VA - Groove Club Vol. 1-2 (2010-2011)

Fabrice, 17 years old, is a minet, or to say it better, a mod from one of the posh neighborhoods, the 16th district in Paris and such golden ghettoes as Auteuil, Neuilly and Passy. Fab likes to have his ronron at the Drugstore , as Dutronc sang it (an untranslatable wordplay on ronron, cat food , and a minet - a kitten - purring). Fabrice attends Henri IV prestigious high-school; his father, a businessman who made a fortune selling plastic flowers, and his mother, a former model from Jacques Fath, are never home a cosy home indeed! With his Weston shoes, a slim-fitting suit by Renoma and his haircut modelled on those of Anglo-Saxons musicians appearing on French Eps, Fabrice dreams of Carnaby Street and the Sunset Strip. He is not alone: there s his sister Stéphanie, 16, who wears a fringe, a mock Courrèges dress, a pink Shetland pullover and white boots. Stéphanie reads Salut Les Copains and Mademoiselle Age Tendre, which both fuel her passion for Françoise Hardy, Zouzou, Twiggy and the Beatles. The Groove Club is happy to present twenty-two records that we dug out as a tribute to Fabrice s kinky faves. We imagine those magic years 1966-71 (with two inclusions from 1976 & 77) to have been as you can hear it here truly decadent pop-sike, as beautiful as the cathedral of Evry... whether it's the arch-hippie Lolita taking us beyond the limits of pop music, singing songs which make one dream of Anicée Alvina riding her bicycle in a red dress... or whether it's sunny and stunning, or brooding and tinged with sadness. And we sense that, paradoxical as it may seem, although we have imagined a parallel cosmos to the Grande Heures of pop culture, we are not far from the truth. Popisme fantastique!

Recorded mostly live without the careful control that a recording studio allows, these 19 cuts of Cambodian rock have a delightfully unhinged, raw, and ragged sound, as traditional instruments mesh and clash with rock guitars and keyboards, all with surprising vitality. The music collected here is full of bright grooves, but this release is also, in ways, a memorial. The rise of the Khmer Rouge in 1975 changed the landscape of Cambodia on every level, and massive famines and a chilling campaign of genocide joined to cause the deaths of some two million Cambodians, a number that is staggering to comprehend. Among those deaths were some of the musicians represented here: Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Sereysothea, and Pan Ron all were executed by the Khmer Rouge. There’s a rhythmic and wild joy in these sides, but there’s a sadness, too, and it reminds us that playing music is always a serious matter.