Basement Crates: Discoveries 12 & 13

Serge Gainsbourg: Je T'aime Moi Non Plus Au Lac Vert (Philips, 1976)

Serge Gainsbourg never meant much in this country, but, weirdly, loads of people name check him now. He always seemed to me to be the most perfect kind of popstar. Someone who was a brilliant enough musician to be able to pick out the most sublime melodies while looking as if he'd barely thought about it, and old enough to know it was all a load of old shit anyway and you might as well hammer the pastis and smoke yourself into an early grave.

Serge Gainsbourg had that air about him of someone who knew he could do this stuff with his eyes closed, but it paid for nice house in Paris and all the naughty stuff he could handle, so why not just bang it out and be done with it?

Anyway, this is taken from the soundtrack to the fairly terrible movie, Ballade De Johnny-Jane. It's not exactly the best record you'll ever hear, but it does have some sublime versions of Serge's signature tune (as least as far as everyone who's not French is concerned) Je T'aime Moi Non Plus. This one sounds like it should be playing in the lift of a mid-70s Travel Tavern somewhere outside Dusseldorf, which can only be a good thing.

DJ Shadow Count And Estimate (Dub) (Sole Sides, 1993)

Now, I've written about DJ Shadow before (that's his original studio pictured above, BTW), but I was going to post this Oneness Of Juju record and then, having dragged it up from a long forgotten box in the basement, I realised it wasn't actually any good. This, on the other hand, is great. Raw, chopped-up breaks and dubbed out vocal samples. 14 years ago this sounded like the future. 14 years later it sounds like the past, but at least it's an interesting past...

I'd post the original version of Entropy, but it's 18 minutes long (gotta love the Shad...) and who's got that kind of bandwidth to spare? Anyway, this is fantastic and I might dig out my original, extremely well-played and a little crackly Mo Wax promo of In/Flux sometime soon and post that - still one of the truly astonishing records of the last twenty years.

Tonight's post has been sponsored by a nice Chianti and some lamb chops...

Enjoy!