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CD
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LITA 139CD
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"Remastered from the original tapes. Essay by 'Punk Professor' Vivien Goldman, interviewing key players. CD includes full album plus 2 bonus tracks. By the time poet, singer-songwriter, and artist Lizzy Mercier Descloux recorded 1984's Zulu Rock, she'd marked herself out as both a globe trotter with more passport stamps than Tintin and a musical innovator whose loose, arty spirit could be applied to styles as varied as no wave, Bavarian oompa and Soweto jive. She'd also established a tight-knit threesome with muse/former lover Michel Esteban and producer/on-off lover Adam Kidron, who all reunited to follow Zulu Rock -- a surprise hit in her native France -- with something that, once again, represented a complete about-turn. The location, this time, was Rio De Janeiro, a suitably exotic location to follow their sojourn in Soweto given that Brazil had recently emerged from twenty years of dictatorship. But unlike Zulu Rock's broad appropriation of the local sound, One For The Soul borrows very liberally from Brazilian culture. The aim, says Kidron, was to 'reimagine the blues', but Lizzy's musical essence was in flux. 'A Word Is A Wah' meshes reggae with her beloved accordion, 'Women Don't Like Me' is wild, new wave pop, and she even wanders into soul territory, with whispery lounge versions of Al Green's 'Simply Beautiful'. Most notable is the album's foray into jazz, and the fact that Chet Baker, the master jazz trumpeter, blew his last on 'Fog Horn Blues' and the sensuous 'Off Off Pleasure'. Rio was to be the last great hurrah of Lizzy and Michel's global recording adventures, and although work proceeded apace, the experience was often quite tense. 'The sessions were tough work,' says Kidron, in the new liner notes by Vivien Goldman accompanying this deluxe reissue. 'Lizzy never quite got singing, no matter how much she drank, and no matter how hard she tried. Chet was very much at the drug-ravaged end of his life and had very little stamina or dexterity left... but there is a deep, sad, lyrical tone to his performances on the album.' So fraught were the sessions, it's a miracle that such a cohesive, sparky record emerged. The record-buying public did not agree, and as the album crashed and burned, so did the relationship between its three heroes. Lizzy was, for the first time, about to take on the world alone -- and there was but one album left in her."
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LP
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LITA 139LP
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LP version. Includes download code for full album plus two bonus tracks.
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CD
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LITA 140CD
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"Remastered from the original tapes. Essay by 'Punk Professor' Vivien Goldman, interviewing key players. CD includes full album plus 6 bonus tracks. By the time bohemian singer/poet/artist Lizzy Mercier Descloux recorded her fifth album, 1988's Suspense, she'd enjoyed a recording career that was as far from the clichés of music lore as is possible, flitting between genres, continents and collaborators, enjoying great success and equally great failure and even stealing the final breaths of master trumpeter Chet Baker for 1986's One For The Soul. When she came to make Suspense -- reissued here as the final album in our series -- she was, for the first time, working without her longtime muse, partner and manager Michel Esteban, with whom she'd first moved from their native France to New York, where it all began. The pressure was on to repeat the success of 'Mais Où Sont Passées Les Gazelles', a smash hit in France, and Descloux's label were keen to make a conventional artist of her, pairing her with John Brand, an in-vogue producer with a style geared to a big, shiny 1980s chart sound -- an approach Lizzy had never experienced before, nor intended to. Recorded in Oxfordshire and Wales, it features songs recorded in both French and English, with lyrics by Mark Cunningham, the trumpet player of the avant-garde band MARS, and James Reyne, the Australian artist who co-wrote much of One For The Soul. In Vivien Goldman's new liner notes, Esteban notes that Suspense sounds 'less Lizzy than the other records, less open,' but in splitting herself into two -- English and Francophone -- the album has two personalities too; oddly, it shines a light on the real Descloux that her cultural experiments never did. Though the initial aim was to make a folky, acoustic album, the pop sound suited the singer, and 'A Room In New York' is as fine and sparky as AOR gets. But when early single 'Gueule D'Amour/Cry of Love' stiffed, EMI lost confidence and buried the LP. Bound by her contract to the label, Descloux moved away from music and focused on painting. She eventually settled in Corsica, the French island, where she died, aged 48, of cancer. Descloux's musical career ended, therefore, with the aptly titled Suspense. It was only a matter of time before this furiously creative artist's work was re-evaluated, and with these deluxe reissues, that time is now."
