Let's toddle back to 1998 when Air released their, oft-copied/seldom matched, sci-fi lounge masterpiece Moon Safari. Tucked away on the b-side of simian-disco smash 'Sexy Boy' was a gem that saw them calling on the voice of a certain first lady of the French yé-yé scene.
This passed me by completely at the time, and though I loved the song 'Sexy Boy', I could only afford to buy the album and not the single too, and so I missed out on those bonus b-sides. Instead I discovered something magical when my now wife and I did a tape swap, where we both compiled some Gallic-flavoured numbers for our first holiday together in Paris.
Back then, neither of us had much of a French record collection, so we had to be imaginative: anything with even a hint of the old ooh la la about it was recorded and sequenced, and a certain track on her C90 shone through. It was taped off an Elefant Records compilation Pop Romantique: French Pop Classics (1999) - a tasty little album if you can still find a copy: it has French language covers and originals including that Heavenly/France Gall one I posted recently; and Chaîne 17 contenders-by-proxy The Magnetic Fields doing a creaky version of 'Le Tourbillon' from Jules et Jim, that sounds like a busted old merry-go-round.
But I digress. The song by Air with a guest vocal by Françoise Hardy is entitled 'Jeanne' - a beautiful, breathy wisp of pastoral synth-pop with possibly the most melancholy oscillator solo I have ever heard. Make sure you have a handkerchief nearby before you listen...
This passed me by completely at the time, and though I loved the song 'Sexy Boy', I could only afford to buy the album and not the single too, and so I missed out on those bonus b-sides. Instead I discovered something magical when my now wife and I did a tape swap, where we both compiled some Gallic-flavoured numbers for our first holiday together in Paris.
Back then, neither of us had much of a French record collection, so we had to be imaginative: anything with even a hint of the old ooh la la about it was recorded and sequenced, and a certain track on her C90 shone through. It was taped off an Elefant Records compilation Pop Romantique: French Pop Classics (1999) - a tasty little album if you can still find a copy: it has French language covers and originals including that Heavenly/France Gall one I posted recently; and Chaîne 17 contenders-by-proxy The Magnetic Fields doing a creaky version of 'Le Tourbillon' from Jules et Jim, that sounds like a busted old merry-go-round.
But I digress. The song by Air with a guest vocal by Françoise Hardy is entitled 'Jeanne' - a beautiful, breathy wisp of pastoral synth-pop with possibly the most melancholy oscillator solo I have ever heard. Make sure you have a handkerchief nearby before you listen...
