rinocerose Installation Sonore (V2/BMG)
David Bowie Hours... (Virgin/EMI)
Air Premiers Symptomes (Source/Virgin)
Brigitte Fontaine Morceaux de Choix (Virgin France/EMI)
Sure, her drowned rat appearance is a bit off-putting, but I'll tell you, you wish Brigitte was your batty old aunt. A sort of Cruella DeVille/Holly Golightly hybrid, this zany old French broad radiates more zing than Reddy Kilowatt. Morceaux de Choix looks back over three decades of ahead-of-its-time pop music, from her kittenish collab with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, '69's "Comme a la radio," through to the elegant ebullience of her last album Palaces. These exquisitely crafted tunes carry her black humour and theatricality in high style, making for a satisfying listen end to end. But where's her recent jam with Stereolab? 8.5/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)
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Took long enough, didn't it. The V2 people have been sitting on this one all summer, long enough for this clever "collective" from Montpellier, France to bring their amazing live show to Montreal not once but twice. Fingers crossed for a third, fourth and fifth. In the meantime, grab this--Installation Sonore captures the band's engaging blend of house beats, funk flutes, Latin percussion and art rock guitar to a T. Cut-to-the-chase song titles back me up on this: "<
You know those hats you can get for Halloween, the one's that say, "This is my fucking costume"? Well, in that spirit, Mr. Who-am-I-now is back in his latest incarnation--himself. And time has changed him, you know. Hours... (which all too often seems to drag that way) sees Old Man Bowie looking back to the halcyon days with a sigh, both lyrically and in the numerous could-be Hunky Dory outtakes that litter the disc. While not exactly painful, it's a sluggish and uninspired work, devoid of forward motion. But then, after decades of pulling rabbits out of his ass, we can forgive the man a few moments of tired, regretful contemplation. 6.5/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)
The first five songs of this EP are indeed a look back at the "early symptoms" of the Air-borne outbreak that seized us in early 1998--in other words, the French cheesy-listening duo's scattershots of singles before Moon Safari. The pieces are nice enough but just sketches of the Rhodes 'n' Vocoder lulling that would become full-blown on the album (only "Le Soleil est pres de moi" really cuts the Dijon). And the final two obscurities, "Californie" and "Gordini Mix," reveal properly aborted attempts at what Air's Parisian confreres would surely call "daft funk." 7.5/10 (Chris Yurkiw)