Edwige Belmore & Mathematiques Modernes

Another French legend passes, with the death of Edwige Belmore, style icon of late 70s Paris punk chic scene and half of new wave duo Mathematiques Modernes.

She was a central figure in late 70s France, in a scene that centred around Le Palace nightclub in the 9th arrondisement.  It was a club that mixed the street punk and the jet set, where celebrities like Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Grace Jones and Yves Saint Laurent could go, but were style and attitude were more important than who you were.

It would enter legend like New York's Studio 54, a place where fashion, music and style collided and sparked something new.

Much of what we think of as the style of the 1980s came from this scene, where she was a central figure.

Belmore was an inspiration for the likes of Pierre et Gilles and  Helmut Newton, her style particularly influencing Jean Paul Gaultier.

Her musical career might have been brief, but again it was remarkable.

Mathematiques Modernes released a single Disco-rough in 1980 . It was produced by Jacno,  former member of French punks Stinky Toys and later electro-pop pioneer as a solo artist and as half of Elli and Jacno. Needless to say it's a classic piece of post-punk minimal electro.

They released one album,  Les visiteurs du soir, in 1981. While very much of its era, it's the kind of treasure that has an appeal that has endured.

In 2013, Yelle covered their track A+B=C. The same year, Les visiteurs du soir was re-issued. It quickly sold out.

New: Jacno Future - Je T'aime Tant by Dominique A

A wonderful version of the song Je T'aime Tant by Dominique A from the Jacno Future tribute album, released recently to celebrate the legacy of the late Stinky Toys, Elli et Jacno and solo artist.

I've already featured the Elli at Jacno version of this song recently on the blog, and I've also mentioned the Jacno Future album, but this is such an outstanding version of the song that I thought it certainly deserved a mention in its own right.

One of the things I have enjoyed most about writing this blog is coming across music that I might never have heard that just amazes me, and this is certainly such a song.

Taking what was en electro song with a female vocalist and re-imagining it this way brings the focus right back to the strength of the song.

There is also a great version by Indochine, which although certainly with its charms is more of a regular rock song than this nicely understated and tasteful take on the song.

New: Jacno Future and Etienne Daho

With two mentions of musician Jacno - the performer originally known as Denis Quillard - in the past couple of weeks on the site, with Stinky Toys and with his later duo with Elli Medeiros Jacno and Elli, I was pleased to hear that a tribute album to Jacno, who died in 2009, has been released.

Jacno Future came out in June, and features his music performed by artists including Jacques Higelin, Brigitte Fontaine, Miossec and Thomas Dutronc.

There are two versions of his key piece Rectangle, the instrumental that established him as an electro artist following the demise of Stinky Toys.

This track Amoureux Solitaires is performed by Etienne Daho, who worked with Jacno on his solo works. Daho has had a long career since the 1980s and is one of the few French artists to have a following in the UK primarily on account of his work with St Etienne.

Daho collaborated with Jacno on Jacno's 1991 album Une idée derrière la tête and on his 1995 Faux Témoin album. Jacno produced Daho's 1981 debut album Mythomane.

The video, directed by Gaétan Châtaigner takes its inspiration from the Fritz Lang film Metropolis, which with its retro futuristic style fits very well with Jacno's musical vision.

Rétro: Elli et Jacno - Je t'aime Tant

Following on from last week's clip of Stinky Toys, a clip of Elli at Jacno from their career as a duo in the 1980s.

Their sound on this song was a far more techno pop one than their earlier new wave/punk work with Stinky Toys, but their adopting a keyboard-dominated sound was an obvious continuation of their forward-looking attitude.

Jacno had been inspired by Kraftwerk, and prior to working as half of Elli et Jacno had released a minimalists electro EP Rectangle, which had met with some critical success, which after the commercial and critical failure of Stinky Toys must have seemed like a step in the right direction. One song on the EP featured vocals by Elli, so the decision to continue the collaboration seemed to be an obvious one.

The duo is similar in some ways to the electro duos of the 80s that were hugely popular in the UK, from Soft Cell to the Pet Shop Boys. Elli et Jacno never enjoyed the same mainstream success in the UK that these other acts did, although they did make the front of one of the UK's music magazines at the time.

The electro pop genre was probably guilty of marginalising the female vocalist and while the Human League did feature their female backing singers heavily, only really Yazoo made the most of a female singer. Elli's vocals may not be comparable to Alison Moyet, but she does do a very good line in a and stylish cool vocal.

Elli et Jacno took the pop sound of 60s France and updated it for the new decade, and came up with some great songs along the way and this is certainly one of them.

Rétro: Stinky Toys - Birthday Party

A great clip from a French punk bank from the late 70s. Stinky Toys were from Rennes, and were around from '76 to '79, and were one of the prime movers of the French punk scene.

Like a lot of French punk it doesn't seem to fit our preconceptions of the genre, it doesn't seem aggressive or particularly angry, and more stylish than street.

But the band were right there from the start playing in London at the punk festival at the 100 club in London in 1976, apparently coming across the channel without any instruments or equipment and borrowing their gear from other bands on the bill.

Those other bands included The Clash, Sex Pistols and the Damned and the Buzzcocks. A legendary event that set the agenda for popular music in the UK and abroad for decades.

The band had come into contact with Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren during his time in Paris, and its thought that Stinky Toys singer Elli inspired the punk movement adopting the safety pin as a fashion statement after she wore an outfit adorned with then.

Its strange how contemporary the music clip seems. Kate Moss would be a dead ringer for the singer Elli, while the band sound more like a 2010s indie band than a 70s punk act.

Stinky Toys managed to release two albums during their original career, a self-titled album later re-titled Plastic Faces came out in 1977, but a lack of critical support led to it facing apathy from the record company who did not release it outside France. A second album came out in 1979.

Elli and guitarist Jacno worked as a duo in the 80s after the end of Stinky Toys, both then having solo careers. Elli continues to release music and has a career as an actress, while Jaco died of cancer in 2009.

It's a great clip of the band in their prime, and while the dancing seems to be a little bit less choreographed than we expect these days, I suspect it might be more down to avoiding a wardrobe malfunction than anything else.

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.