Parallelisme (1980 to 1985, Brussels to Tokyo)

[imomus]

Today, I want to curate a little sequence of songs for you, in the form of a YouTube podcast. What we're mining here is Francophone synth girlpop made between 1980 and 1985. There's often a Brussels connection and a Japan connection; perhaps Haruomi Hosono figures somewhere. Some of this stuff came out on Michel Duval's label Les Disques du Crepuscule.

[Error: unknown template video]

I'll start with Mikado's Naufrage en Hiver, from 1985. Mikado was a man-and-wife duo consisting of Gregory Czerkinsky (I worked with him on Kahimi Karie's I Am A Kitten EP) and Pascale Borel. They have the requisite Hosono and Crepuscule connections (Hosono's label Non-Standard released them), and this song and video (by Pierre et Gilles) take us deep into 1980s synth classicism, irony, and the kind of AllMusic tone-tag cluster clouds that go: "Reserved, Sophisticated, Quirky, Refined/ Mannered, Soft, Hypnotic, Poised, Detached..." (Naufrage en hiver, by the way, means "sinking into winter".)


Here's Belgian synthpopper Jo Lemaire's 1980 reading of Serge Gainsbourg's Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'En Vais. You might know this from Leos Carax's debut film Boy Meets Girl.

[Error: unknown template video]

Elli and Jacno were also French synthpoppers; ex-members of Stinky Toys, they abandoned riffy punk rock and embraced sexy synth classicism. This is their 1982 song Je T'Aime Tant.

[Error: unknown template video]

And at this point we might as well add Lio's 1981 song Amoureux Solitaires, which celebrates isolated lovers and their chemical, plastic fabrications:

[Error: unknown template video]

Antena are my favourite Crepuscule band. This is their 1980 reading of The Girl From Ipanema, called The Boy From Ipanema:

[Error: unknown template video]

Brussels becomes a stylistic junction that connects Scotland and the Postcard Records scene to Japan. Josef K, of course, recorded an EP for Crepuscule, and when the band broke up and I took over most of the musicians for my Happy Family project in 1982, Paul Haig went to live in Brussels, recording this Sly Stone cover, Running Away. I find the video intriguing -- it takes us deep into the parallel universe of this part of the 80s, with its Chariots of Fire references, its insistence on European elegance:

[Error: unknown template video]

We now switch our attention to Japan, but we do it via Brussels, and via Telex, a Belgian synth trio who were giving Kraftwerk some competition with tracks like Moskow Diskow. Telex produced a track on Miharu Koshi's first album, Tutu, produced by Hosono in 1983. Here's another track from the album, Scandal Night:

[Error: unknown template video]

The work Miharu Koshi and Haruomi Hosono did together in the mid-80s really takes me to paradise. Nobody took synthpop to such refined heights as they did on tracks like Parallelisme (from Koshi's 1984 album, currently extremely rare and selling for over $400). The art direction here is by Kuniyoshi Kaneko, the subject of a Momus song-tribute himself in 1995.

Japan in 1985 fascinates me; the country was at its economic peak, filtering Western culture like crazy, pioneering new technology, embracing early post-modernism, inventing video games. Hosono dabbled in music for TV commercials and video games, and even appeared in some Namco ads himself. They're brilliant, and I think they connect to the sound of my Joemus album, which means we've managed to make a link all the way from Postcard and Crepuscule, via Brussels, to the present.

[Error: unknown template video]

[Error: unknown template video]

[Error: unknown template video]

Since there are no videos of Miharu Koshi's 1984 album, here's an mp3 taster:

Miharu Koshi: Parallelisme (stereo mp3, 5 mins 11 secs, 6MB)

Comments

[bibble.livejournal.com]

have you seen the current trend going now of using the distortion/compression technique for editing new music videos? chairlift has one and kayne west decided to "cancel" his b/c chairlift already did it.

http://stereogum.com/archives/video/new-kanye-west-video-welcome-to-heartbreak_053261.html

no mention of either of yours'ssss. sadly.