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LP
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LITA 140LP
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LP version. Includes download code for full album plus six bonus tracks.
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CD
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LITA 138CD
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"Remastered from the original tapes. Essay by 'Punk Professor' Vivien Goldman, interviewing key players. CD includes full album plus 5 bonus tracks. In the course of three albums, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, the rogue poet, artist, and singer-songwriter, travelled on a musical voyage from Manhattan (1979 debut Press Color) to The Bahamas (1981 follow-up Mambo Nassau) and apartheid South Africa (1984's Zulu Rock) -- a controversial cultural boycott in protest of the nation's racially divided society. One place Descloux had never visited was the pop charts, but that changed when 'Mais Où Sont Passées Les Gazelles? (Where Have The Gazelles Gone?)' -- a reworking of a South African Shangaan disco hit -- went all the way to the top spot in her native France, giving her a platform and a profile in the land she'd fled many years before. Recorded at Satbel Studios in Johannesburg, the album followed what her mentor Michel Esteban describes as 'an extraordinary adventure' through eastern Africa following the footsteps of 19th century poet Rimbaud through Sudan, Ethiopia, the East Coast. A socially conscious person, Descloux wanted to use her music to draw some attention to the situation in South Africa, even obliquely, but there were musical motivations too -- she was tapping into a hot and little-heard dance music in the aforementioned Shangaan disco, Soweto jive and mbaqanga, the style Malcolm McLaren had mined for his mash-up hit 'Duck Rock' a year before. The music of South Africa seduced, subsumed, and molded Lizzy, who sounds surer and more swinging than ever before throughout Zulu Rock, but credit must also go to British producer Adam Kidron, then best known for his work with Scritti Politti, who joined Esteban and Descloux for the entire African journey. Lizzy and Adam's was a battle of wills from the start, but his insistence on getting Lizzy to sing in a more conventional, tuneful way resulted in an emotional, ambitious, creative power struggle that delivered arguably her best vocals yet. In Vivien Goldman's new liner notes for this reissue, Kidron says: 'My first impression of Lizzy was that she couldn't sing but that she had that crazy Madonna, Neneh Cherry, Nina Hagen attitude thing going on and a magical way with words -- a marketer's gift for getting to the essence of a feeling or idea.' And for once, on this album, the marketing did itself."
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LP
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LITA 138LP
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LP version. Includes download code for full album plus five bonus tracks.
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CD
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ZE 025CD
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2016 restock; originally released in 2006. Ze Records presents a compilation of some of the best work from Lizzy Mercier Descloux. Having already established herself as Paris' punk muse as a correspondent for Rock News, in 1978 Lizzy Mercier Descloux moved permanently to New York City and took a huge empty loft in Soho with friends Patti Smith and Michel Esteban, who would later go on to found Ze Records. They used the space as a workshop to play guitar, produce art and music. Under this incredibly influential umbrella, Lizzy and DJ Banes started a pretty obscure and nervous combo called Rosa Yemen. Drawing from the fertile grounds of punk, new wave and avant garde from the likes of Arto Lindsay, Lydia Lunch, James Chance/White and the rest of the new Ze Records signings, Lizzy eventually produced her own infamous first full-length Press Color (1979), which sounded like nothing that came before it, with angular guitar raves, feminine punk scrawls, and African-influenced dance beats, all liberated by Lizzy's yelps. Her versions of "Fire" and "Mission Impossible" would soon fill the dance floors in Tokyo, London, Paris and Berlin, signalling the transition from the grit of punk to the cheekiness of New Wave. Lizzy continued to expand her palette by recording in the Bahamas, South America and South Africa, recruiting musicians who would bring their diverse worldbeat influences to develop soul/funk/dance/no wave crossbreed records of inimitable originality. For her second record, Mambo Nassau (1981), Lizzy would work with Steve Stanley (who would also work with Grace Jones, and the Tom Tom Club) and employ the talents of Wally Badarou (Herbie Hancock, Level 42, Black Uhuru) as well as no wave founding father Arto Lindsay. After much acclaim for her next record Gazelles (1984) which won Album of the Year award in Paris, she then went on to record One From the Soul, in which she collaborated with Brazilian musicians and jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. After one more somewhat unsuccessful release, and some appearances in films, Lizzy moved to the West Indies, devoting herself to her painting, though she would record one last, unreleased album in 1995. Best Off is a compilation of the most riveting of Lizzy's work, showcasing worldbeat, discordant punk, celebratory no wave, boisterous Latin-infused funk, to comprise a joyful, frenetic celebration of this pioneering, unforgettable artist.
