Lewis - "L'amour"

http://weirdcanada.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Lewis-Lamour.jpg

a poster linked to a track from this on the "classic album you were knocked out by" thread. theres a few other tracks from the album up on youtube. its amazing. wistful mysterious arthur russell-esque 80s soft synth ballads. anyone else heard this? is it going to be reissued? information on the record is fairly scant but i did across this - http://weirdcanada.com/2012/03/departures-lewis-lamour-1983/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjwaVKAD1l0

it's being reissued next year on a mystery label. There's a big thread on hipinion about it

Bump. This is a great album. That's all I have to say at the moment. Check it out.

What I've heard of this sounds incredible, very excited for the reissue.

Learn how to spell Chlodoweg in the modern native fashion...

I am terrible with cryptic clues.

8th April

http://lightintheattic.net/releases/1140-l-amour

This is some great stuff. I'm sure every review of this is going to mention Arthur Russell, Nebraska and "Twin Peaks" - every one I've seen so far already has - but it's not really like anything I've ever listened to. There's so much fragility and intimacy and stillness embedded in this. The synths are straight out an 80s TV movie, the piano is played with saccharine sweetness and the vocals are so smooth and delicate, on paper it sounds very cheesy but the execution is so weird that the earnestness becomes haunting.

There's a convoluted backstory about Lewis, whoever he is, being untraceable and paying for the recordings with cheques that didn't clear, and while you wouldn't need to know that to enjoy this, know that there's this air of mystery around the album just adds to the otherworldly atmosphere.

I don't know if I'm obsessed with this record or just having a haunting old LA mystery story to click around at 3 a.m.

I mean, in my head, this is the kind of LP a murderer with an artist girlfriend makes in a late-80s made-for-TV noir.

i wonder why you would choose the pen name 'lewis' for a mysterious alter-ego, it reminds me of when people choose unremarkable pet names

nice album btw

just for the "lewis l'amour" joke, i figure

i had never heard of him before just googling him now.

kinda hoped it was a nod to inspector morse's sidekick

a touch of john martyn with the vocals too, the way the words just crumble to dust and are almost unintelligible

awesome indeed

this is great.

this is SO great, can't wait for my subscription copy to show up

Purchased it digital from their site a while back, definitely...off. Pleasantly.

http://i.imgur.com/MZiG0m0.jpg

I MUST KNOW ABOUT THIS SECOND ALBUM. (I know as much as Kaleb does, we've been boggling at it on Twitter/FB.)

i'm not convinced

This isn't him, but wouldn't it be funny if it was? http://ohio.arrests.org/Arrests/Lewis_Ballou_17403539/

i'm not convinced

― the late great, Monday, July 21, 2014 1:08 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You're not convinced its real?

He isn't ronvinced its ceal!

There is this...on page 27:

http://forums.hipinion.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=65579&start=797

"Ok. Well now that the cat is out of the bag, I will shed a little light to wet the tastebuds... A Canadian digger turned a copy of this up 2 months ago and sold it to Light in the Attic. In a great irony, it was the same guy who we asked to go to the studio in Vancouver to ask about the recordings done there in the mid '00s. In an even greater irony, he found the record in his storage unit just thumbing through the refuse of some old buys. Such is life. The copy currently on eBay landed at THE SAME record store that Aaron bought his copies from years ago. It has been confirmed as having been recorded in Calgary, despite the address on the back for R.A.W. Corp which is actually a PO Box at a mailboxes etcetera type place in Beverly Hills.

The label had me come in and I found the disc under the coffee table, while Matt was on the phone. I initially thought it was a total hoax, but they handed me a CD-R and listening to it on the ride home I was pretty blown away. It's a great follow-up to an incredible record, and is decidedly even more personal and strange. The unintentional nods to Badalamenti on the first disc take a plunge into deep red room turf on "Romantic Times" and in some ways he feels like a necromancer waiting to make an appearance on that vaunted show. 5 years before it aired. I'll save the rest for the liner notes. Suffice to say, it's a doozy, and for me a future big one in the real people / twilight zone camp."

i believe it's real, i'm just not convinced it's that great

Late Great: "Not Great," Says Ingrate.

this reissue is seriously one of my favorite releases of the year. speaking as someone who'd only listened to the songs on YouTube previously, the vinyl pressing sounds astonishingly lush; it's the kind of album that just ensconses you in in its aesthetic. I hear where everyone's coming from w/r/t the Russell name-checks, but to my ears this album just does something else; I can't recall a Russell song fine-tuned to trigger my "beauty" receptors the way "I Thought The World Of You" does. I feel like the first Durutti Column album or Music For Airports come closer to what this album does - it's all about how gentle, delicate, and ethereal the total package of the album is (to say nothing of its many, many high points). it may be the single most poignant album I own.

