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The chic French collective Nouvelle Vague announced itself to the world just four years ago in singular fashion, boldly re-minting New Wave classics in bossa nova arrangements that turned the dour, disaffected post-Punk ethic on its strutting, hard-done-by head.
Last year's Late Night Tales ventured further a field, taking well-tempered forays into jazz, contemporary classical and country-and-western to similarly bizarre but no less bewitching effect. And now co-founder Marc Collin has taken the revisionist thrust into an even stranger arena as he sets out to change the way we feel about 1980's film soundtracks. No, really.
If Hollywood, Mon Amour seems a disconcertingly tongue-lodged-firmly-in-cheek title for a collection that ranges from Arthur to Footloose to Rocky III, with startling detours en route, it does a disservice to the cleverly selected, lovingly re-assembled, brightly polished examples of Hollywood theme songs contained within.
Stripped of their overblown archness and preening bombast, and re-clothed in dreamy, husky-voiced, lounge-lite arrangements, virtually all of the baker's-dozen compendium suddenly seems more appealing, delicious and digestible than you might imagine.
Lifted from the American Gigolo soundtrack, Blondie's Call Me lends itself to a gently elasticated treatment that, by turns, stretches and compresses the original into a compelling echo caught on the wind. The title track to Footloose is persuasively translated into a hymnal to American jive and Duran Duran's Bond theme, A View To A Kill, suddenly becomes a sophisticated torch song with ex-Morcheeba frontwoman Skye silky smooth and flirtatiously seductive. Most unsettling of all, however, Arthur's Best That You Can Do has its saccharine plasticity sucked out of it and replaced with a sweet, sugary sincerity that becomes irresistibly hypnotic.
Such is Collin's cachet, that Hollywood rock chic Juliette Lewis also pops up with a pared-down, paced-back This Is Not America that calls to mind a mellow Marianne Faithfull. It's just one of the many surprises (Rocky III's quietly intense The Eye Of The Tiger and a beautiful, dark-edged When Doves Cry not least) on an album that, by rights, shouldn't have worked, but does. And sublimely so. - BBC Online
Discography
(Not Complete)
Hollywood Mon Amore - CD Release on Perfect Kiss
Nouvelle Vague - I melt with you / Teenage Kicks - FLAC Release / MP3 Release
Late Night Tales - Nouvelle Vague- CD and 7¨ Release
Nouvelle Vague - Bandé A Part - CD & LP Release on Perfect Kiss
Nouvelle Vague - The Killing Moon / Dancing with myself 10¨Release
Nouvelle Vague - Ever Fallen in Love / Fade To Grey 10¨Release
Nouvelle Vague - Nouvelle Vague - CD & Lp Release
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Bio
Hollywood, mon amour (some people will undoubtedly see an allusion to French cinema here), is a collection of the greatest songs from the movies of the 80s rearranged by Marc Collin, Nouvelle Vagues producer.
Hollywood, mon amour - album to be released early october all over the world
Rock and pop have reached and passed the ripe old age of 50 yes, theyve aged and now seem to be retracing their steps somewhat to their golden past.
Like Nouvelle Vague, Hollywood, Mon amour revisits a genre, a period, retaining only the basic skeleton of the songs (melody and lyrics) to demonstrate that by arranging them differently they can take on a new life while still respecting the original. The titles are, certainly for my generation, classics in their genre.
For this project my attention was drawn to the songs featured in the movies of the 80s, those mainly produced in Hollywood strangely enough, you come across quite a lot of bands from the post punk era whose success led them to writing songs for feature films Blondie comes to mind, Simple Minds, The Human league, Duran Duran and their godfather, David Bowie. Even if all these songs were a huge success, and will always remain classics, nowadays they suffer from having that typical end of the 80s sound which isnt any longer of our times.
John Barry is hailed by one and all for the film music he composed in the 60s, 70s right up until the 90s, and while Diamonds are Forever or Goldfinger are the first songs that spring to mind, what about A View to A Kill, written like the others for a Bond film in 85 and performed by Duran Duran? Barrys musical star has certainly not waned since then, its still there, possibly hidden somewhat by (perhaps) a little too much make-up. So, lets imagine what A View to A Kill would have sounded like if Barry had produced it 10 years earlier
Well, here is not history revisited, but a part of musical history rewritten that all came about while rearranging the songs from the movies of the 80s, each time imagining a different story and a different era. For the project I surrounded myself with the finest voices I have had the pleasure to come across recently: Skye, Juliette Lewis, Cibelle, Yael Naim, Dea Li, Katrine Ottosen, Nadeah, Leelou,Nancy Danino, Bianca Calandra
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