Fashionable Material - Pierre drops the bomb

I've written a couple of times before on the blog (see 'here') about my friend, Pierre Chandeze, the musician and graphic artist who specialises in creating distinctive art  featuring 'ugly animals'. I've also mentioned before that, rather infuriatingly, Pierre always seems to be involved in some sort of marvellous project or other, which serves to make the rest of us look like we're lazy under-achievers. Now, that may well be true but we don't necessarily want to be reminded of it.

Anyway, Pierre's latest project involves taking his excellent 'With A Messy Head' website into the netlabel scene with the release of a brand new, freely downloadable, compilation album on bandcamp.

Called 'You Don't Have To Be Fashionable Vol​.​ 1', the album features  13 shades of pop - principally in the experimental, indie, lo-fi vein - from all across the globe.

We here at the Streetlamp were rather taken by track 9, Veiled Clock by Scotland's own The Maginot Band:


This lot are a six-piece, indie-pop hailing from Caithness in the North of Scotland and this track certainly has something undefinably dark, northern and wintry about it. Check out their bandcamp page for more releases soon.

We also loved the bouncy, bass-driven punk of track 11, Restraint by The Internet from Santa Barbara, US.


The Internet band was formed in May 2010 by guitarist/singer Marvin Dominguez and guitarist/singer Alex Brown. Drums are supplied by Miguel Cuate and bass by Angel Guerra.

I can't finish without also giving special mention to track 12, Lon Chaney by Paul & Pierre. The Pierre in question is, of course the aforementioned Monsieur Chandeze and the Paul is yet another Scottish-based artist, Edinburgh's own cult legend Paul Vickers. Now I'm not going to embed the album version of this song, which is an alternative take on the track, but instead I'm going to give you the official Paul & Pierre video version. The reason for this deviation is that the Streetlamp's Ray, a man with an unparalleled love of black and white horror movies, insisted that this is the version we included. And who am I to argue?




Griff
xx

Griff says; Journey to the eye of The Storm

If you've been paying attention, you may remember me mentioning my friend Pierre Chandeze previously (see 'here'). Pierre is a talented graphic artist, a member of Top Montagne (featured 'here' previously on The Streetlamp), a solo musician in the guise of Carton Sonore, and, last but not least, an exponent of the musical saw. As if all that wasn't enough, Pierre has also found time in the last two years to play the bass guitar with tonight's Streetlamp recommendation, Sean Croft.

Sean Croft (pictured below) is a singer-songwriter from Florida, US, who decided to move to Paris two years ago. By his own account, he has not seen much of 'La Ville-Lumière' but has spent this time living in the closet of a studio and feverishly working on his freshly released meisterwerk, entitled The Storm.


The Storm is a 'big-sounding', wonderfully ambitious and accomplished 13-track album, which can be found 'here' on bandcamp. A physical copy of the album is a mere $5, while the digital version may be freely downloaded.

The tracks, which have a melodramatic and portentous air about them, are written to sound like the different parts of the storm, e.g. the gathering storm, then the full force, and finally the aftermath. However, they are not in chronological order. The album, which opens with the rousing Landfall, starts with the storm in full flow and then goes backwards and forwards in time throughout its course.

I'm embedding a couple of tracks below, to give you a flavour of the sound. Like many of the 'Griff says' recommendations it has a folky feel but, on this occasion, there is a harder, rockier edge at work too. Listening to this album, the artist I am most reminded of is Beirut, which is high praise indeed round these parts.





Given the richness of the sound acheived, you may be surprised to learn that Sean Croft is merely a trio. The final member of the group being Felice Briguglio, 'a Sicilian madman', who provides the driving percussion.

The lovely cover art (pictured below) was provided by Sean himself who digitally manipulated one of his own photos, taken on the beach outside his house in Florida.



