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VOX POPULI! / PACIFIC 231 - Cut Chemist presents Funk Off

Format: do-LP & 7inch Label & Cat.Number: A Stable Sound ASS008 Release Year: 2014 Note: a collection of early highlights, rare tracks and previously unreleased material from 1983-1986 (mainly taken from early MCs and compilations) by the legendary French VOX POPULI! & PACIFIC 231 project, this is the more experimental / industrial side of both projects, all re-mastered and comes with 12p LP sized booklet containing photographs, flyers and art from the group, plus a lim. 7" with partly unreleased tracks from 1983+1984, for the first pressing!! Price (incl. 19% VAT): €36.00 Warning: Currently we do not have this album in stock! More Info " 2xLP + 7"! 1980's French post punk, industrial, minimal movement collective known for circulating cassette only releases gets the reissue treatment lovingly curated by turntablist / producer / DJ Cut Chemist. In 2004 while on tour/record digging in Milan, Italy, Jurassic 5 founder and DJ Cut Chemist picked up a compilation featuring a group named Vox Populi!, whose track "Megamix" caught his attention. As familiar as he was with early hip hop releases that pioneered the megamix (The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash, Double Dee & Steinski's "Lessons" series, for example), this was clearly coming from a different set of cultural reference points. Originally released in the 80s, the track was not rooted in disco, hip hop & DJ history but rather post punk and industrial influences. The rudimentary "scratching" present on the song was abrasive, and probably executed with a reel-to-reel tape machine rather than a turntable. And its intended effect was not to bridge two songs or breaks, but to jar the listener out of what was otherwise a seamless club track experience. Music Concrete is what the collective (Vox, Pacific 231, H.N.A.S., X Ray Pop, others) would have perhaps described their approach at the time. "Wild Style on dust" was how Cut's collaborator Tom Fitzgerald described it on hearing it 20 years later. Finding this record ultimately led to Cut Chemist tracking down the group, bonding over shared aesthetics and getting their blessing for this collection, which includes unreleased tracks, photographs and little-seen flyers and art from the group. Their original output was primarily on cassette with the occasional vinyl LP/EP on their own Vox Man Records imprint, or on other equally limited-release minded independent labels. Limited run of CD and LP include extensive insert liner notes, first pressing of LP comes with 7" containing previously unreleased tracks by Vox Populi! and Pacific 231." [label info] "Somewhere in France, sometime in the '80s: a radical independent underground micro-scene peopled by creative teenagers who grew up listening to Kraftwerk, Throbbing Gristle, A Certain Ratio, Metal Urbain, and Cabaret Voltaire, making their own synth- and sample-based music, with heavy beats and noisy dubbed out FX, that's like a post-punk/industrial hybrid of old school hiphop, Detroit electro, and tape-splicing musique concrete experimentation, releasing it themselves on artfully packaged cassette tapes and occasional pieces of vinyl, in limited editions heard only by the most dedicated international networkers in that pre-internet age. Sound good? It is! That's what this release documents, remarkable DIY music that's been aptly described as "like Wild Style on dust". Or imagine some other underground '80s industrial experimentalists from France, like Le Syndicat, toning down the noise (a little) and trying to make tracks like Afrika Bambaataa. And please don't get confused, either, 'cause noted turntablist, producer and crate digger Cut Chemist's name is on the cover. This isn't a DJ mix, or remix, or collaboration, or anything like that. Cut Chemist doesn't himself have anything to do with the music of the two closely related bands on here, Vox Populi! and Pacific 231, other than having discovered 'em on one of his record-buying excursions (specifically via finding Vox Populi!'s track "Megamix" on a rare compilation LP called Alternative Funk, released by VP!'s own Vox Man label), and then making it his mission to find out more about them and get their stuff reissued - which he did, after many years of research, and friendships forged with both Vox Populi's leader Axel Kyrou and his colleague Pierre Jolivet, whose own project Pacific 231 ran parallel to Vox Populi!, and was also an important part of the collective described above. So, thanks to Cut Chemist, whose imprimatur will hopefully help get this music some additional well deserved attention, we've now got this fantastic anthology of twenty VP! and P231 tracks rescued & remastered from rare cassette and vinyl comps, eps, etc., with plenty of previously unreleased material too. It's a real treasure trove of headnodding, mindblowing, utterly rad stuff, what could be indeed called, "alternative funk". Make that, alternative WTF? funk. These wide-ranging tracks contain, in varying combinations and degrees, all manner of frizzled blip bloop electronics, propulsive drum machine rhythms, subversive cut-ups, spanking funk bass, gothic cold wave vocals, ambient synth trances, crazed echoing dub effects, and reel-to-reel tape manipulation (the DJ "scratching" sounds you'll hear). All we can say is, upon hearing this, we immediately understood Cut Chemist's obsession! Musically, the French always seem to have their own unique, unusual take on things, whether it's disco or prog or black metal, and the hard-to-define genre this represents is no exception. The thick cd booklet (or big lp insert) is full of detailed liner notes, graphics and photos, which should give one a good sense of the exciting artistic/cultural/musical milieu these folks inhabited. Highly, highly recommended. (Note, the double vinyl version comes with a bonus 7" of extra tracks, which are also included on the cd.)" [Aquarius Records]