RIP Chris Marker

We were sad to hear news that Chris Marker has died at the age of 91.

Born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve, Marker apparently took his professional name from the Magic Marker pen. His 1962 "essay film" La Jetée, is perhaps his most famous work: a 29 minute short made up of mostly still images depicting a near-future dytsopian love story seen through the eyes of a time traveller; the film was hugely influential and became the blueprint for Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys.

La Jetée is a favourite here at L'Amour Electronique HQ, and we showed it many times on our little TV back in the Penthouse days.



If you enjoyed that, another of our favourite Marker films is Sans Soleil, which is shot mainly in Japan, and features an EMS synthesiser which translates sound into visual imagery. You can watch that here.

François Truffaut 80

And finally... Today would have been François Truffaut's 80th birthday.

There's a nice tribute on the Guardian site in salute to the great Nouvelle Vague film-maker.

The one and only fitting song I could think of to post was this curio discovered via the blowupdoll mixtape exchange last year...  

"Antoine Doinel, Antoine Doinel, Antoine Doinel, Antoine Doinel, Antoine Doinel..."

Elisa Point - Paris Ressemblait À Un Film De F. Truffaut

[buy Elisa Point from fnac | amazon.fr]
[Elisa Point informations: myspace | facebook | wikipedia]

Breathless

Finally got to see the 50th Anniversary re-print of Godard's À Bout De Souffle (or Breathless if you can't pronounce the French) last Friday. I've seen it countless times on DVD, but seeing it on the big screen it had so much more impact. It was, if you pardon the pun, close to breathtaking.

I urge you to go and see it if you can.

Here's a little mp3 tribute to the scene above: A song I first discovered on (the sadly latent) Spiked Candy back in July 2007 . Hopefully she won't mind me re-posting it now...

Jany. L - Herald Tribune

[Feeling rich? You can buy Jany. L's only 2 seven-inches from cdandlp.com!]

Lux Interior R.I.P. [21.10.46 - 04.02.09]

Cramps frontman Lux Interior died this week – he’s gone to that great goth graveyard in the sky / bowels of the earth [delete as appropriate].

It’s no secret that we are BIG fans of The Cramps (the sound of Miss Pain has oft been described as a kind of “electro-Cramps rumble”, and we’ve covered their ‘Call of The Wighat’, and done our own Cramp-ed up version of ‘Fever’ in our live sets). Here’s our little tribute to him…

First, a raunchy, blues-y stab at 1978 their buzzzzzzzzzzzz-erk tremelo-drone ‘Human Fly’ by slinky French bossa-nova merchants / arch-ironists Nouvelle Vague.

Nouvelle Vague – Human Fly
[buy Nouvelle Vague: iTunes | Amazon]


And here's a filthy, squelchy synthed-up Sonovac version of the same song

Sonovac - Human Fly
[buy Sonovac: iTunes / Amazon]

The Cramps made a bleak and tear-jerking rendition of Ricky Nelson’s ‘Lonesome Town’ on their Gravest Hits ep. Françoise Hardy’s 1968 version is lusher and grander, but no less fragile. There won’t be a dry eye in the house…

Françoise Hardy – La Rue Des Coeurs Perdus
[buy Françoise Hardy: iTunes | Amazon]


Lux Interior, We salute you!