hard as it might be to believe there was a time when i was quite innocent. now, here in my thirties, i’m feeling mighty jaded and a little deflated.

driving to la rochelle earlier this year we passed a phenomenon i’d forgotten about.

on the side of the road black silhouettes, some with a red lightning flash at the head, would occasionally puncture the verge of the slick, macadamed surfaces which cut swathes through the fields of the charante-maritime. after a few kilometres of pondering how they resembled discarded props from a fairground ghost train ride and just before they settled into my accepted background of inter city france it dawned on me that each one stood for a death on the autoroute; a real person now cut-out of the communities their macabre mannequins are left to guard. Read more »

a very quick something for your weekend and while i was tempted to rock my second re-uppage of the week i figured i could do better than that, that but tide and time wait for no chick and i’m about to dash off for another timely trip across the sea to the land of good food and justice, a delightful segway which (almost) seamlessly allows me to let you know that yesterday GvsB posted a new Justice remix of Justin Timberlake’s LoveStoned, which you really need all up in your weekend.

the HL however… well, we’ll be kicking back on the boulevards and avenues of paris, a mere stones throw from the final resting place of galloise-smoking, womanising, pastis-sinking, french legend serge gainsbourg.

more from us when we return next week but until then, here’s proof that if you smoke heavily and know about jazz you get the girl.

serge gainsbourg & brigitte bardot - bonnie & clyde 

Speaking of dilla.

Me and Saint Christophe came across these dudes last night.

Their album Tribute is a very dilla-esque collection of 1-2 minutes sketches. Not much in the way of depth maybe, but nothing like a wickedly cut-up soul break to get me through till friday. The guys originate from france, a nation which seems intent on monopolising my ipod at the moment, which brings me on to the other big french related news of the day;

BUY YOUR OWN DAFT PUNK MASK !!!

Not sure what you’d do with it exactly (apart from rule over all mankind) but next time I have a spare $65,000 then count me in.

Anyway whilst I dream of robots, here is the Curtis Mayfield sampling, Arts and Policy-heavy.

 

you know, ten days out of the city might be just about right. long enough to get some distance, far enough away to achieve perspective but not soo far gone you lose touch completely.

for me this week just gone was a watershed (and not just because of the torrential rain and plentiful opportunities to wear my brand-new, bright-yellow poncho) much like in a box of that beautifully branded Dorset muesli - if you shake it up enough, once the rattling has subsided and the oatmeal levelled, all the big stuff finally is left on the top. same thing happens in my life (only with fewer raisins) so with a week in the deafening quiet of the Poitou-Charente countryside, the dust seemed to finally settle on the last year and half and the view ahead started to clear. but i won’t bore you with the minutae of my own personal revelations because we’re here to talk about the music/film/culture/miscellania.

over the great glassy sea to my right, j.tillman’s been busy working on his new album, the Territory, and posted another beautiful demo which you might have seen on gorilla vs bear or his myspace, but since we’re always happy to lend him bandwidth on the latitudes and since it’s (somewhat unsurprisingly) achieved the repeat-repeat-repeat-feat on my itunes since i got back, High Enough to Raise is a welcome back track today.

i know i’ve waxed lyrical about josh’s gently effortless talent loads before, but his is a voice which has followed my last eighteen months through the dust storm, the chiming tales in his lyrics ringing truer than is sometimes comfortable but always worth listening to, i’d urge you buy his records so he can record more and finally get the bits of cement out of his beard.

j.tillman - high enough to raise

buy j.tillman records at fargo, yerbird, amazon or your local record store.

So for the next week or so HL is taking a well needed summer break.

Jb and I will be in france, walking through empty corn fields with kids and dogs, eating wonderful food and drinking a bit too much wine.

Nothing like getting away from everything to give you some perspective. It’s so easy to spend so much time dealing with everyday concerns that you never really appreciate all the amazing stuff that goes on the macro scale of your life.

As well as being one of my all time favourite ’sunshine’ tracks, Grace Jones ‘La Vie En Rose’ reminds me of sitting in a bar saying goodbye to a workmate (who’s wedding we’re going to tomorrow) and the way our memories seem to add rose-tinted hue to our lives, when we look back in retrospect.

It’s been 9 months (and almost 200 posts) since we started HL and so
much has happened, personally, in that time, it feels like we’ve been
on somekind of epic journey.

Well now it’s time to look back, enjoy the sun, and appreciate how far we’ve come.

Cause when we do, it gives us hope-hope that if keep moving with this velocity, then we might reach still greater heights.

