Asylum Party - Borderline

1989; 14 tracks  Asylum Party was a French new-wave group from the 80s whose amazing talents were only put into two full-lengths, this being the first (although it contains material from a previously released mini-album). They sing in English, and the lyrics glide effortlessly inside your head. To listen to them is the most natural thing in the world.


You will probably never find a more beautiful new-wave/post-punk band on earth than Asylum Party, even if you tried. The Chameleons springs to mind as a possibility, but for some reason Asylum Party proves itself to be even more outstanding. I can't describe it, they just possess absolute magic and it shines through their songs.  "Sweetness... of Pain" is probably my favorite track, especially the last two minutes or so oboyoboyoboy.

Enjoy!



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Lucrate Milk - La Rage Qui Vit

  1991; 20 tracks

As a bizarre French punk band who incorporate jazz, punk, and even some classical into their shrieking, riotous sound, Lucrate Milk is a band most people haven't heard of, but love once they do. I think. Here is a compilation of tracks from a 1983 split with MKB Fraction Provisoire, a 1983 EP entitled Nepla Relou, and their 1987 full-length I Love You Fuck Off. Enjoy.

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Camille Saint-Saëns - Music for Violin and Orchestra

 2000; 8 tracks
Jean-Jacques Kantorow / Tapiola Sinfonietta In an effort to invite some much-needed culture back to my blog, here is Jean-Jacques Kantorow leading the Tapiola Sinfonietta in Camille Saint-Saëns' First Violin Concerto and other works for violin and orchestra.

01 Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 20, I. Allegro
02 Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 20, II. Andante espressivo
03 Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 20, III. Tempo I
04 Introduction et rondo capriccioso in A minor, Op. 28 for violin & orchestra
05 Romance in C major, Op. 48, for violin & orchestra
06 Havanaise in E major, Op. 83, for violin & piano (or orchestra)
07 Sarabande Op. 93, No. 1, for string orchestra
Solo violin: Tero Latvala
08 Morceau de concert in G major, Op. 62, for violin & orchestra

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Cortex - Tropeau Bleu

1972; 11 tracks

Smooth and jazzy music from 70's France, gilded with glittering female vocals that are shockingly high-pitched. I am personally obsessed with the song "Chanson d'un jour d'hiver," it is sooo pretty! Tropeau Bleu is a very nice and wintry album, so I'll just leave it at that.

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Georges Delerue - The Conformist

1970; 12 tracks



Georges Delerue was a French film score composer with an immense amount of work under his name. The Conformist, or Il Conformista was an Italian political drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Among softer classical melodies (the title track "Il Conformista") some tracks rattle away in a more... exotic manner. I don't know any precise technical terms for this, but it's an enjoyable soundtrack.



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Sébastien Tellier - Sexuality

2008; 11 tracks

Here is an album that defies all previous understandings of sexuality. Tellier's music is flush with the facets of excitement, combining pure electronica with intimate lullabies. Sexuality is a "taste of fruit - very juicy and full of sugar." Sébastien Tellier is a French singer and song-writer of international fame, and this is his third album. His music is sensual without being vulgar, each track exploring Tellier's idea of sexuality further - he finds women's sportswear to be very sexy, and the only instrumental track, "Sexual Sportswear," is dedicated to that fantasy. This album contains beautiful downtempo / electronica with a mysterious sexual aura that is at once heartbreaking and perfect for dancing.


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The beautiful "L'amour et la violence."




And "Look," another favorite!

Michel Legrand - Une femme est une femme

1961; 24 tracks

Here is the soundtrack to Jean-Luc Godard's new-wave film Une femme est une femme, a very charming movie that I saw MOST of, but not the whole thing. I will have to change that.

Michel Legrand is a renowned Franco-Armenian composer of film scores, as well as a conductor and pianist. Despite his extensive career and countless works, Legrand's soundtrack to Une femme est une femme is far from a long, cohesive piece of music one might expect. It consists of, instead, small bursts of dialogue, big band, jazz, musicals, and other variations of 60s French music. The work is is certainly interesting to listen to, if only for the sake of immersion in a lost time.


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Hector Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique

1999; 5 tracks
Riccardo Muti / The Philadelphia Orchestra

Hector Berlioz was French composer of the early Romantic period, and a conductor most well known for his contributions to the modern orchestra. I've heard his name thrown around for quite a while but never looked deeply into his plethora of musical output... Hearing The Symphonie Fantastique for the first time two nights ago made me so fantastically excited about exploring more of this fiery Frenchman's work.

