A great overview of Gainsbourg’s key psych jams and funk productions, this collection draws on everything from soundtrack work (including excerpts from Cannabis, La Pacha and Manon 70) to the seminal Histoire De Melody Nelson. You could see this as a themed greatest hits package. Michel Colombier features pretty heavily on this collection, and he shows up on the opener, ‘Requiem Pour Un Con’, which has a rhythm track comparable to something by Can, produced with an awesome, driving echo chamber drum sound. The provision of ‘bonus beats’-style tracks for certain songs is a real gift to all you sample hounds and DJs, and that’s certainly the case for this cut. This wouldn’t be Gainsbourg without the orchestral elements though, and there’s plenty of that on this disc, including a few Jean-Claude Vannier-assisted pieces, most notably the closing ‘En Melody’, a whirl of crunching guitar, heavy funk drumming and experimental tape techniques. Great collection.
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