Jacno-Triangle (1979)

A friend was asking me tonight about the band Rita Mitsouko, a longtime favorite of this blog. And then a few minutes later, I got notice that the one and only Jean Claude Vannier will be hosting a tribute to Serge Gainsbourg at the Hollywood Bowl this August. Gasp! This Hollywood Bowl concert might even surpass seeing Dead Can Dance and Nouvelle Vague a few years ago. As you might’ve noticed, I have a special fondness for all kinds of French music but my tastes these days tend towards French Cold and New Wave. Recently, a friend made me a copy of So Young but So Cold, an excellent compilation of 80s synth-pop and cold wave from France and that’s where I came across this excellent tune by Jacno. I loved his work in Stinky Toys and his collaborations with Elli Medeiros known appropriately as “Elli et Jacno.” Sadly, Jacno died of cancer on November 6, 2009 (excellent tribute here). Coincidentally, almost exactly two years earlier Fred Chichin of Rita Mitsouko also passed away from cancer.

Bonus! Bonus!

Stinky Toys-Birthday Party (1979)

I somehow overlooked featuring this video and song on the blog, which is quite strange because it’s a favorite (cringe, trying not to use THAT word). Stinky Toys are considered to be one of the first punk bands in France.

Lyrics:
Chinese chinese birthday party
Give me chinese birthday cake
Chinese chinese birthday party
Give me chinese birthday drink
Getting younger every day
Getting younger getting younger
Younger every day
Gonna be a baby soon!

M̼m РWe Have A Map Of The Piano

Please don’t flow so fast
You little mountain hum
I’ll take a bottle down to you

H/T: Myk in London

Massive Attack – Psyche

Many times on this blog, I’ve written about the relationships I have with certain songs and bands. I’ve written about these things in a very earnest, almost cringe-worthy way, I know. I make no pretense to be anything other than I am, I am not a writer, nor a music critic or any other such highfalutin’ thing. I just like sharing music that means something to me at the time I’m listening to it.

If I could create a song to express how I’ve been feeling lately, it would be Psyche by Massive Attack. The combination of Martina Topley-Bird’s vocals and Van River and Subliminal Kid’s Fever Ray inspired remix of an already almost perfect song sent me to another place. A place I needed to go.

Quench abuse and let love flower
Rip the cage out of your chest
Let the chaos rule the rest
Show without showing
What you know without knowing…

Dissolving who we are
Call out for yesterdays destiny come
We’re on a foreign shore
It was your mark of falling
I was the car still running
And when you call I’ll be your shield for life
And if you feel it you will fly
The sun should have been with me
When I was set to fall in
As I was set to fall in…

I Am Also a Nihilist – Renzo Novatore

The revolt of the free one against sorrow is only the intimate, passionate desire for a more intense and greater joy. But the greatest joy can only show itself to him in the mirror of the deepest sorrow, merging with it later in a vast barbaric embrace. And from this vast and fruitful embrace the higher smile of the strong one springs, as, in the midst of conflict, he sing the most thundering hymn to life.

A hymn woven from contempt and scorn, from will and might. A hymn that vibrates and throbs in the light of the sun as it shines on tombs, a hymn that revives the nothing and fills it with sound.

Les Fils de Joie – Adieu Paris (1982)

How should one say goodbye to Paris? With rope or gas? From the Eiffel Tower or the Montparnasse Tower? These are the questions Les Fils de Joie asks in this beautiful song about ending one’s life: “I bring nothing to humanity, I preferred to slip away…”

De mon vivant
Je n’ai rien produit
Je n’ai rien écrit
Ni fait d’important
Ho ho ho ho hoo c’est bien fini
Howo ho ho
N’importe comment
Je n’y ai jamais pensé vraiment

In my lifetime
I have produced nothing
I’ve written anything
Neither is important

In 1994, Debord committed suicide in Champot, Upper Loire. It was not his first attempt, having tried to asphyxiate himself once before in 1955. His ashes were scattered on the point of Ile de la Cité, Paris. The French press promptly made him a celebrity, never before having acknowledged the significance of the Situationist International or Debord’s work.

Link

Indians in Moscow – Naughty Miranda

“Things aren’t quite what they seem…”

I’ve lived a life of pseudonyms.

M83 – Skin of the Night

You can’t really say shoe-gazing had a revival because it never quite left us, thank goodness.

She digs her nails into her naked chest
Miles of veins fan out like a road map
She pulls back the skin to show her ribs
That twinkle like shooting stars

M83

Nocturnal Emissions-Never Give Up

I’ve sensed the endtime-ish mood in the air. Apocalypse is so 2010! Never give up.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Deaths of birds and fish en masse stir end-times theories
Bizarre reports of washed-up fish and downed birds have many people scratching their heads, and jumping to conclusions.

When the term “dead fish” became a top Google search Wednesday, soaring past the likes of Lindsay Lohan and leaving Justin Bieber in its scaly wake, it looked as if the end were near.

That’s what everyone was saying, anyway.

After millions of tiny fish went belly up in Chesapeake Bay this week, much of the populace immediately dismissed the official scientific explanation (the water was just too darn cold). What made more sense, they reasoned?

The approaching apocalypse. Of course.