"The Symphonie Fantastique was initially composed in 1830 and first performed in December of the same year under the direction of Habeneck. Berlioz however revised the work extensively during his trip to Italy in 1831-2 and in subsequent years and did not publish it until 1845. The work as we now know it is thus substantially different from the original of 1830, which can no longer be reconstructed in full detail.

The Symphonie Fantastique has always been the work with which Berlioz’s name is most closely associated. The composition of this revolutionary masterpiece marked a breakthrough in the composer’s career, at once the culmination of his years of apprenticeship, and the starting point of his mature work as a symphonic composer. The impact that Beethoven had on Berlioz is evident in the work, but no less evident is Berlioz’s originality in opening up new paths that Beethoven had not explored, and the sound world of Berlioz is entirely his own."

Understanding The Symphonie Fantastique comes with understanding the story behind it:

"When he was twenty-four years old, Berlioz fell in love with a theater actress named Harriet Smithson. He sent her countless love letters, but she never wrote him back. Feeling that his love for her has been completely misunderstood, his pain and suffering then turned into musical motivation, which led to the creation of Symphonie Fantastique. With a length of roughly sixty minutes (depending on the conductor's pace, of course), this programmatic composition is more of a semi-autobiography. It tells the story of an artist who cannot resist the urge to think of a young woman he has fallen in love with. Slowly, the image of the woman starts to haunt him. Even when he's in the countryside, her appearance still lingers in his head. This leads to fear and paranoia as he becomes convinced that he's deceiving her in some way. With an overdose of opium, the man dreams that he is being executed for murdering her. Smithson was not there when this work premiered, but she eventually had a chance to meet Berlioz himself. They married, but this turned to me anything but a happy ending. The marriage became a disaster, and they divorced eleven years later. Smithson would die several years before the French composer did.

The symphony itself is pure brilliance: it's filled with wild orchestral color and wicked imagery (in the second half). With so much expression in terms of both story and music, this would become a milestone in the history of classical music. It, as well as a few other works by other composers, would take every single orchestra straight into the Romantic era."

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Ad Hominem - Climax of Hatred

2005; 10 tracks

Ad Hominem is a French black metal band created by Kaiser Wodhanz, who does all the instruments. His approach to black metal is much like death metal in content - packed full of non-stop anger and power, the drums a prominent part of nearly every track. There isn't much attention to the "atmosphere," as the main focus seems to be the content of hatred (hence the title?) I wouldn't call this a strictly NSBM release, to be honest. Their lyrics deal more with anti-religion and just hatred in general:

Looking forward to another existence
from ashes will rise a new essence
No religion. nor lowest lambs
Only cold plain and devastated landscapes

I am filled with admiration.

This is one of the most hateful and aggressive albums I've ever heard, definitely on par with the two released by M8L8TH.

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Françoise Hardy - Comment te dire adieu?

 1968; 12 tracks

God, this album... it is honestly beyond words. Françoise Hardy was a French singer of the 60s, focusing on pop and fashion. On Comment te dire adieu?, which originally had no title, each song is beautifully written and sung, the lyrics from a variety of sources. Françoise Hardy's voice is unlike anything I've ever heard, especially in the realm of French 60s pop singers. Lacking the deep, seductive qualities of Juliette Gréco, but not as sweet and childlike as the voice of France Gall, Hardy seems to float just in the middle with her pure, heavenly voice. My particular favorites are the softer, acoustic tracks, like "Où va la chance ?" and "A quoi ça sert ?" Listen to these two and you'll know what I'm talking about.

"...Tastefully imaginative orchestration, strong melodies, and sexy vocals. It's perhaps even sadder and more sentimental than was the norm for Françoise - she perpetually seems to be singing as though she's gazing out of a deserted château on a rainy afternoon. She largely forsakes original material here (although a couple cuts bear her writing credit), and offers fine, haunting French interpretations of Leonard Cohen's 'Suzanne,' Phil Ochs' 'There But for Fortune,' and Ricky Nelson's 'Lonesome Town.'"

