froome, following in Sir Bradley of Mod's cleats and taking 1st place in the 2013 Tour de France yesterday. This one's for you...

Meanwhile, Kraftwerk performed at the Latitude festival on Saturday night. It was a "3-D concert" - er, aren't all concerts 3-D if you are there watching? No, apparently this was even more 3-D than real life as there were huge projections which made you feel sick unless you were wearing 3-D glasses which probably made you look like a bit of a twerp.

You can watch an impressive 35 minute show of highlights from their set on the BBC website. And you may also want to try and werk out if they are actually playing anything behind each of their neon lecterns. Sadly, no Tour de France though...

You can watch Kraftwerk at Latitude for the next 4 weeks via the BBC iPlayer

Here's the setlist for the film:
* The Robots
* Numbers
* Computer World
* Home Computer
* Computer Love
* The Man Machine
* The Model

TRES CHIC!

First there was C'est Chic! Now there is Très Chic! The new Ace Records compilation of 'more French girl singers of the 1960s'.

It's a tough job putting together a comp like this: trying to make it a captivating, immediate listen for the newcomer, as well as aiming to create a strong overview of the French yé-yé scene; meanwhile there's probably the nagging thought at the back of your mind that there are people like me out there who have got all the more populist stuff and want some new treasures unearthed and plonked on their stereo. And that's before you get to the tooth-pulling task of trying to get licensing permission for the material you WANT to put on it.

I say: give me anything with some 60s French music on it and I am a happy bunny!


The 24 track CD version has Gillian Hills on the cover, and I had a nice surprise (and a little flush of pride) whilst scanning through the inlay booklet: the L'Amour Electronique blog gets a mention under 'other reference sources'!

There's an abridged (blue!) vinyl version too, with a very un-sixties Anna Karina photo on the front.

If I can find the time, I'll write a little review of it...

You can buy both direct from Ace Records: CD version | Vinyl version.

Ripping Vinyl - Karo

Would Madame et Monsieur care for a little vinyl warmth to start le weekend? How about a double-serving of pure, unadulterated Québécoise sweetness by Karo, on the Trans-Canada Vedettes imprint?

You French pop fans will probably know Karo (real name Caroline Vallée), for her sugar-y 60s HIT 'Un Garçon En Mini-Jupe' (what was it back then with all those boys with long hair and mini-skirts and girls with short hair in trousers?). What you may not know is that she penned the music and lyrics to most of her songs, which certainly wasn't the norm for most female pop artistes back then. These two being perfect examples of her oeuvre, encapsulating an, undoubtedly rose-tinted and very saccharine, world view.

Here she is in double-vision with her ever-present smile and schoolgirl bunches:

[image source]

And here she is oiling up her motorbike, though possibly not getting ready to join the Ton-Up Club...

...As this evidence suggests...

Could anyone make the prospect of riding pillion with a roaring motorcycle between your legs sound quite so twee as Karo does? "VRROOM! VRROOOOOM!" She squeals as she wraps her arms around her leather-clad beau and they race off down the Route TransCanadienne.

Karo - Sur Ta Moto


On the flip-side, Karo hauls a gang of school kids in and together they summon up the joyful sound of going away on summer holiday (and not a Cliff in sight!). It's absolutely brimful of sunshine and happiness, and then she slips in a key-change and the cup of glee runneth over.

Altogether now, everybody cheer: "HEYYYYYY!"

Karo - Je M'en Vais En Vacances

[you can download a compilation of Karo's 60s material Un Garçon En Mini-Jupe from 7digital or archambault.ca. If you'd like to buy the 45, there's one in the US on musicstack, a snip at £22.37.]


I have a couple more Karo 45s hanging around, so if you like these songs and want to hear more from her, leave nice comments and it will encourage me to dig them out.