I've been desperately imploring all my music friends to check this out, but it's been an uphill battle. their loss. L'Amour is an all-timer, even without the backstory. I'm very, very glad to have a copy.

well i like the backstory AND the cover

guess i'll give it another shot

Jamescobo entirely otm. It's an all-timer.

i got quite a strong blue nile vibe off this thing

omg this album

My fiancee commented about how the backstory was a little to good to be true. In the sense that it is too perfectly mysterious with all the dead leads and haunting soft music and bounced checks and his general allure against all that he's kind of like the Bon Iver of reissued artists except way more compelling in every category.

t'would be great if bon iver started rocking lewis' sartorial sense

And similarly embraced anonymous obscurity.

"What happened to that guy?"

"THERE NEVER WAS THAT GUY."

wait so there's a 2nd album thats getting a reissue??

As we're talking about just upthread...

No that's Dustin Hoffman up there.

maybe lewis is gonna start to sponsor a super obscure small batch whiskey that was only made for one week during the '70s.

http://cdn.stereogum.com/files/2011/12/avalanches-boniver.jpg

maybe lewis is gonna start to sponsor a super obscure small batch whiskey that was only made for one week during the '70s alone in a secluded cabin.

I'm making my way through the hpn thread about L'Amour now, and some artist called Thomas (or THOMAS) keeps coming up as comparison point. can anyone shed any light on what they're talking about? for obvious reasons this is a pretty tough one to google.

also I would recommend Robert Lester Folsom's "Music And Dreams" to anyone who digs this album. it's less ethereally beautiful than L'Amour - then again, the same could be said of pretty much everything in the universe - but if you like gorgeous found-object private-press records, it'll do you right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZIkdqkH-7A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUCcLLbF0O8

fyi http://isthisthomas.bandcamp.com/music

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LEWIS-LAMOUR-his-2nd-lp-LEWIS-BALOUE-Romantic-Times-R-A-W-private-synth-folk-/181469207601?pt=Music_on_Vinyl&hash=item2a40685c31

wow

whoa

daaaamn

Fuuuck

my grails are ;_;

The statement that the albums won't be re-pressed feels like *pressure* to buy the second album when I want to live with the first one for a while.

― djh

When I read what they said about not re-pressing them I ordered the Romantic Times vinyl straight away. It came with a download which I now have on my iTunes but don't plan on listening to it for a while. I'm obsessing over L'Amour right now and want to spend a lot more time with it until I hear the second album.

The L'Amour vinyl has just gone out of stock on Amazon by the way and no sellers seem to have it anymore.

they still had a copy of l'amour on cd at my local record store. i thought about picking it up, since i've only heard it on spotify, but for whatever reason i changed my mind.

I ordered L'Amour from LITA a few days ago and it said they'd be delivered early September. Are those coming now or did they cancel that pressing?

Hey guys I found the 3rd Lewis album. Plz send me $5000 plus nipples

Lewis - L'Ane?

New Lewis. I'm guessing the title's actually supposed to be "Heartbreak":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcor3spv3cE&feature=youtu.be

lol

Somebody please please please stick a microphone in front of this guy pronto and ask him to strum and sing the songs he's been working on for 40+ years. I get the feeling hearing Randy/Lewis in his older years could be just as singular and otherworldly and special as he was around Romantic Times times.

― Bloody Pelt Found Near the Scene of the Crime (Skrot Montague), Friday, August 8, 2014 10:31 PM (6 days ago)

http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-colbert.gif

I think this recording is from the late 90s or early 00s. From the sessions in Canada.

he sounds like a muppet?