This is the first album I've heard of hers, and it's amazing, but I really want to hear more. Any suggestions? :3


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Eric Serra - Léon (The Professional) Soundtrack

1994; 24 tracks

French composer Eric Serra's soundtrack to the hauntingly powerful film Léon (The Professional), by Luc Besson, is just as striking as the picture. It opens with the distant sounds of a war marked by corruption, addiction, and the simple filth of humanity. The foreshadowing portrayed by the rueful strings at the very beginning of the soundtrack sets a dark tone for the film, but not an entirely hopeless one.

Ever present in Léon is a mesmerizing rhythm, almost Einstürzende Neubauten-like in atmosphere, that adds an interesting dimension of urban intensity. It does seem like the vibrant rhythm is the background of much of the film - it comes to symbolize the almost ridiculous antics of the film's divinely psychotic villain (who is, strangely, a figure signifying authority and good), Stan Stansfield. Stan claims to like Beethoven and LOVE Mozart, so in the beginning brutal fight scenes, when Stan goes on a destructive rampage, the music builds into a chaotic frenzy as a sort of "overture" to the rest of the film ("Noon" and "Fatman").

As much as Stan is a figure of evil, signifying good, there is a definite force of good in the film, one that is intended to stand for evil. These dissenters are Léon and Mathilda, an unlikely pair who generate an unimaginably innocent relationship out of loneliness and unaffected trust. This purity is clearly seen in the soundtrack by songs such as "Ballad for Mathilda," "She is Dead," and "Cute Name," which are all my favorites. They are tenderly beautiful, contrasting greatly with the more dark and primitive tracks.

With the more industrial tracks on the soundtrack, I am reminded of a particular level on Crash Bandicoot called "Generator Room." I don't know why. The saxophones and droning bass notes also contribute to a jazzy, 90s feel. The more I listen to the soundtrack to Léon, I am reminded of Badalamenti's score to The City of Lost Children, which I love with all my heart. French film scores ftw.

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Arthur Honegger - Symphonies 1-5 + Pacific 231

2004; 2 discs
Michel Plasson / Orchestre du Capital du Toulouse

Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, born in France, and member of Les Six. His style is similar to that of Milhaud's and Poulenc's, certainly, but there's an odd edge found here in his symphonies, particularly the first. This might have to do with the natural primitism underground artists and those dabbling in Dadaism might have found appealing. Les Six was a group of composers based in France who sought to fight against impressionism and, at times, art itself. This has prompted some to take the composers as Dadaist, or of the same artistic standpoints a Dadaist (Dadaists were avant-garde artists during the first world war who produced art that was... not art). But I cannot really judge this. Honegger's overall brash and manly sound contrasts darkly with the airiness of his contemporaries, I think, which makes me wonder what the purposes of these men truly were. Apparently the six were terribly different in thought, but shared their love of music. It is completely rational to consider these men as simply avant-garde composers who enjoyed cubist and surrealist art, working against the artistic structures of the time to create an entirely new approach to music. Satie and his "furniture music" is one example... "Art that hides art." They were influenced by literary figures such as Jean Cocteau and Ornella Volta, as well as the great artistic minds of the time, most notably Pablo Picasso.

According to his site, Arthur Honegger's music "is characterised by a great sense of architecture which allows him to mix all the different languages and musical techniques of his era. His music serves a humanist concept that is completly in phase with the major questions of the twentieth century." That explains his music perfectly - a great sense of architecture. Honegger loved trains, the suite Pacific 231 being about a train in particular. It's interesting how how many early 20th century composers were so fascinated with trains and the industrial revolution.

I think this quote nicely illustrates the apotheosis of Honegger's musical aesthetic:

"I do not worship the fair, or the music-hall, but chamber music and symphony music for its essence of solemness and austerity. I place such importance in the architecture of music that I would never want to see it sacrificed for reasons of literary or pictorial order. I have a tendency (maybe a little exaggerated) to look for the polyphonic complexity. I am not trying to return to a harmonious simplicity, like some anti-impressionist musicians. On the contrary, I think that we should use the harmonic material created by the school of thought that preceeded us, but in a different way, as a base for figure and rythym."


Disc 1
Disc 2

Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire de Melody Nelson

1971; 7 tracks

Many of you have probably heard this before, it being a 40 year old album. But still, it must be said - it is an iconic album, one everyone must hear at least once! Serge Gainsbourg was a French singer/songwriter, among many other things. Histoire de Melody Nelson, Gainsbourg's 12th album, is conceptualized around a young girl named Melody Nelson. More info on the album's interesting and romantic plot can be found here. The entire album is silmultaneously sweetly beautiful and very sexy, but "Ballade de Melody Nelson," the second track, is easily the most tender and melancholy.

