My love for Serge Gainsbourg's 1971 masterpiece "Histoire de Melody Nelson" is immortalized forever in the default username and password for Movable Type ("Melody" and "Nelson," respectively). I can't state enough how amazing "Histoire" [1] is.
But of course, the only bad thing about "Histoire" is that there's only one such album. Gainsbourg's entire catalog is incredible, of course, but for that mix of psychedelic guitar, deep funky bass, and spooky choirs, there's nothing quite like "Histoire".
Or... maybe not!
Because just last weekend at Amoeba, I picked up the recently-reissued "L'Enfant Assasin Des Mouches" [2] by Jean-Claude Vannier, who arranged and produced "Histoire de Melody Nelson." And it's even more fucked-up and psychedelic than the Gainsbourg album! The story (written by Gainsbourg), basically, is about a child who tortures flies, & who then descends into a fly kingdom where he's tortured and eventually killed by the flies.
Of course, it doesn't have Serge's louche vocals or the lyrical narrative, but musically, it sounds like a mix of "Histoire" and Gainsbourg's 1970 score to the film "Cannabis," in which he also starred along with Jane Birkin (and which Vannier also had a hand in, incidentally). Lots of guitar, strings, and spooky choirs. Very much recommended!
[1] Which I'll call the album throughout the rest of this post, BTW, because it takes too long to write the entire album name, and it's too confusing if I were just to write "Melody Nelson", because there are a number of songs on the album named that or something like it.
[2] "The Child Fly-Killer"
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