Incidentally, and I don't know if Sean himself is aware of this, but the ancient motto of the city of Paris is; Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: "It is tossed by the waves, but does not sink"). Seems like Sean could have found no better place to record his album! However, it seems that his time in Paris is now over and he is soon to be on the move again. As of the beginning of October, he will be in Mozambique with the Peace Corps teaching English in a high school while working on the follow-up to The Storm. The Streetlamp looks forward to hearing it and can't help but wonder how Mozambique will work its way into the music, just as Paris did.

Griff
xx

Griff says; Come down from the mountain, Top Montagne

I have a nice combination of music and visual arts for you this evening. As you'll hopefully know, I'm rather keen on artist/musician fusion (see Colorform, mkf, entertainment for the braindead) and, as I'd like to begin blogging a little about lo-fi artists, as well as musicians, I admire, I'm confident that this should be an agreeable little taster for you. The band is called Top Montagne (pictured), they come from Paris, France, and remarkably the band line-up contains, not just one, but two excellent visual artists.

I'll begin at the beginning. Back in the days when Myspace was a thriving community for aspiring musicians to meet and share their art, I became friendly with a young musician and graphic artist called Pierre Chandeze. Pierre had attracted my attention as he was a rather fine purveyor of that most evocative, and yet most neglected instrument; the musical saw. Rather infuriatingly, he also seemed to have an almost inhuman work rate and every other week he was playing on someone else's song, or producing their cover art, or designing their website. He also found time to create a distinctive series of art works featuring 'ugly animals' (pictured).




I was rather fond of these and for quite a while the above freaky sea-creature was my pc desktop picture. Anyway, Pierre is still at it and last month one of the bands he plays with, Top Montagne, released their album 'J'aime Pas La Musique'. The album contains 14 brilliant little, quirky, home-produced, folk-pop masterpieces and features those perennial Griff favourite's; the glockenspiel, the melodica and the concertina, but of course, this time with the added bonus of the aforementioned saw to add a bit of whimsical Gallic charm. Naturally, this being Streetlamp, the album is available as a free download but, interestingly, not from one of the usual sites. No, 'J'aime Pas La Musique' is available only on comic book artist David Snug's website. In fact, 'J'aime Pas La Musique' is also, the name of the next David Snug comic book and will include the Top Montagne album inside. Unfortunately, the comic book is not yet completed but, for now, feel free to download the album. So, you're no doubt wondering, who is David Snug? David Snug is the psuedonym of Guillaume, the band's main composer. He also provided the wonderful album cover art as well as other diverse artworks (below) for the band. Like Pierre, he has his own distinctive and idiosyncratic style and his site is well worth a visit.


While it's creditable to laud the band's in-house artists I shouldn't neglect the other band members, so I'll correct that now. The full Top Montagne line-up is: Aude (vocals, glockenspiel, melodica, concertina, flute...), Guillaume (guitar and percussion), Hélène (oboe and backing vocals) and Pierre (guitar, musical saw). I've added two songs from the album to soundcloud so that you can have a listen (below). I think you'll like it!
08 les animaux - Top Montagne by SadPanda

11 c'est pas fait - Top Montagne by SadPanda


I hope you enjoyed that. If you want to hear similar I should also mention that; Guillaume and Pierre also play with the band Quetzalli who have free music available at CLLCT, Guillaume also fronts The David Snug Trio, Pierre is a member of Sean Croft, and finally (phew), Pierre's solo music work goes under the name of Carton Sonore. Carton Sonore's music is free and can be found on last.fm, CLLCT and bandcamp. You may also remember that a Carton Sonore track 'Dérive' was also featured on Daydream Generation No. 9 (along with a sighrens track), which can be downloaded here.
If you liked Pierre's 'ugly animal' art then you might want to buy one of his rather fine self-produced t-shirts or bags from here. As it's getting close to Christmas might I suggest that these would make excellent presents for family and friends. Now, how many music blogs do you know that help with the Christmas shopping? Yes, as always, The Streetlamp likes to go that extra mile.

Salut!

Griff
xx