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Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe - Pièces de viole

2005; 28 tracks
Paolo Pandolfo, viola da gamba
Thomas Boysen, theorbo and baroque guitar


Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe was a French composer and violist. To listen to these pieces through is an extremely somber experience.

The manuscripts used for this recording are the so-called Panmure and Tournus, perhaps the work of pupils who brought back home at least part of the master's corpus of compositions. Therein lies a large proportion of extremely idiomatic music for the instrument, always highly personal and full of unforeseeable twists and turns, verging on extravagance, which in that respects brings to mind the music of his Concerts à deux violes égales. A general atmosphere emerges from the manuscripts which fully contradicts the image of an artist given to obscurity and tormented by pain, complacently abandoning himself to solitude and suffering.

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Malicorne - Nous Sommes Chanteurs de Sornettes (Malicorne IV)

1977; 10 tracks

Malicorne is a French folk/medieval group founded in 1973. Malicorne IV, their 5th studio release, is a beautiful "electric folk" album that needs many listens - one will not absorb every aspect of the music in a single listen (or even, perhaps, in many). There are so many different instruments and melodies and voices and sensations that can occur in these 40 minutes that it is by far one of the most interesting albums I've ever listened to. "Le Jardinier Du Couvent," a mesmerizing track, reminds me a lot of Debussy's "La Fille aux cheveux de lin." If you've never heard that, just know that it's innocent beauty set to music and given wings.

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Frédéric Chopin - Nocturnes, Études, Waltzes, Piano Concertos

2005; 19 tracks
Maurizio Pollini, pianist

Maurizio Pollini is one of my 4 favorite pianists in the world (the other three are naturally Zimerman, Michelangeli and Berezovsky). His interpretations of Chopin, as shown in these 19 Nocturnes, is literally unprecedented. His style is robust, tender, and absolutely 100% perfect. While listening to his playing of Chopin's most beautiful solo piano pieces, I never have to question why he made this or this choice regarding the sound - he plays Chopin so flawlessly and elegantly that no amount of "affectation" is needed. He plays not for the audience, but for form - true form, that of the Romanticists and of the true Chopin-admirer. Nocturne Op. 27, No. 1 is my favorite of them all, it is a scene of murder and moonlight and the whisking away to heaven's gates after death. Only Pollini can pull this off so well. I highly, highly recommend this recording.

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1990; 24 tracks
Vladimir Ashkenazy, pianist

Ah, Ashkenazy. He is wonderfully technical and precise, but I've always sensed a rather off-putting lack of emotion in his interpretations. Perhaps I have just never cared for him... but in any case, you would be hard pressed to find a finer recording of the Études than this. These are marvelously mechanical (not in such a negative way), truly exemplifying the wondrous abilities of a fine-tuned piano and a master of technique. Chopin himself was a pianist of great talent, and these virtuosic pieces (pieces intended for private study but are so beautiful that they are played in concert halls) showcase every important technique a student must learn to master the piano. That is why these are so often taught to students of the piano, they are "Studies" (Études) of important techniques. As a student of piano, I can say that these pieces are tremendously difficult, requiring the skill of a very mature pianist. Oh my god I'm rambling now. Listen to this and tell me if Étude Op. 25, No. 12 in C minor, the very last track, doesn't absolutely fucking blow your mind.

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2010; 19 tracks
Alice Sara Ott, pianist

The Waltzes of Chopin are utterly timeless, and indeed essential to the understanding of his works as a whole and, in a way, Romanticism itself. I don't believe Ott plays unremarkably, but she takes too many liberties with Chopin's work (the "Grande Valse Brilliante" makes me so mad, but whatever). This doesn't detract from the lovely energy she exudes in these pieces, however. Ott's version of the Waltzes are very enjoyable to listen to, very lustrous and full of life.

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1999; 6 tracks
Krystian Zimerman, pianist / Polish Festival Orchestra

God, I love these. Chopin should have written more for orchestra. Zimerman is amazing as always. <3

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Zouzou - L'intégrale

2003; 21 tracks

Here is a collection of 60s songs sung by Zouzou (Danièle Ciarlet). She's a French ye-ye/pop artist and she's fantastic. I've been listening to Chantal Goya, and I thought she was good, but Zouzou is even more spectacular. Particular highlights from that album are 'L'Heroiene' and 'Mes Convenances' (ye-ye + punk?!!), but there's a handful of other beautiful songs too.