I think this recording is from the late 90s or early 00s. From the sessions in Canada.

ah. hopefully his unreleased material is stronger, because I'm really not feeling the blues thing. it's funny how the video is captioned "From The Album 'Mystery Man'" -- I wonder if he recorded an entire album in Canada or if that's just a joke on the part of the uploader/producer.

That Youtube is exactly why this mystery should have just remained a mystery.

Sounds like a Robert Plant impression.

I think that YT is a joke, no?

from a vid uploaded in 2012:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utlLjnP9kVE&feature=youtu.be&t=50s

(50 seconds in if timestamp doesn't work)

aka lewis aka randy duke

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100210215905/parksandrecreation/images/thumb/7/7a/Duke_Silver.jpg/250px-Duke_Silver.jpg

Shoobee doo wop

http://31.media.tumblr.com/11e25142d4a96f00c76f492dd5211497/tumblr_naezhxDygG1qjuy9xo1_500.png

yeah stockbrokers just cán't possibly have feelings. (didn't Jandek used to be a stockbroker)

for the record: i think L'Amour is absolutely beautiful, but that 2nd album... woah, laughable. if you'd buy that one in a thrift shop (if only!) you'd think, 'well at least the cover is cool!'

Is Brinkley actually hinting at being the "beautiful girl/model" that was with Lewis at the recording of L'Amour?

there's a dedication to Brinkley on the album sleeve

Billy J'oel

Dang, didn't catch that at first crut

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/emperor-ice-cream

^An insurance executive who concealed multiverses

(Or was he a banker)

http://www.factmag.com/2014/08/27/a-third-lp-from-elusive-crooner-lewis-has-surfaced/

more like lewis nae more amirite

And yet MORE Lewis

http://www.fiascobros.com/lewis_randy_duke.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULD82AApJpo

Those are old Randy Duke albums that someone is digitally bootlegging as "Lewis" records

nothing beats L'amour

I thought Randy Duke was Lewis?

yes, but those are not "MORE Lewis", nor anything that he wanted released under that name, nor with those covers

ok well it's the same guy.

dudes you are never going to believe what i found in the record store today

http://blog.clearvisionstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Duke+Definitive+Edition+Remaster+dukedefremastered.jpg

how's Hawaiian Breeze? anyone?

http://i.imgur.com/aVBJWHV.jpg

xpost -- I like it! As opposed to that other collection of Randy Duke stuff, which is good but more straightforward, just him and guitar, Hawaiian Dream has more production in general, fuller arrangements, even a backing singer and one song with a total Epic Rock Solo. It's almost something that follows on from Romantic Times.

Meantime, well worth reading this latest from Kaleb Horton.

http://bitterempire.com/best-music-story-2014/

Lewis is a 2014 artist in the same way Robert Johnson was a ‘60s artist. Sure, they verifiably existed a few decades earlier, but they were around without any myth or campfire stories or PR curation, and nobody really knew about the records.

er... nobody but some black people buying blues records in the 1930s. i know this is just an analogy but it reeks of the whole "it doesn't exist until people I know (=white hipsters) know about it!" thing.

btw at this point i don't really care about the back story all that much, i just think they're compelling and pretty sui generis records. nice use of synths.

xp it's immensely more complicated than that as per race records of course...
http://www.pbs.org/jazz/exchange/exchange_race_records.htm
... but this is probably a poor place for that conversation

well, yeah (johnson's records were released when sales were pretty bad IIRC) -- but the idea that somehow robert johnson was completely unknown before the 1960s is a little nagl.

IMO "Hawaiian Breeze" is much more engaging and wonderful than "Love Ain't No Mystery." As I get more familiar with it, I'm starting to sense it might even be as good as "Romantic Times" (though probably not quite up to "L'Amour" levels). There are less tics in his voice on the new one, but he really sounds great throughout. The weird ultra-delay effect on his voice adds an interesting new touch. Not to mention the arrangements are quite bonkers.

And a new interview, kinda. In...Maxim?

http://www.maxim.com/entertainment/music/article/looking-lewis

How had Lewis gone from making such ethereal compositions to putting out such dreck?

lol

that's kind of mean! although it sounds like lewis himself will never read that so i guess no harm done.

also it immediately points out that he didn't make those records

control+F "Climate of Hunter"