Lay back on your (fake!) polar bear fur and listen to a Fireside Chat with (the real!) Jane Birkin. 60s icon and muse to the genial Serge Gainsbourg, Jane witnessed swinging London, the beau monde of Paris and has remained a tasteful and opinionated recording artist to this day.
A progenitor of the trip-hop movement, Laurent Daumail (a.k.a. DJ Cam) started putting out records in 1994, right around the time albums like Dummy (Portishead), Protection (Massive Attack), and Old Codes New Chaos (Fila Brazillia) were mesmerizing college radio DJs burned out on rap and alternative rock. More jazzy than Air and less housey than Daft Punk or Cassius, Cam was friend to the crate-diggers and head-nodders that gravitated to the smoker’s delights found in the back catalogs of Ninja Tune and Mo’Wax. Smooth, smooth stuff. Now Cam is back with his seventh studio album—not counting a slew of DJ mixes—and putting a fresh spin on a genre he helped foster.
If you’re in Paris and need a morning break from the Right Bank’s pomp and glamour, you needn’t go all that far. Just cross the river Seine to the tamer, quainter, bohemian Left Bank and treat yourself to a walking expedition.
With her explicit lyrics, edgy beats, and spunky personality, Yelle might single handedly be responsible for making the US fall in love with France. Julie Budet (Yelle) and her band, consisting of Jean-Francois Perrier (GrandMariner) and Tanguy Destable (Tepr), have been out on the road for a 6-week tour in support of their latest release, Safari Disco Club.
Backstage before the show at Los Angeles’s Music Box, Yelle greeted us with a smile and a look that would have taken the average person a team of stylists to assemble. Dressed in spotted animal print pants and a black scoop neck shirt, sporting a soft pretzel necklace and Eiffel Tower earrings, she pulled up a chair and began expressing her love for America.
In an interview with ChinaShop, Yelle discusses remixing songs for Katy Perry and Robyn, getting used to American culture, and dressing to impress on stage.
Everything is sexier in Paris, especially when you start combining the worlds of music and fashion, which is exactly what Gildas Loaëc and Masaya Kuroki did back in 2002 when they founded the Kitsuné label. With releases from notables like Alex Gopher, Wolfmother, Hot Chip, Fischerspooner and Phoenix (along with countless others), the Parisian label grown into one of the country’s most eclectic and well-respected culture institutions. One of the biggest reasons? Their compilations.
The latest Kitsuné Maison compendium—#11 in the series if you’re taking notes—seeks to combine sultry house music (what they’re known for) with more indie rock undertones (which they’re slowly become known for). The Indie Dance Issue drops May 16, and you can purchase it from iTunes or your local good music purveyor. In the meantime, label boss Gildas Loaëc waxes poetic about each song on the compilation, three of which are available for download after the jump.
Gale Parker has played quite an amazing role in the history of the fashion world. She was a muse to style gods Valentino and Yves St. Laurent, a contributing editor at Andy Warhol’s Interview, Design Director for Ralph Lauren’s Woman’s Collection, and the youngest Fashion Editor at Vogue. Her earliest memories consist of mingling with fashion designers on vacations in Paris and searching for second hand treasures in New York thrift stores. Gale’s latest endeavor is her eco-fashion line, Clothespin, which offers stylish and individually designed dresses, blouses, and skirts that cater to woman of all body types. Her pieces are constructed from never before worn 1940’s vintage fabrics that Gale acquires from all over the world, vintage buttons, and frilly lace, which she blends together with organic yarns. Clothespin also features jewelry, boots, leather belts, scarves, purses, and other accessories hand-picked from places like India, Morocco, Thailand, Czechoslovakia, and Paris. Gale takes custom dress orders from the vintage fabric of her customer’s choice at her Melrose Avenue shop.
Gale graciously took time out of her extremely busy schedule to share some tales of her fabulous past and to discuss her new green collection, Clothespin:
Bandroom Records | Midnight Juggernauts are another electroclash dance band, the likes of which you may think you have heard before, and maybe even quick to dismiss as just another in the genre’s endless line of assembly line clones. But take another listen — because the boys from Australia probably know this, don’t give a crap, and, if you love this kind of thing, neither should you. Thus far their discography recalls the greatest of early 80′s synth/Britpop, like Missing Persons, Duran Duran, and even a bit of Avalon-era Roxy Music, yet their hooks and dance-stomp beat bring to mind the dance-punk of groups like Franz Ferdinand. It’s this unabashed love for New Wave of old helps them relieve any sort of tedium, though it may not break any barriers. But that’s not what all music’s about. It’s like many of the films of that perilous decade — don’t think so much about it, and just enjoy the show.
Midnight Juggernauts – TNT (memory tapes mix)
This New Technology – Midnight Juggernauts from midnight juggernauts on Vimeo.
Words by Jeff Nau
There’s something oddly refreshing at the heart of France dance duo The Penelopes’ brand of twangy, ambient rock n’ roll. Picture the electric Fender reverb of a 1960′s strat mixed with a layer of synth and bubblegum pop dance beats, and you’re only getting a small part of the picture. The Penolopes’ sound is perfect for everything from breaking up a rave with a brawl, or taking a road trip as far away from the civilized world as possible.