Ruth M. Ellyerie is no other than Thierry Müller, graphic artist, photographer and musician behind the magnificent Polaroïd/Roman/Photo album that is dedicated to his own anagram. 

The LP sold 50 copies in 85, the year it was released on Paris Records, but is now a collector's item. It will be re edited on vinyl by Angular Records for its 25th anniversary*. The whole album is outstandingly modern for what the french music scene was doing at the time: rachitic rythms and two fingers on the Casio. 

Müller wanted to make a pop album that could be aired, and it includes some rather effective pop songs (Polaroïd/Roman/Photo) along with experimental bits, like the album's first song, Thriller, whith extracts from J. Huston's Asphalt Jungle and a sampled phone. Polaroïd/Roman/Photo (LP) is a stunning pop music piece with sexy trumpets and cold beats on which Frédérique Lapierre (who co-wrote most of the tracks) sings with cruel and hypnotic and languid voice. Urban myths says that on the first version of the song, woman's verses were sung by a girl Müller just met and took back to the studio, the result is playful and by far quirky and one could imagine this unknown french girl saying these things to you in a flirty, yet mocking way. This track was revamped and replaced by Frédérique's more fluid version which has more credibility in the album as a whole. The aforementioned ''jane doe'' version is available on the remastered CD (Fractal records).

Mots is the 6th track of Polaroïd/Roman/Photo, and was featured in some compilations in early 2000's, but was overshadowed by the eponymous Polaroïd/Roman/Photo track.

The song is rather obsessive with its thrumping trumpet and looping fultes-clarinets, martial drums as well as its dreamy synthetizers and ethereal vocals reciting poetry by Edouard Nono. 

Un mot un mot un mot offert         Saillantes virgules histoire tirée du tube 

parfois parfois c'est sauter             finir le pas moi une chose sortir finir

tu tu t'efforces en mesure              sortir finir sortir de tes pores

sinistre dans tes fleurs 

labouées

qui va passer araignée            A partir de là prendre les mots et jouer entre eux

se tordre trop tard un peu parfois     Un mot parfois offert pour où? Offert parfois

un mot un mot un mot offert                    alors un mot pour où?

alors offert offert pour où

Peut-être peut-être                 Yeux fermés cils hallucinés des actes et fibres

peut-être complice               après fibre tourner cacher tourner cacher tourner cacher

boucler juste le silence                 cacher tourner cacher ton usure.

elle elle introduit son corps

prenant la place de ma faim

Rouge de sang orageux se prendre             A franchir la fièvre à verser les mots

se prendre leur danse dans la nuit d'un monde     à verser ces mots dans la fatigue

peut-être peut être peut-être boucler             puis après serrer un monde bouclé

serrer boucler boucler folie                                Peut-être ton usure...


Ruth - Mots  




*The album was previously re mastered and re edited in 2000 by Thierry Müller himself, a CD version was released on Infrastition/Fractal records at the time, but is now sold out, Music owns the whole album and wouldn't mind sharing it.

MUSIC IN OFFICIEL LIBAN - OCTOBER 2010

DEUX SUR UNE BANQUETTE

At Music, we have an unconditional love for french new wave, as you might know if you own the issue 0 of the fanzine.

Marie et les Garçons are from Lyon, they were formed in 1975 and toured with the likes of The Clash, Police and french bands like Téléphone and Bijou. They were discovered by Michel Esteban and Lizzy Mercier Descloux and invited to record their debut album in New York, it was produced by John Cale. But the band split up when the "garçons" from the band discovered dance music and decided to record a disco album that made it to the US charts but never gained commercial success. 
Here are two versions of the same song: Re Bop. The first one is a catchy rock'n'roll tune that loops on the same sentence, a very upbeat take on surf music. It was released in france in the late seventies. 
The second one, Re Bop Electronic was on the B-Side of Garçons's debut album, "Divorce", released on Ze Records. It is featured on the great "Ze Records Story (1979 - 2009)" compilation (Strut Records). This version is darker and could sound like a clean french Suicide single, the analog instruments transform the song completely, making it as cold as the lazers of the long gone Palace.

Re-Bop - Marie et les Garçons 

Re-Bop Electronique - Garçons

  

Tokow Boys manipulate the clichés of the eighties as precociously as if they were holding dynamite. The gang of five serve us an explosive mix of laconic slogans and child ballads, on analog beats and heavy bass all mixed up with perverse carelesness. When the band split up, two of their members carried on with music and formed Luna Parker, who peaked french charts with the single "Tes états d'âme, Eric".
I just got a 7" at this great record store and extracted this track. It is the B-Side of their first single "Petite Rockette". Throbbing lyrics on ambiant music.

Swinging Pool - Tokow Boys

EMBRACE THE HERD - THE GIST (Stuart Moxham)

In the issue 0 of Music (the fanzine) we decided that the 9th track of the compilation would be one from Stuart Moxham's solo project: The Gist. It is a simple song in which you can almost hear the wind blowing through the station where someone seems to be waiting for Love at First Sight. Taken from the 1983 album Embrace The Heard, of which Moxham himself said that it was a "symbol of (his) misery and lack of direction at the time", this synthetic ballad where the treacly pop of Colin Blunstone collides with Brian Eno's intellect on the ruins of his former band, Young Marble Giants.


In the issue 11 of les Inrockuptibles (1988), Moxham was interviewed on Embrace the Herd:

"I couldn't work at the time, I didn't know what to do. I had lost all ambitions. Then I had a motorbike accident which left me in a plaster and crutches for a year. This incident made me go back to London since Rough Trade (who then signed Young Marble Giants) asked me to compose an album after listening to the demos I previously sent them. Part of the album is actually demos, I was naïve thinking I could do better. There was no direction or continuity in the album, but I was thinking about The Gist since Young Marble Giants released Colossal Youth, the day the latter band separated is the day Love at First Sight was released."

Embrace the Herd (released on Cold Storage records) is a jewel comparable to Eno's masterpiece, with as much elegance and complexity as the 1977 pre-new wave album Before and After Science.
Moxham also claimed that he was listening to a lot of dub music at the time, which leaves its print on some tracks of the record, but generally, Embrace the Herd leaves the listener feeling like he listened to eighties pop songs standing in a train station, shivering from the cold Liverpool winter.

Here are two tracks from The Gist's Embrace the Herd:


Love at First Sight (Demo version) - The Gist

Dark Shots - The Gist 


French singer Etienne Daho has his own personal take on Love at First Sight, which appears on his third album, "Pop Satori" (Virgin music): Paris, Le Flore. 
The lyrics have nothing to do with the original Moxham recording, but the melody is almost intact (though the Daho version has added synthetizers).
This is the english version we're posting:

Love at First Sight (The Gist cover) - Etienne Daho 

ISSUE 01

the firstsecond edition of MUSIC will be in collaboration with musician Charbel Haber, who will share his primary record collection with us, the sound that got him into making music. We met him at his flat in Beirut to gather all the images we needed to have so as to create a visual identity that is close enough to the former Scrambled Eggs, La Chambre, X-mas Eve Family Massacre front man.

A CRACK ON THE HEAD

One of The Smith's best songs, off the 1985 album Meat is Murder.  

Morrissey barks painfully to the sound of a heavy yet almost funky bass, it's touching, sad and at the same time very danceable for a song that addresses a rather sensitive topic.

The same verse is repeated about four or five times in the 6 minutes song, leading to the last bit that is only instrumental, the climax of Barbarism Begins at Home is there, followed immediately by a brutal end, but you've been shuffling your feet and nodding your head all along, you're begging for more. Leave the song on repeat.


Barbarism Begins at Home - The Smiths