Taste: their new EP

W-a-y back in January this year I featured the track Bang Bang Bang by Taste, looking forward to their

first release in February.

Well, in our absence Taste have been busy and delivered the goods. The Taste EP emerged in February, with both Bang Bang Bang and its predecessor Shame Game along with three other tracks hitting like Depeche Mode fronted by Nick Cave let loose in a late ‘70s Berlin studio with some of Kraftwerk’s leftover kit.

Taste consists of La Mverte and Yan Wagner, both names you should know for their dark electronica, reinforced with Guillaume Marnez and Marc FKClub.

They’ve now delivered another EP, the charmingly titled four-track Pants Shitters that includes both Pile of Guilt and Walking Home, two tracks released over the past few months.

There’s something of the late ‘70s Bowie and Iggy Pop cool here, with a dark menace not too far below the surface. It’s sophisticated and polished, but at the same time unsettling, in the best possible way. It should be blasting out the speakers in the early hours of the morning through the dry ice of  a haunted nightclub

Meanwhile, the recycling of ‘50s American imagery is a simple but effective way of juxtaposing the horrors, real and imaginary, of society alongside the stylishly fantasized version. It may be retro, but it’s more relevant than ever.

Taste’s good for sure.

Taste: Bang Bang Bang

There's a new Iggy Pop album released today and if there's anything on it as good as Bang Bang Bang by Taste he'll have done a great job.

There's a very nicely done video too, making the link between the fetishisation of firearms in entertainment and American society in general, with the actual tragic consequences of this. From fake comedy to very real tragedy. 

You can probably name most of the films that flash up for a couple of seconds, you've probably seen them.

Taste might be a new name - this is only their second release after a track Shame Game came out in December - but the band's members La Mverte, the dark dancefloor DJ and producer Alexandre Berly and Paris-base artist Yan Wagner should be no strangers to you. 

Both have been producing some great things for a number of years and Taste looks like a fascinating step forward.

Taste also features Guillaume Marnez on drums and  Marc FKClub on guitar, making the position of an actual band that could perform live something really look forward to.

Taste release their first full EP on February 3. Can't wait.

Yan Wagner: It Was A Very Good Year

A new video from Yan Wagner, with the track It Was A Very Good Year featuring on his second album This Never Happened.

It's a cinematic and disturbing video for this moody piece of electro showcasing his dark crooning perfectly. If Scott Walker ever fronted a particularly melancholic Kraftwerk it might sound a bit like this.

It is a song made famous by Sinatra which has been covered by dozens of other artists since, from Robbie Williams to the Flaming Lips. Maybe best to ignore William Shatner's cover of it.

Yan Wagner's album came out earlier this month, a follow up to his widely acclaimed debut Forty Eight Hours which came out in 2012 and it's his first release on new label Her Majesty's Ship.

Expect it to be mentioned again by many others as one of their highlights of 2017 before too long.

Yan Wagner: Some Velvet Morning

I love this version of the track Some velvet Morning by Yan Wagner.

The track emerged last month, and was originally a hit in 1967 for Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. It's regarded by many as a classic of its era, and has been covered by many acts over the years, memorably by Primal Scream who recorded a version of the song with model Kate Moss.

Yan Wagner released his debut album Forty Eight hours in October last year, the title track being one of my favourite things I've heard in recent months, like a version of Scott Walker fronting Power Corruption and Lies era New Order, with the urgency and melancholy

Wagner has recently remixed the track Drive by Tomorrow's World, a track I've featured here previously on the blog.

Meanwhile, an EP of Yan Wagner tracks remixed by others - including Jupiter, the Hacker and Arnaud Rebotini came out earlier this year.

Yan Wagner has a number of live dates at festivals over the summer, including the Francofolies in La Rochelle on July 13, the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 15 and the Vieilles Charrues festival in Carhaix on July 20.

He played a some live dates in the UK last year, and hopefully it won't be too long until we see him here again.