The Parisian

The Parisian Lounge experts take care of the young: first CD of the Soul Brothers. Anyone who has been following the Buddha Bar series's recent publications has inevitably stumbled upon the Soul Brothers. At the compilation Buddha Bar Presents Armen Miran &Ravin they were represented directly twice: with the track Sheika and a Remix of the play Magnolia. And because the numbers proved such a catchy Groove, the Parisian Lounge experts simply entrusted the Soul Brothers times the compilation of an entire CD.

Frenchman Jean-Féry Rebel was introduced to the Parisian court as a child prodigy. He lived to enjoy a long and productive career as a violinist and composer. Commencing as a member of the court of Louis XIV, by 1699 Rebel has become first violinist of the Académie Royale de Musique. He journeyed to Spain the following year, and was given a place in the 24 Violons du Roy on his return in 1705. Rebel served as Court Composer, a Maître de Musique at the Académie and became director of the Concert Spirituel.

Jean Françaix: a quintessentially French composer following in the tradition of Saint-Saëns, Poulenc and Satie; composer of some one-hundred-and-fifty works; and virtuoso pianist in his own right. The four works on this recording were composed between 1942 (the Divertissement—very much a 'distraction' during the Nazi Occupation of France) and 1977 (the Clarinet Quintet). All four share a high degree of compositional mastery, but this is always embedded within an air of grace, of profound charm, and of wit. It is perhaps this sense of humour which has so endeared Françaix's music to generations of musicians and music-lovers. But despite the facts that L'heure du berger was composed in honour of a Parisian restaurant who were to use it as 'background' music, that Françaix self-deprecatingly passed off A huit as a 'stop-gap to fill a programme' for the Vienna Octet, and that the Divertissement contains unashamedly blatant musical jokes, these compositions are unmistakably the work of an expert, a distinctively 'Gallic' artist.

When the Mountain Goats got together in March 2020, it was to make not one album, but two. The idea was to again work with Matt Ross-Spang, the dashing Memphis wunderkind. Matt pitched we spend a week at Sam Phillips Recording, his home base in Memphis, followed by another at the storied Fame Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a plan that dovetailed nicely with John’s notion of corralling these songs into two complementary batches: one light, one dark.