The Clientele

Merge Records release I Am Not There Anymore, The Clientele’s first new record in six years. Over The Clientele’s 32-year career, critics and fans have described their songs with words like “ethereal,” “shimmering,” “hazy,” “pretty,” and “fragile.” Their singer, guitarist, and lyricist, Alasdair MacLean, has his own interpretation of the effect his music creates. “It’s that feeling of not being there,” he says. “What’s really been in all the Clientele records is a sense of not actually inhabiting the moment your body is in.”

On the first full album in seven years from the softly psychedelic British band, they’ve left something behind in the quest to recapture the essence of the Clientele.

BBC - Storyville: The Paris Brothel (2003)
PDTV | 720x400 | .AVI/DivX @ 867 Kbps | 58mn 15s | Audio: English AC3 224 kbps, 2 channels | Subs: None | 459 MiB
Genre: Documentary

An exploration of Paris' 'maison close', the unique state-authorised, high-class brothels that Napoleon set up and which existed until 1948.
Mark Kidel's astonishing film recaptures a lost French tradition. Nowadays it would simply be called sex tourism; but in the 1920s and 30s people did speak about brothels with awe. These were enormous facilities, often with a restaurant conveniently situated downstairs. Many French women, including Edith Piaf serviced the clientele, which was rich and French, as well as rich and foreign. Of course there were cheaper brothels for working men. George Orwell's remark that 1930s France was "midway between a museum and a brothel" turns out to have been literally true. But this is a wonderful film because it tells you about the French attitude. What other culture would have the courage or indifference to establish the sex trade at its heart?