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L'Illustration Musicale

L'Illustration Musicale

a review by Chris Rose of
release format L'Illustration Musicale by King Of Woolworths (MNTCD1032)

text

So you're wandering through Woolies clutching a few week's pocket money in your hand, looking for the Record Department hoping to spend 50p on a single your big brother won't laugh at, or maybe looking to find something good in the 10p ex-chart box when you get lost and find yourself in the furniture department where there's obviously a spooky killer in suede sheepskin gloves with big sideburns lurking behind the beige leather settees as opening track "G-Plan" plays over the tannoy.

Then "Montparnasse" swiftly jets you to Paris to see the opening of a made-for-TV movie with Alain Delon in a pair of over-large shades looking moody while an incredibly young looking Isabelle Adjani pouts among autumnal trees on the boulevards. Then we're back to the studio (are we still in Woolworth's? I've trailed off somewhere altogether else by now...) and Dot Allison makes an appearance on Crackerjack to sing "Sell Me Back My Soul", trying her best to look sultry among the super-imposed wobbly angles as they try to replicate the "Bohemian Rhapsody" video with one camera and no budget.

Some glam handclaps on "123 (Brillo's Beat)" lift the pace a little, but never so much that you have to actually get up off the sofa. Then, instead of brainy French Ircam we get the homemade BBC Radiophonic Workshop soundtracking a Blue Peter feature on our great lost composer "Delia Derbyshire", coming across as lo-fi Autechre avant la lettre, which is a fine thing indeed. Emma Pollock from the Delgados drops by for a cup of tea and some dreamy vocals on "Nuada" (a distinctly chaste Vaseline-on-the-lens love scene) before "A12" and "This is Radio Theydon" bring in the closing titles.

Far from being part of the current ocean of retro-kitsch, however, the King of Woolworth's second LP "L'Illustration Musicale" is all done so well it's far from being kitsch, more reminiscent of kindred souls Air and St. Etienne, in creating a madeleine for whoever else spent Sunday afternoons somewhere in suburbia sometime in the mid-70's.

On this showing, he should definitely be promoted to the King of John Lewis, at least.

Posted by Chris Rose at 16:32, 01 May 2003