XXXALBUM REVIEWS

HQ, Deux Filles was a beautifully odd on KLF’s ‘Chill Out’, there is a vaguely proposition. As Gemini Forque (Lloyd- sombre tone to many of the pieces Tucker) and Claudine Coule (Turner), here, with tracks like ‘Treasure Trove Of the pair developed a whole narrative Memories’, with its pretty synth filigrees, around these “characters”, one involving carrying a delicate, fragile and mournful disappearances and suspenseful intrigue, quality that is sweetly evocative. while also allowing them to don dresses and confuse audiences without ever Projects covering so much musicological once revealing who was really behind ground can often appear peripatetic the project. and elusive, and ‘Space & Time’ is most definitely both of those. It’s almost as if, Deux Filles released two albums at the after sloughing off the mask of assumed start of the 1980s, ‘Silence & Wisdom’ identity, Lloyd-Tucker and Turner went (1982) and ‘Double Happiness’ (1983) and all-out and loaded these vignettes with the pair would eventually come clean even greater levels of musical intrigue about who they really were. It’s therefore and impenetrable mystique. In doing so, perhaps of some surprise that, despite ‘Space & Time’ acts as a wonderfully the cheeky fraud of their backstory being quirky next chapter in the weird story of DEUX FILLES exposed as a deception, they would need Claudine and Gemini. Space & Time to use the moniker for ‘Space & Time’, a long-awaited third album. MAT SMITH LTM / LES DISQUES DU CRÉPUSCULE Picking up where they left off Very much picking up where they left for a third outing, two guys pretend off, ‘Space & Time’ is an expansive and frequently arresting collection of 24 to be two girls all over again discrete and varied pieces taking in all sorts of sounds from around the globe. The transformation of Simon Fisher Aside from audience manipulation, one Turner from youthful pop star to an of the most interesting things about Deux award-winning soundtrack composer, Filles was the sheer breadth of Lloyd- via a stint as Derek Jarman’s go- Tucker and Turner’s musical scope, from to composer, is one of music’s most experimental pop to soundscapes, both intriguing stories, full of chance collaborators being capable of picking up encounters and collaborations. Turner’s more or less any instrument and making work with electronics dates back to the it work in a brave and unexpected tail end of his nascent pop career, when context. he began fiddling around with a Revox tape machine, arriving more or less That same spirit of unbridled at the same time as he began playing experimentation runs through the short around with his own identity, adopting segments of ‘Space & Time’, with tracks names like the King Of Luxembourg to ranging from ambient texture (‘Horsebox separate himself from his earlier path. Parade’), distorted saw-wave buzz (‘Mouth Popsicle Explosion’), maudlin In a career filled with all sorts of Latin guitar-laced with subtle electronic partnerships, from Terre Thaemlitz to sequences (‘Soft Crushed Love’) to Factory Floor, one of the most enduring gospel reverence (‘Happy Clappy’) to Turner projects was Deux Filles, a band menacing pseudo-classical structures that saw Turner and former The The forced into new, almost Cageian member and esteemed producer Colin shapes by aggressive processing and Lloyd-Tucker create a whole storyline manipulation (‘Twinblade Sofa Cull’). and mythology and assuming female Though occasionally playful, somewhat identities. The product of a opportunistic like the metaphorical journey taken by meeting in a watering hole while both Messrs Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty were visiting the Cherry Red label exhaustive 87-track collection, complete bottomed jeans of the indie dance scene, with a 12,000-word booklet. Not all the turning to the likes of Andrew “Andy” usual suspects are present and correct: Weatherall to give them a snare shuffle My Bloody Valentine are conspicuously and funky wah-wah-flavoured rebirth. absent, but Moose, Pale Saints, Jesus & Mary Chain, Slowdive and of course Bands grew up incredibly quickly at the Cocteau Twins are all on board. The the time. Consider the cavernous 4AD contingent is surprisingly light here, gap between Primal Scream’s 1987 but the real joy is suddenly alighting ‘Sonic Flower Groove’ and 1991’s on names you’d long consigned to your ‘Screamadelica’ or the Shamen’s 1988 mental recycle bin: Catherine Wheel, Dr ‘Jesus Loves Amerika’ and ‘Progen’ Phibes And The House of Wax Equations, in 1990). And in certain cases artists The Honey Smugglers… it’s like brushing evolved from the protean shoegaze the cobwebs off a copy of NME circa sound of guitar distortion and muddy 1991 or tuning into a lost episode of vocals, towards something more melodic, Gary Crowley’s GLR radio show. Many of as you can hear with the Boo Radleys’ these prove their inherent forgetability ‘Kaleidoscope’ on the album. In a sense, on a fresh listen, but lost gems include shoegaze encapsulates everything VARIOUS Kitchens Of Distinction and Ultra Vivid you might love and hate about the Scene. preciousness of “indie” simultaneously. ARTISTS It was sonically challenging and Still in a Dream: Cherry Red deploys a fairly loose uncompromising as well as being A Story of Shoegaze 1988-1995 definition of the term, meaning there’s unashamedly arty. But it was also elitist, CHERRY RED a good number of American bands blinkered and overly reverent towards a represented too. Heartening to see the bygone era of late-60s psych and garage. Gotta spare seven hours? Boxset likes of Boston’s Galaxie 500 alongside propels you back to the genre that Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips, which They were the worst of times, they fashion forsook brings home the point that, contrary to were the best of times. But you can’t the oft-trotted out Britpop rubric, the deny they had some blisteringly blissful Of all the strains of vintage indie, cultural gap between the oceans was tunes. For ardent proof that we’re not shoegaze rarely finds itself basking in the narrower in certain quarters. By the just looking back at it all through cider warm glow of reappraisal, but the recent start of the 90s, the barriers between ‘n’ black-tinted spectacles, just drench return of both Ride and Lush makes this “traditional indie” and the dance/ yourself in Spacemen 3’s ‘Hypnotise’ bumper five-disc set seem rather timely. electronic genres were already being or Curve’s ‘Ten Little Girls’ and let the broken down. shoegaze was a key part dreams snap you out of your wakeful fog. Budding shoegazers must’ve found it of this revolution. Plenty of noiseniks hard to shake the feeling that the odds were donning the Joe Bloggs’ paisley- JOOLS STONE were always stacked against them, being named after their propensity of staring awkwardly at their own Doc Martens on stage. Alternative monikers were equally damning: The Scene that Celebrates Itself is a tag that could easily be levelled at most (anyone remember Romo?) and Dream Pop feels woefully inaccurate, since little of the genre’s output has the shiny, accessible veneer we associate with the word “pop”. Even shoegaze’s champions did little to help to cause, with their talk of “sonic cathedrals” and the rampant over-use of the word “ethereal”.

And so it falls to Cherry Red to exhume shoegaze’s chequered cadaver with this CURVE