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CD
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ZE 026CD
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2016 restock. 2006 reissue. This is the third record Lizzy Mercier Descloux recorded, originally released by CBS Records (France-only) as Gazelles in 1984, now repackaged by Ze Records, including five bonus tracks. After having spent the previous few years promoting the Mambo Nassau album, Lizzy became enamoured of her trips to Africa and its music: highlife, Zairian rumba, Manu Dibango's makossa, King Sunny Adé's Juju music and Fela Kuti's Afrobeat and Julius Levine's African pop. The music you will hear on Zulu Rock is as diverse as the blend of ethnic groups in South Africa itself: it is mbaganga -- which literally means "the poor South-African stew," a musical blend of different local styles and Anglo-Saxon pop. A heavy and emphatic bass line characterizes this sound, with a technique inspired by Zulu guitars. Against all expectations, the record was very well received in France, both by the critics, who awarded it Best Rock Album of the Year, and by the public. "Mais oét Passé Les Gazelles?" went on to be the unlikely hit single of summer 1984. .
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ZE 004CD
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2016 restock. First readily available CD issue of Descloux's 2nd album, originally issued in 1981 by Phillips (France). With 5 bonus tracks (including Arto Lindsay on 1 track). Fold-out digipak packaging, 16 page booklet of liner notes/photos. "After touring to promote Press Color, her debut album, with a funk band, Lizzy Mercier Descloux travelled to Europe with companion-film-maker Seth Tillett. They worked in Italy on a serie of short films where she played Anna Magnani, Suzanna Agnelli, filmed Renzo Rossellini at Cinecitta about the Emerginati movement, met Federico Fellini during the filming of Cita della donna, discovered the label Ocora (traditional music from all around the world) and with all this in mind started writing songs with help of drummer Bill Perry. In Paris they auditionned many African musicians cause after wild child funk the idea was to make a record malaxating african roots music, french buzz vocals, albatross swing and some bizarre soundtracks. The record was made in Nassau, Bahamas at Compass point, Island Records studios under kindness support of Chris Blackwell. Walli Badarou who worked there as a house musician with Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, joined Lizzy's band. Steve Stanley a young engineer from Jamaica who was also working on Grace Jones's album, produced the sound, he later also produced Tom Tom Club, Third World and lots of Island records.
Mambo Nassau was all instinctive pulsations, improvized energy. Each song is an attempt to mix the urban vibes of city like New York, raw tempo and acrobatic drum beats, african harmonies, hirsute guitars, heavy pulse of bass lines, anachronistic chants, derisive laughter, a blissfull ignorance of the rules of good taste. Music to snatch and glean with a big black sun in the middle of it. World music was not in the cards, it was a step by step adventure, everyday was a surprise, an uncompromizing ride, a motherfucking hot stew and they had the ocean to get lost.
Eric Clapton, who was recording next door, showed Lizzy his legendary guitars and she sang him an Edith Piaf song. Nassau is an island for Les millionnaires, drug center, casinos, American ladies looking for sex but Lizzy and the band lived like hermits in the studio, outside Lee Perry was talking to his tree and that was the best omen for a record. Fireflies music."
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12"
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ZE 1204EP
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2016 repress. "Before getting french national fame in 1984 with cult hit, 'Mais où sont passées les gazelles', Lizzy was in 78 a French boyish poetry cute girl singer living in New York and used to play in No Wave band Rosa Yemen. She also used to write in Rock News, one of the very first French 'Punk' magazine. Her first album Press Color was recorded in New York with Eric from Marie & Les Garçons. Her covers of 'Mission Impossible' and Arthur Brown's 'Fire' became club cult from New York, Tokyo to London. Press Color was released in 10 countries. Her second album was recorded in Nassau Bahamas in Island Studio Compass Point with collaboration of Walli Badarou and Tom Tom Club's Chris Stanley. Here's a 12'', a taster of both albums featuring the tracks 'Fire', 'Funky Stuff' & 2 versions of 'Mission Impossible".
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