Coralie Clement, Stereo Total

On a quick note: a new compilation of Stereo Total has just been released, called Party Anticonformiste. It features a lot of favourites, but almost no covers. Cosmonaute (orig. from Monokini) is a nice bleeping slow song.
Unrelated, but nice to know: It seemed like Coralie Clement (pictured) vanished from earth: her official site is deleted, no new additions to her MySpace, and no word (well, I'm not hearing anything) yet from her third album, apparently called Toy Store. Then she reappears on a song by Brazilian guitarplayer Toco, on his first album for the always stylish Schema label she sings a very sweet duet, a reprise of La Contradiction from Coralie's album Salle des Pas Perdus.

Stereo Total - Cosmonaute
Toco & Coralie Clément - Contradiçào
Coralie Clément - La Contradiction

Teri Moïse

At the recent Victoires de la Musique awards, FS-favourites Olivia Ruiz, Emilie Simon and -M- got a statue. See pictures here, watch that nice little getup Olivia is wearing.
Ten years ago, Teri Moïse was the big winner at the Victoires. The year before, her single Les Poèmes de Michelle was a big tune, and sold over 200,000. On her untitled first album she got help from produver Etienne de Crécy. Nicolas Godin from Air plays guitar on Poèmes. That first album is still a soulful chanson gem, great lyrics too. Teri has Haitian parents, but lived in South Central, Los Angeles. She studied at Berkeley, but also literature at Sorbonne Paris. After a short period back in LA, she returned to Paris, and made a name for herself as a songwriter. I heard a rumour she was the girlfriend of Philippe Ascoli, the boss of the French Source label. In 1999, her even more soulful second album (again without a title, nice one) was released. The first song from that album has that great sixties plopping-bass-sound (Teri plays bass herself). The rest of the album is nice, but not as good as her debut-album. After the second cd, she kinda faded away, I guess, 'cause I could not find any recent news.

Teri Moïse - Les poèmes de Michelle
Teri Moïse - Il sait

Emilie Simon (live)

This week L'Olympia was released, the first live-cd (there's a dvd too, but as far as I know there's no combi) by Emilie Simon. Recorded, obviously, at Paris Olympia. It features tracks from all her albums, including the March of the Penguins-soundtrack. I can understand why you want to see Emilie live, but why you want to own a live-album by her is puzzling me. The music's nice, lots of strings, but almost no songs have different arrangements. Her voice is as sweet and angelic as you would excepts, which ofcourse is a big plus. Em covers two songs, The Stooges' I Wanna Be Your Dog (also on her debut-cd, and on Dailymotion), and Nirvana's Come As You Are. I like it when a girl sings a typical male song (Tori Amos once made a whole album with testosteron-songs), and Emilie does a fine job.

Emilie Simon - Come As You Are (live) (see on YouTube)
Emilie Simon - Opium (live)
Emilie Simon - Fleur de Saison (live)

Like Emilie Simon, my sweet Canadian obsession Ariane Moffatt had her picture taken by Lisa Roze. Reason enough to post the nice remix of Ariane's Will You Follow Me.

Ariane Moffatt - Will You Follow Me (remix)

Helena Noguerra

Under an earlier post with a Helena Noguerra song, Didier from Lalalala.org reacted: he wrote an extensive portrait of the gorgeous singer. With added discography. Very handy: now I know what albums to get, if still available. I would love to hear Rivière des Anges (1992) or that Rolling Stones-cover with Jacques Duvall. Enfin. In 2005 Cinema was released, an album by former Madredeus-member Rodrigo Leão. A thoughtful, pretty nice addition to the pile of lounge/chill-out projects and comps, with guestvocals by Beth Gibbons, Sonia Tavares and, yes, Helena Noguerra. She sings two French songs. Jeux d'Amour is, if I'm not mistaken, a chachacha, while La Fête takes your arm and waltzes away.
Sonia Tavares (from Portuguese alt.rockband The Gift) is singing two English songs, but also the vèry breathy L'Inspecteur, that sounds a little like Besame Mucho. What's this guy inspecting anyway?

Rodrigo Leão & Helena Noguerra - Jeux d'Amour
Rodrigo Leão & Helena Noguerra - La Fête
Rodrigo Leão & Sonia Tavares - L'Inspecteur

Babet

Released this week: Drôle de L'Oiseau, the first solo album of Dionysos-furie Babet. Just like Valérie Leulliot, Babet is taking things slow and sultry on her first album without the boys. Lots of acoustics, and just a few songs with Babets trademark violin. But her voice, OMG! Just listen to the first song of the first album, Le Voyageur. So sweet, so high, don't it make you want to fall in love with her very, very deeply? The first edition of the album has an extra cd with all songs, sung with just a guitar. Have to get that as well. Here a nice review of Drôle. Here Babet's Myspace. Here Babet live.

Babet - Le Voyageur
Babet - Les Amoureux

Marie Laforêt

Roar posted some great crackling Marie Laforêt-singles on Splendida-blog, but to my request he unearthed other Laforêt-gems for this blog. Paint the walls orange, put on your bellbottoms or minidress and enjoy the seventies-ride!

The Les vendanges de l'amour long box so far gives the best introduction to Marie Laforet's 70s discography. The three cds in it contain 24 tracks each, cd two and three focussing on the 70s entirely. Admittedly the record company could've done a better job on it, but I won't split hair, the long box compilation is definitely an easy recommendation to make.
With regards to styles Marie Laforet has often shifted between pop and (poppy) folk music. These shifts also dominate her 70s catalogue, plus a fair bit of main- and non-mainstream sentimentalism regardless of genre. And though I don't think they're all great, every album she released during this decade has moments of brilliance (sometimes they're chock full of them). Additionally she released some excellent singles.
What else? The said long box includes her albums from 1972 and 1973 in their entirety (the album from 1973 is gorgeous), but miss some great singles, plus several lovely tracks from her later albums. Examples from the latter category are included below. Please enjoy.

Marie Laforêt - Berceuse pour Deborah (1974)
Marie Laforêt - Mon amour (1976)
Marie Laforêt - Il reviendra (1977)
Marie Laforêt - Roman d'amour (1979) highly recommended!

Camille remixed

Camille is no stranger to electronic dancemusic. She sang on tracks produced by Etienne de Crécy and worked with the mysterious oOmiaq. But to my knowledge, Ta Douleur is the first Camille-track that gets remixed. And not by the just anyone. Henrik Schwarz is a highly talented German graphic designer slash producer slash dj. He makes disco-tinged, techno-influenced and funkified music, and remixed the likes of Coldcut, Alex Smoke and Slope. He transformed Ta Douleur into a subtle, piano-driven dancetrack that (thank god) doesn't rely on symphonic synthbreaks or a monstrous beat. On the flipside of the 12-inch vinylrecord is a remix by Al Usher. Good, but Henrik's way better.

Camille - Ta Douleur (Henrik Schwarz remix)