“Effortlessly French” – how can you be ‘effortlessly French’? It’s not that hard to stay a nationality after all…And why are you never ‘effortlessly Belgian’? but the electronic version of Railways and Moules-Frites are these two tunes, the first from Belgian electronic pioneer Jacques Sirol.
The second is Rene Costy – he’s been sampled by J-Dilla (it might be easier to list what hasn’t been sampled by him!) and Pretty Lights.
Both these were created as library music in the 1970s – refuge for misfit electronics boffs and those playing outside of their genres (funk for instance), or like Delia Derbyshire did as an on-the-side secret paid gig. I love the continental grooves on these – on first listen I thought these were French, although being on the French side of Belgium that’s not that far.
Googling there have been some who have ‘flipped’ these for beats (not very well I may add) but surprised more don’t follow the J-Dilla and Dangermouse approach of mining old library records – for starters it’d be heck of a lot easier to clear.
And some amazing record covers – wish I had a copy of this album, unlike some of Jacques Siroul’s work it’s not on iTunes, grr:
So now you can say at parties ‘I’m really getting into Belgian early electronica’ and back up that statement. They might still think you’re a fucking hipster, though.
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