french

  • jeanmichel

    Holding fast to some heartfelt theory, I do believe the best musicians aren’t always, exactly “musicians” themselves. Joining us today in our personal, illustrious group which includes Steve Hiett and Brian Eno, is native Frenchman Jean-Michel Gascuel. In the span of two years, from 1982 through 1984, Jean-Michel Gascuel released two albums C’Est L’Premier Pas…

  • Dracula, I Love You

    Periodically, I like to dive into my old “A Track, A Day” blog archives for music I’ve written about before but I feel still hasn’t gotten its fair shake. What better time than Halloween to revisit Tuca’s (real name Valeniza Zagni da Silva) curious masterpiece: Dracula, I Love You? Curious because it’s unlike much released at…

  •   I almost hate myself for sharing this. It’s like eating a slice of sublime dark chocolate cake, followed by a full spread of some fine charcuterie, chased with some sumptuous Riesling. Obviously, it’s too rich and not entirely good for you…but man is it refined and tasty when you’re devouring it. That’s exactly the…

  • Back in 1979, French musical giant Serge Gainsbourg travels to Jamaica, meets up with hugely influential dub producers Sly and Robbie, then proceeds to create this controversial 30-odd minutes of “freggae” featuring Rita Marley’s erotic background vocals. It’s a scene that so thoroughly infuriated his own critics, and through one controversial song, infuriated all sorts…

  • ho knows what’s going on in the air? Something in it is stirring me to share this wonderful compilation of music brimming with ideas that seem so gauche in our time. It seems like the sweeping, uber romantic, and grandiose music of Parisian Michel Legrand only gets fleeting kudos whenever someone speaks of French music in general, and film…

  • While I was researching this bit of music, I ran into this interview by Jean-Claude Vannier. In no uncertain terms, Jean-Claude tried to guide the interviewer away from asking questions about what he’s known for. If you’re known for something as iconic as arranging the music for Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson it would be easy…

  •   It seems I’m running out of summer, and in this case Isabelles, but before I do, I have to share one of those perfect albums that just scream: Can you hold on, just for a bit more? Isabelle Antena’s En Cavale released on uber-stylish indie Belgian record label Les Disques Du Crépuscule, and graced by a gorgeous watercolor album cover…

  •   Now this is what you call a performance. Rightfully, Isabelle Adjani has to go down as one French cinema’s greatest actresses. Possessing an expressive beauty that she can transform from ethereal to surreal in movies like Possession, Subway, all the way to Diabolique, it’s Isabelle’s ability to sculpt that mysterious sexuality on her own terms that allowed her to use such talent to get away with almost everything in her artistic career.…

  • Al Stewart – 1976 You all know or have heard Year of the Cat right? It was nearly four decades ago that this single became neo-folk steam train that could. Little things about its creation distilled in a wonderfully universal way nearly all the transformation, and rungs that neo-folk had taken by then. You hear…

  •   Nino Ferrer To tell the story of the artist involved in creating the masterful track of the day, “South”, I have to start backwards from his death. On August 13th, 1998, two months after his mother’s death, Nino Ferrer took the hunting gun from his Creole Cottage-style farm in Quercy in the southwest of…

ambient art pop art rock balearic brazilian electro-acoustic england environmental music experimental folk-rock fourth world Funk fusion japan jazz minimalist neo-folk neoclassical new age walearic