Obsessive Velvet Underground fans may recall ‘The Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes’ – an extraordinarily ragged live bootleg distinguished by the fact that the accidental genius responsible for taping a series of Boston concerts placed their recording device on top of the guitar amps, resulting in hours and hours of churning Sterl n’ Lou strummage, hanging disembodied in space, almost entirely disconnected from the soothing context usually provided by songs, vocals, drums, and Doug Yule’s smiling face.

The results proved a bit too much even for me to be perfectly honest, but the person or persons behind mysterious Parisian outfit Hôpital De La Conception apparently deemed these absurd recordings the ne plus ultra of rock n’ roll’s grand mission, subsequently recording and releasing ‘The Electric Rockin' Chair’, in which two lonely electric guitars hold down the musical equivalent of a dead-eyed stare for just over half an hour without blinking.

Evoking an enervated, teeth-grinding, urban-subway-sound, the clean-toned rhythm guitar clings maniacally to a single chord – pure white heat, with ABSOLUTELY NO syncopation, slack or string-bends allowed in the building (Hôpital De La Conception SPITS upon your stupid ‘blues’).

Lead line over the top meanwhile gets busy with some hideously malformed practice amp wah-wah pedal shit, later reining it in in favour of finger-slicing, overdriven high end explorations, hitting that same peak of ‘Run Run Run’-at-the-Gymnasium nirvana again and again and again, then circling back ‘round for more. Occasionally, a man mutters slurred, potentially saucy, off-mic exclamations in French. Sounds like he’s enjoying himself.

From whence did this music emerge? From the austere bedroom of some finely tailored, smack-smoking gallic super-snob who wears shades 24/7 and will insist to the point of death that this is THE ONLY TRUE, LEGITIMATE ROCK N’ ROLL MUSIC? From a couple of bored music students casually marking out an intriguing historical dead-end? From some former garage band dude gone wa-ay off-piste in pursuit of room-clearing devilry? Who knows. Beyond the clues provided by this tape’s intriguing, headless cover shot, perhaps we will never know.

For most of the human race, this music will prove about as appealing as dental torture, but for those of us who’ve already had our palettes thoroughly scoured by the merciless wire-wool of The V.U., Rallizes, Black Time and Jim Shepard, there’s a fine, evil draught to enjoy here, worth drinking to the dregs. I’m not really sure why, but then, I’m not sure why I stuck my finger in the socket of that light-fitting when I was eight years old either, and a few decades later here we all are.

Listen & download via Opaque Dynamo bandcamp.

2019 vinyl pressing on Cardinal Fuzz / Feeding Tube already LONG SOLD OUT by this point, but hey, it exists.

Labels: album reviews, France, Hôpital De La Conception, tapes

Things of Interest:
Stinky Toys / Elli et Jacno

It goes without saying that I’ve been learning a great deal from Joe Stumble’s spectacular recent round up of French music from the punk/new wave era over at Last Days of Man On Earth.

Of all the tunes and videos he’s posted though, the two that really did it for me turned out to be the work of the same people.

First, here’s Stinky Toys from 1979;



As you will have observed, Stinky Toys appear to be a replica of a ’79 power-pop band created by aliens who tried their best to replicate earth culture, but, rather like the creators of the room Dave Bowman wakes up in at the end of 2001, got everything slightly wrong. By which of course I mean completely right.

The singer’s dress and dance moves are of an order one rarely sees without having ingested powerful drugs. The interlocking guitar strumming patterns are simple but quite unusual and deeply pleasing, as is the deceptively ‘normal’ rhythm. The English language lyrics are slurred and kind of perplexing (“Chinese Chinese birthday party / give me Chinese birthday cake”?). The whole thing is awesome and fascinating.

Before long it seems, the singer and one of the guitarists broke away from the band and began to build a pop career as a duo: Elli et Jacno.

Stinky Toys seem pretty rad, but I think this was undoubtedly a good move for them, because Elli et Jacno are simply incredible.

In fact, I have no words that allow me to quite quantify how incredible they were.

By way of explanation, let’s just watch this;



Oh man, the bits where he plays the ‘solos’. GENIUS. I love you Jacno.

Elli et Jacno did some other songs and videos in 1982 as well.

They’re all pretty similar.

They’re all pretty great.





‘Main Dans La Main’ Is still totally the best video, but ‘Le Telephone’ is probably the one I’d go for if I was DJing somewhere.

Wikipedia says:

Elli & Jacno was a French 1980s electro-pop group. They were quite successful in France and to some extent in Britain, having been featured once on the front page of Melody Maker magazine.

Denis Quillard alias Jacno and Elli Medeiros decided to start a music duo after leaving the punk band The Stinky Toys. Jacno composed and performed the music and Elli sang and wrote the lyrics. They released three albums together before splitting up and beginning solo careers.

I have found The Ramones of minimalist, tongue in cheek French synth-pop, and I couldn’t be more happy.

Labels: Elli et Jacno, France, Stinky Toys, things of interest