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Darius Milhaud - Piano Music

1997; 26 tracks
Francoise Choveaux, piano

Darius Milhaud was a member of that group Les Six, so his style is similar to that of Satie's. That said, I think Milhaud's solo piano music is even more delightful and charming that Satie's - it has a marvelous vibrance and an... exotic-ness that Satie lacks. This is most likely due to Milhaud's travels to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1917. He went there to work in the diplomatic entourage of his friend, the poet Paul Claudel, who was serving as the French ambassador to Brazil at the time. Inspired by the country's tropical landscape and rich culture, Milhaud seemed to have been particularly intrigued by the rhythm of Brazilian popular music, and the elusive, mournful, and liquid way Brazilian performers played this music.

The piano music of Milhaud takes me to his world and transforms every one of my senses to his. Listening to Milhaud I can feel the warm sunlight, taste the cold fruit, hear the birds calling, smell the earthen ground... and it calms me.

Milhaud once remarked that while he gazed into the heavens at night he "would feel rays and tremors converging on [him] from all points in the sky and from below the ground, simultaneous musics rushing towards [him] from all directions."

He expressed this ideal of simultaneity in his music with a technique called polytonality, the superimposition of chords and melodies in different keys.This collection of his piano music, and most importantly the 12 Saudades do Brazil, or "Fond Remembrances of Brazil," is incredibly stunning.

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Erik Satie - Cubist Works & Le Fils des Étoiles

2007; 38 tracks
Ronald Corp / Cologne Symphony Orchestra
Bojan Gorisek, piano

Although this music cannot and should not be considered truly "cubist," for whatever technique one might use to create "cubist music" Satie didn't use, Satie was a strong proponent of the style as well as a friend to the painter most readily associated with Cubism, Pablo Picasso.

This program includes the two large collaborations between Satie and Picasso, the ballets Parade (1917) and Mercure (1924) in both their piano and orchestral versions, along with three short pieces; the organ "Divertissement: La Statue Retrouvée," written for a masquerade ball that contained a short choreography with designs by Picasso, and "Trois Valses distinguées du précieux dégoûté," a suite written as a malicious jab at Ravel's stately piece.

Erik Satie's schizophrenic body of work has resisted canonization by the classical establishment in favor of avant-garde adulation and popular ubiquity: by turns, he’s either Vexations, paving the way for aleatory and process music, or he’s the superb, cinematic mood music of Gymnopédies. In the vacillation between these poles, we find the notion of "Furniture Music," which, as Brian Eno would articulate much later, is as excellent as it is ignorable. This recording draws out the explicit links between Satie’s work and the frenetic, sectarian art world of Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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2008; 17 tracks
Claire Chevallier, piano

The aim of this rather challenging disc, according to pianist Claire Chevallier in her erudite, thoughtful, and yet entertaining booklet notes, is to demonstrate "the existence of a continuous line of thought in Satie's life." The line of thought under discussion is Satie's unorthodox spirituality, which was by all accounts closely linked to his music. This murky, incantory yet rigorous recording highlights the mystic spirituality of Satie.

He flirted with Rosicrucianism (in a distinctive Parisian sect also attractive to Debussy) but loved to visit Notre-Dame. Later he founded a single-member church of his own, which he called the "Eglise Métropolitaine d'Art de Jésus Conducteur." The musical counterparts to these ideas were stark harmonies and modal tunes derived from Satie's studies of chant and medieval music. A lovely CD that features a beautiful look at both Satie's well-known works and his more cerebral.

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Francis Poulenc - Piano and Chamber Music

2004; 5 discs, 119 tracks

French composer Francis Poulenc was among "Les Six," which included other young French composers such as Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger and Germaine Tailleferre. Poulenc, especially, had a special knack to bridge the gap between the classical and modern styles through his inexhaustible melodic inspiration, piquant melodies and sense of humor through music.

Gifted with unusual skills and abilities, Poulenc's powerful imagination allowed him to create pages filled of colorfulness, cheerful lyricism, hovered by a Pagan humor; he was, by far, the most Dionysian composer of the group, despite the fact the whole attention of great audiences seemed to focus the most on orchestral proposals such as Erik Satie with Parade or Milhaud's Creation of World...

This 5 disc set features over 100 pieces of elegant and blissful piano/chamber music by Francis Poulenc.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Tracklist