Hector Zazou: S&D?

Zazou had a brief Rock In Opposition link. His first duo, ZNR, has two albums of Satie-esque moog/rhodes/drum machine pop (have only heard the first, have long been hunting for the second).

His solo stuff is less casual, poised, glossy, sparklingly produced, but also with a kind of post-modern artificial remove; self-consciously lovely. It really works on the early records. 'Reivax Au Bongo', I think that record's fucking georgeous. 'Geologies' too. Noir et Blanc should be a lot better known than it is.

In '89 the loveliness congealed a bit, later records seem shallow and so the pretensions suddenly become unbearable, but it might just be my high opinion of the early records. If you like 'Cold Seas', get 'Reivax Au Bongo'. Avoid the Harold Budd collaboration like plague. The Irish one is totally empty.

The recent record with Sandy Dillon I'm not sure about, but she's a really intense, fucked up vocalist, and it's actually the weirdest thing he's done in a long time, so it might very well grow on me.

guilty was patchy, but there is the fabulous na kenda 12" off it which is as near as african acid house as you'll possibly get.

There are/were two versions of Sahara Blue - I think I have the one shorn of all the Sylvian contributions (some legal dispute?), or at least with his name taken off the sleeve. I'm not at home so I can't tell from the Allmusic entry whether the tracklisting matches my copy (on Crammed).

The Bjork track on Cold Seas... is lovely.

so good. it's on the 'guilty' CD, worth it for that one track. bikaye's vocals are incredible. he's great on 'reivax au bongo' as well, but in more of a soundscapey Martin Denny context.

I'm still looking for the 'mr. manager' 12", contemporary with 'noir et blanc'. My maniac russian friends tell me it's even further out than the album.

zazou was doing the accompaniment

he forced the audience to watch a totally inept promotional video for chansons des mers froides before "nanook"--the bits of music played during this video made it sound utterly reprehensible, like deep forest under ice

the accompaniment was one of the worst things i've ever sat through, completely vacuous and dull (but unnecessarily loud)

i'm afraid that on the evidence i have to write him off as a charlatan

ugh

...imagine the most dubious variants on those two "genres" (and yes, one of mr. zazou's big problems is that he really seems to think of "world music" as a "genre") mixed together...

upthread when I said 'Geologies' I meant 'Geometries' -- the vinyl version of the record has an outstanding extra song, definitely my favorite album apart from 'Reivax'.

Noir et Blanc, his album with CY1 and Bony Bikaye, is an amazing set of African/European art-songs which contrast Bikaye's commanding, resonant vocals (usually layered or multitracked) with CY1's remarkably contemporary-sounding, minimalist dub pulses. It sounds like nothing else I've ever heard - or perhaps what Graceland might have sounded like, had Aphex Twin decided to make it before Selected Ambient Works Vol. I.

And, as far as Zazou/Bikaye's other stuff without CY1, I find it marginally less compelling listening. Mr. Manager isn't really any further-out than Noir, as a poster suggests above; in fact, it strikes me as a more refined and traditional-sounding mixture of high life and electropop elements, very much in the vein of so much soukous stuff that's out there. "Nostalgie" is a gorgeous, twinkly big-beat pop number that sounds like riding the escalators at Saks Fifth Avenue. I have Guilty! on vinyl as well, but all I can remember of it is that it sounds a bit more "rock" and didn't appeal to me as much.

Bony Bikaye, incidentally, made a hideous solo album of weird cover tunes a few years back that's available on eMusic. It reminds me of an African Daniel Johnston, and not in a good way...

RIP

??!!