(proposed for the launch of PTW in late ‘06 or early '07, with comp chosen over reissued, expanded originals---most of which were better---because of its relatively late '06 release date, I think, but still deemed too old)
Lizzy Mercier Descloux: Best OFF (ZE)
In 1979, NYC's ultrahip ZE Records issued Press Color, the debut album of Parisienne expat painter et post-punkette Lizzy Mercier Descloux. It was pretty good punky funky no (-ish) wave. But the most striking thing about the early songs invited to ZE's new Lizzy fair, Best OFF, is the way their parsing paisley parsley and bodyhair telegraphy grow through the French, South American, Caribbean and African elements of LDM's Eiffel of a peak. For instance, Best OFF offers a juicy slice of 1984's Soweto-collaborative, bollocks-to-apartheid Zulu Rock, which ZE has also reissued, with several bonus tracks. Wherever she goes, Descloux sounds far too at home to be satisfied, but there's a nervous delight in her flight, though it's never unsteady. She often suggests the artist as discreetly caffeinated spectator, responding to the multiplying dimensions in her pulsating frames. Descloux (who moved to the West Indies in the 90s, and kept painting, right up until her 2004 death from cancer) even molds bullets from samples of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker's narcotic blue satori, which remains undisturbed, of course. Opposites attract, eternally.
In 1979, NYC's ultrahip ZE Records issued Press Color, the debut album of Parisienne expat painter et post-punkette Lizzy Mercier Descloux. It was pretty good punky funky no (-ish) wave. But the most striking thing about the early songs invited to ZE's new Lizzy fair, Best OFF, is the way their parsing paisley parsley and bodyhair telegraphy grow through the French, South American, Caribbean and African elements of LDM's Eiffel of a peak. For instance, Best OFF offers a juicy slice of 1984's Soweto-collaborative, bollocks-to-apartheid Zulu Rock, which ZE has also reissued, with several bonus tracks. Wherever she goes, Descloux sounds far too at home to be satisfied, but there's a nervous delight in her flight, though it's never unsteady. She often suggests the artist as discreetly caffeinated spectator, responding to the multiplying dimensions in her pulsating frames. Descloux (who moved to the West Indies in the 90s, and kept painting, right up until her 2004 death from cancer) even molds bullets from samples of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker's narcotic blue satori, which remains undisturbed, of course. Opposites attract, eternally.
(ZE site still "under construction" last time I checked, so for instance see
(update: in 2016, Pitchfork published Laura Snapes' informative, insightful, incisive profile of LMD: http://pitchfork.com/features/from-the-pitchfork-review/9828-lizzy-mercier-descloux-behind-the-muse/)