Grace Jones-La Vie En Rose (Tom Moulton Mix)

you know that thing about the sum of something’s parts? well, getting a justice remix of a daft punk track is a bit like that, a sort of gallic dance implosion so large it’s almost too much to listen to. though only almost.

but if you couple that with this teaser for daft punk’s electroma (even if the logo has poached our dear friends coco electrik’s branding almost hook line and sinker)

and i find myself researching the price of ateliers in the 14^e arrondissement and then planning to head out of town for the whole of august. obvious comparisons to gallo’s brown bunny (right down to jackson c. frank on soundtrack) have followed screenings of the movie which, not only looks stunning, as you can see, but appears to contain elements of both the icarus myth and casting out from eden.

but with robots. obviously.

back here on dry (human) land though via Brooklyn Vegan some time ago (sorry, i’ll find my own content eventually) justice take on daft punk’s human afterall taking french existentialism to new levels. satre would be so proud.

daft punk- human after all (justice remix)

I know this is ridiculous, but I had to post something just to get that prince picture off the top of HL. I’m so ravaged by jealously (not at the woman btw-that would be weird-but at the crowd in general.) Oh well come 3rd August all will be forgiven and hopefully by then I will have found someway to control my inner 15 year prince obsessive. (right now I’m refreshing housequake/prince.org every twenty seconds for news of anymore secret gigs-I’ve a long way to go!!)

Anyway let’s just agree not talk about it alright?

Moving on to more positive recent developments, sarahkellypaine.com ,(my wonderful sister, sarah the artist’s, website) is now live after lots of hard work, and it’s a thing of such great astounding beauty that I can barely bring myself to close some of the pages. I just leave them open and come back to them throughout my day.

Needless to say I’m nigh overflowing with kelly pride and recommend that you go visit the site sometime when you need a break from the day. Take your time and click through the gallery with something beautiful on your headphones.

Maybe something like this……

Harvey Mendel-Christo Redentor

Man, have been struggling to find the right track to put up for this link all afternoon.

Gone through about five or six alternatives trying to nail it.

In the end decided to ‘keep it kelly’-here is track I made, and one that is at least partly inspired by the artwork itself.

Enjoy.

A man called horse-in the light of day

Following on from yesterday’s sleep deprived postage, by rights I should be enjoying the man behind the sheet’s session down at plastics tonight.

Truth is I’m way to sleepy still. (and if you knew me well, you would want to shout *BORING!!* at me now- as loud as you could) Much as seeing detroit’s other favorite son is way up there on my ‘things I need to do’ list-I guess I’m not as much of a wednesday night person as I thought I was.

Also (and I know this is nigh of heresy) I wonder if his sound isn’t moving from being kinda edgy to a little bit classic. He needs to find something fresh to keep it as vital as it was (when was the last really essential moodymann record ?). Former glories can only go so far.

Talking of freshness, this is the sound that feels new to me. I resisted it a while cause the label sounds like it should be releasing happy hardcore records. Turns out whilst other, wiser and far more beautiful, members of the hl fam have been waxing lyrical while I’ve been sleeping.

Which reminds me….

oh okay, just one more listen before bedtime.

SebastiAn-ross ross ross

photo of the Pompidou by calinore

As you know some members of HL have serious love for the Entente Cordiale. Personally I would fly just that little bit further and prefer to touch down at Leonardo Da Vinci airport if it had to be anywhere on the Continent.

But that does not preclude me from spreading musical love when it’s due. Another HL favourite you might have noticed is the mighty Luaka Bop label and compilation compiler, par excellence, David Byrne. Last night I started breaking into boxes of CDs that have been sitting around since I moved house at the end of last year, and chanced across a 2002 comp. introducing the French ‘nouvelle’ generation called Cuisine Non-Stop.

The opening track by Lo’Jo just grabbed me and made me dig out the inlay card and check the rest of the CD - which is equally as strong. Java on track five in particular - Acoustic-Gastronomic-Gangsta-Gaulisms…”English Beef -Legalise, Salmonella -Legalise, Spliff -Legalise…” Nice. Not making fun of us over here or anything then…LOL

Apologies for bringing these nuggets of aural treasure to you five years late, but as I always find myself saying these days - better late than never. Translations always welcome, but even if your French is worse than mine, you’ll still enjoy Lo’jo - Baji Larabat Allez!

j’aime la france.

i think i’ve made that pretty clear, not just here but all over the place (pronounced plass in this case). subsidising a couple of london branches of paul,
wearing blue and white striped breton shirts every other day and living
about as close to the eurostar terminal as its possible to get. and its
not just the pace of life, lyrical language, pastry or three hour lunches of ham, cheese and beer which make me want to put an extra ‘te’ on the end of my first name…

french music is supercool too (yes, even johnny halliday).

despite being a bit too old and grumpy to make it to the ed banger
warehouse party on saturday night and therefore missing what was
inevitably a legendary barnstormer by with most of the ed banger
records crew, justice included (about whom i’ve already been vocal) i have a little party favour for you all.

an amuse bouche.

or oreilles maybe.

and je suis desole because this is a blatant re-up from legendary palmsout sounds
remix sunday, yesterday but its been on repeat in my sennheisers all
day long. a delicious thirty seconds of this track featured on the ed
banger medley released last week (and still available on the internets)
but the glitchy break down at one minute thirty gets me every single
time and has me going back for more and more and more… i wish i could
be more eloquent about it really but i’m going to channel a little
french aloofness and just look disaffected while i smoke a gitane and
drink strong, black coffee in a back-street bistro somewhere.

alors.

so enjoy mr oizo - trina700 (trina kills xtended edit)

if you want.

i mean. its up to you.

you don’t have to.

you can do what you like *exhales and goes back to a tattered copy of the outsider*