Wednesday 28 October 2009

Soofle - Nouveau EP

A great French EP from 1993, released on Arctic Records via FNAC.

This features the dual talents of Ludovic Navarre (aka St Germain) and Shazz (aka Aurora Borealis), and very nice it is too. This was the point when there was a load of real quality French dance music getting made, and they all seemed to get on with each other and work together. Awww. Just before those big bad boys Daft Punk came along and spoiled it for everyone.

Not much else to say here, except that it should appeal to anyone into the whole FNAC/F Communications stuff that was floating about around that time.

I never realised back then that there was a lot more to FNAC (Fédération nationale d’achats des cadres, fact fans) than just a record label. It was a workers collective, co-op kinda thing in the 60s/70s, then developed into the French equivalent of Virgin(?) in the late 80s/90s - they seem to have the right attitude anyway. Ain't Wikipedia great?

History lesson over, go and listen to the tunes...



Soofle - Nouveau EP
A1 - Thrill
A2 - Happy Cycle
B1 - Away
B2 - How Do You Plead

Buy it here

1 comments:

Tommy said...

nice one Mog, some Choice tunes mon ami; these were the beautiful days of French house and techno.

and by quirks of ultimate ownership the golden patch of 1993/1994 saw FNAC dance division as a state-owned techno label...marvellous.
Only North Korea could rival this kind of musical enlightenment at the time; "Got any DJ Kim Jong-Il?" you used to hear a lot at the Missile and Rice Bowl in downtown Pyongyang.

visited the FNAC HQ in Paris at this time and was more than adequately looked after by highly affectionate long-legged French beauties....sigh....and then Wake Up at the Rex club with Garnier at the helm afterwards. Magic.

LN (and maybe Shazz) did a bit of engineering / production work on Laurent Garnier's á bout de souffle e.p. (translates literally as all out of breath...breathless) which was released on FNAC, so a bit of a connection (sort of) on the name of these e.p.s

btw - Glasgow's own Soma records were responsible for the first Daft Punk releases, this being 1994. Alive was pretty good (bit of a rip-off of that Detroit via Glasgow sound) and at the Slam had not fully disappeared up their collective arsehole...their feet were still hanging out.