News: Lady Gaga or Metal Urbain? Lady Coca-Cola

The release of Lady Gaga's new album Born This Way is probably the most anticipated release of the year so far, a collection of power ballads, reheated club anthems and a few decent songs combined with a marketing strategy that would make any successful presidential campaign looks half hearted.

The four RedOne produced tracks are probably the ones that will attract the most critical acclaim, and the Moroccan producer has also worked with Mylene Farmer on her most recent album which has so far produced two number one singles in France. Her third single - Lonely Lisa - will be another of the RedOne tracks on the collection.

Of course, there were claims that Gaga's Born This Way was just a bit close to Farmer's song, Libertine.

However, I'd like to think the biggest artistic influence on Lady Gaga from France was Metal Urbain's song Lady Coca-Cola from 1977, a great slice of still-futuristic sounding post-punk art rock, that came out before most of the world was even embracing punk rock.

New: Hotroad - Insanity

If you like your thrash old school, Swiss band Hotroad are playing something that you'll enjoy.

Thrash was a huge movement that re-invigorated the rock scene, and American acts like Metallica and Megadeth (as well as Slayer and Anthrax to list the full Big Four) are credited as the main innovators, but there were many European bands who were also at the front line of the revolution in the 80s, with Kreator and Sodom from Germany being among them.

So the fact that Hotroad are from Switzerland (Lausanne in Vaud, the French speaking part of the country of course!) shouldn't exclude them from the critical attention that new generation thrash acts are getting, with the likes of Municipal Waste and Gama Bomb getting the credit for re-inventing the scene.

Like metal in general, thrash has established a huge international following, with acts developing the genre in pretty much every country, and Hotroad's debut album Insanity holds up well against the international competition.

They claim influences from Pantera, Motorhead and Metallica, and these elements can certainly be heard throughout the album, which was released in late 2010.

The band is a four piece, Loïc Tapia on lead guitar, Florian Grobéty on bass, Coowar Thierry on rhythm guitar an vocals and Théophile Burnat on drums.

Sure, they can rock with the brutality that their genre demands, but they are capable of some serious stunt playing. Check out The Fear of the Unknown for a lesson in how to create a bit of atmosphere while keeping the foot down.

Highlight for me was probably the track The Last Redemption, a slow-building heavy instrumental that gives the band a full seven minutes plus to showcase their skills.

More on Hotroad here >

News: French punk on the BBC

Today a link to a wonderful an unlikely documentary that was on Radio 4, the quiet voice of establishment broadcasting in the UK, highlighting the development of French punk music.

Listen to the programme again here >

The presenter Andrew Hussey makes the point that without the French, punk rock would just have been pub rock but with shorter hair. There are interviews with Stinky Toys and Marc Zermati from Skydog records, and brief blasts of some very great music.

The documentary makes a strong case that France had a pivotal role in punk rock, in both the broader picture by adding the intellectual and artistic ideas that underpinned the movement, and in detail, with such things like the singer of the stinky toys being the first to wear safety pins.

While making it clear that punk originated in the US, France picked up on it and developed it long before the UK. The ideas fell on fertile ground in France, Paris having a long history of rebellion and youth unrest, and earlier artistic movements centred there such as Situationism, Dada, Surrealism, and the 1920s modernists.

Malcolm McLaren spending time in France and took the influences of the French punks on board, but to these ears at least much of the French punk material has dated better than its UK counterparts. Maybe because it is because it is not as over-familiar, maybe because much of the UK punk was just pub rock repackaged or maybe because the French punks were a bit cleverer in their approach.

Take Métal Urbain's use of synths - still sounds like something most contemporary electro bands could only dream of achieving.

Anyway, there's a rich seam of music there that's been mostly written out of history and the documentary goes some way to redress the balance.