Jean-Jacques Perrey & David Chazam - ELA

Picture yourself driving around one of the more rural areas of France. You decide to stop overnight in a hillside village. As you get to the main square you see there’s a stage set up and a crowd watching the act now performing. Going over to take in the sight you’re unsure whether this is a headline show or support, intended for children, adults or both, such is the child-like quality of the beeps, bloops and jaunty tunes you’re hearing. Welcome to the new album from Jean-Jacques Perrey and David Chazam.

Perrey was back in vogue (or at least latched on to in a more mainstream manner) in the Nineties, following his Moog heyday twenty years prior. Easy listening revivalists & BBC Radiophonic Workshop devotees dug out the likes of his Moog Indigo album (previously already plundered for samples by hip-hop acts) and he returned to recording in 1997, releasing the Eklectronics collaboration with David Chazam the following year.

Since then he’s collaborated with Luke Vibert and Dana Countryman but ELA finds him back again with Chazam, brightening things up with the modern musical equivalent of a Jacques Tati film. Which may obviously not be to everyone’s taste, given the aforementioned seeming childishness of the music here contained. 

Things kick off with 'Electropop-Parade', a track as martial in pace as its name suggests & which sounds like Sousa filtered through a Fisher Price gizmo. From then on there's no flagging of the pace as Perrey & Chazam's compositions take in all manner of duck quacks, sheep calls, dog barks, synth sounds, electronic drums, gurgles and a myriad of less easily defined further noises. Whether you could actually find enough here to grab on to and hum at a later date is debatable. An element of maturity is achieved on 'Chronophonieremix' only to be thrown over in the Benny Hill-like 'Hectic-Joker'.

Very much then one for regular devotees of the godfather of French electro or for people who're interested in broadening their children's musical exposure at an early age, despite the overall air of fun and utter refusal to take itself seriously.    

ELA is available from amazon.