Spun on this week's show! https://soundcloud.com/thepressuredrop/the-pressure-drop-show-12th-june-2023 #radiogold

Discover Weekly Archive - 4

Black Focus

Remembrance

Strings of Light

Symphonie Pacifique

The Duke

The Duke (feat. Moses Boyd & Simon Dufour)

Changing Light / Sommer

Changing Light

Friendship EP

Spiky Boi

Fluent Stutter

Tongo Barra

Watch Her Dance

Polymood

Taishi-Koto, Pt. 1

Natural Wonder Beauty Concept

Fallen Angel

Symphonic Funk Odyssey

BUY VINYL: http://www.darkentriesrecords.com/store/vinyl/deux-filles-silence-wisdom-double-happiness-2xlp/

The short, mysterious career of the female French duo Deux Filles is bookended by tragedy. Gemini Forque and Claudine Coule met as teenagers at a holiday pilgrimage to Lourdes, during which Coule's mother died of an incurable lung disease and Forque's mother was killed and her father paralyzed in an auto accident. The two teens bonded over their shared grief and worked through their bereavement with music. However, after recording two critically acclaimed albums and playing throughout Europe and North America, Forque and Coule disappeared without a trace in North Africa in 1984 during a trip to visit Algiers. The short and terribly unhappy lives of Forque and Coule are at the root of the small but fervent cult following the mysterious duo have gained since their disappearance, not least because the placid, largely instrumental music on the duo's albums betrays no hint of the sorrow that framed their personal lives.

This would be a terribly sad story if a word of it were true. In reality, Deux Filles were Simon Fisher Turner, former child star/teen idol and future soundtrack composer, and his mate Colin Lloyd Tucker. Turner and Tucker left an early incarnation of The The in 1981 to pursue another musical direction. Turner claims that the idea of Deux Filles came to him in a dream, and he and Tucker strictly maintained the fiction throughout the duo's career. Not only did they pose in drag for the album covers, the duo once even played live without the audience realizing that the tragic French girls on-stage were actually a pair of blokes from south London. Deux Filles released two albums through Turner and Tucker's Papier Mache label, 1982's “Silence & Wisdom” and 1983's “Double Happiness”. Both albums are included here and  blend watery piano, occasionally ghostly vocals, sheets of synthesizers, heavily processed guitars and the barest minimum of percussion. Drifting and wistful, they’re a pair of lost ambient gems from a time when the genre had yet to mature, an excellent example of post-Eno, pre-Orb ambient music.

All songs have been remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The vinyl comes housed in gatefold sleeve with original front covers of both albums, and a centerfold of archive images and the original liner notes.  Each LP includes a sticker of the Lino cuts by Adrian Gill that was included with the original pressing. “Like an early French film soundtrack with melodramatic overtones, the sound is jagged and disjointed but never harsh. Lilting guitars and ample use of echo smack of Vini Reilly, relying on the hypnotic qualities of the sound rather than abrasive noise" (Sounds, 03/1983)

12 The City Sleeps

Complete Mythology

Soul Heaven

Dryfruit

A Furrow

There is something simultaneously both brand-new and retro about 'All News Is Good News’ - the debut album from Melbourne's instrumental soul group Surprise Chef. It sounds like something dreamt up by lo-fi cousins of David Axelrod and Janko Nilovic, with dramatic Library-music-esque cinematic arrangements echoing both light and dark, delving into moments of dissonance and positivity. There is a meticulous education of 1970’s soul on display that touches on the legacies of the great composer / producers, yet at the same time, this is a truly contemporary record that could have only been made now. 

The first limited pressing of 'All News Is Good News’ was released on the band's own 'College Of Knowledge' imprint in November 2019. It slipped rapidly into the collective consciousness of underground music lovers around the world, with all copies selling out within a week and becoming a firm favourite at Mr Bongo HQ in the process. We felt Surprise Chef had made something very special, a future-classic, and that needed to be heard well beyond those lucky enough to have bagged those limited first copies.

Formed at the end of 2017, Surprise Chef have grown within the fertile, creative, and supportive Melbourne music scene. Whilst the band is comprised of four core members, the album features friends and family as guest instrumentalists on flute, saxophone, vibraphone, congas, and assorted percussion; all adeptly recorded by engineer Henry Jenkins from the band Karate Boogaloo. The warm-raw-authenticity of the album was captured in the recordings live to tape over a handful of sessions in the band’s home studio in Melbourne’s inner-northern suburb of Coburg. As band member Lachlan Stuckey explains “All of the music we record is tracked live to tape, simply because so many of the records we love most were made that way".

The results are a captivating journey of instrumental cinematic-soul that will connect with the hardened Axelrod, Truth & Soul, El Michels Affair, and Daptone's fans, as well as the open-minded first-time listener. We are very excited to share this first slice of Surprise Chef’s world, with plenty more magic from these guys coming around the corner very soon.

All News Is Good News

Surprise Chef - All News Is Good News

Surprise Chef’s music is based on evoking mood; their vivid arrangements utilize time and space to build soundscapes that invite the listener into their world. The quintet’s distinct sound pulls from 70s film scores, the funkier side of jazz, and the samples that form the foundation of hip hop. 


Hailing from just outside of Melbourne, Australia, their first two albums, All News Is Good News and Daylight Savings amassed a die-hard fanbase and brought their sound from their home studio to every corner of the globe. The band is now signed to Big Crown Records, joining a lineage of contemporary and classic sounds that have influenced Surprise Chef’s music since their formation in 2017.


Surprise Chef’s self proclaimed “moody shades of instrumental jazz-funk” encompass punchy drums, infectious keys, rhythm guitar you might hear on a Studio One record, and flute lines that could be from a Blue Note session; but when you step back and take in the entirety of their sound and approach, you’ll hear and see a group greater than the sum of its parts.

Spiky Boi

Surprise Chef

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