Saint Etienne released Fox Base Alpha in 1991, when I was aged 5. And I’m sad to say, that for the rest of my life the album passed me by. However, this does, in a way, make me the prime target audience for Richard X’s remix of the album –updating a classic album with a new lease of knob-twiddling life.

So when it comes to what’s been added, taken away, nipped, tucked, surgically enhanced or simply desecrated, I really couldn’t tell you. Judging the calibre of the artists involved though, I can’t imagine that there’s any kind of defilement going on. Continue Reading

Air France

In conjunction with the release of Foxbase Beta (Richard X’s fantastic re-working of Saint Etienne’s legendary 1992 debut Foxbase Alpha), Heavenly Records have also released a limited edition 12″ entitled the Foxbase Beta EP which features an extended mix of ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’. The main event on the EP though is the remix of ‘Spring’ by Gothenburg based production duo and friends of TLOBF: Air France.

Never to shy away from their love for Etienne, with the sound and influence of the seminal London trio strewn across AF’s recordings and infamous DJ sets, Joel and Henrik were asked to remix ‘Spring’ after Saint Etienne personally invited them to DJ for them at their Bloomsbury Ballroom shows back in May. What they came up with can only be described as a balearic masterpiece, which is why we’re thrilled to be able to offer the track exclusively on TLOBF. The only catch – you can only grab it for the next 48 hours… so act fast before you miss out! The mp3 has now been removed from our server… Told you to act fast! You can still stream the song in full below, though.

I got in touch with Joel and Henrik earlier today to ask them what the original song meant to them. Their response: “This is the answer to our prayers. ‘Spring’ is the song we fucked to when we were eleven and took rohypnol raw”.

Thanks chaps.

Air France are currently holed up in their Gothenburg studio recording the follow up to last years triumphant No Way Down EP.

The Charlatans will crown the month long celebrations at The Social.

In 1999 The Social opened in Little Portland Street – at the heart of London’s West End. Originally the brainchild of Heavenly Records whose offshoots included a highly successful underground club night (“The Heavenly Social Club”) held at The Albany pub (which launched the careers of The Chemical Brothers). The Social, named after the aforementioned club night was set up with a simple manifesto – to provide great music and better booze to anyone who fancied tripping through the doors.

Ten years later and still run by the original team who created it – Heavenly Recordings & The Breakfast Group – the bar is an award winning London institution. Designed back then by a partnership of David Adjaye and Will Russell (now of Pentagram) with the proviso of withstanding nuclear attack or – at the very least – the worst that people could chuck at it, The Social has launched over a million hugely successful hangovers. Including several here at TLOBF towers.

Throughout October, The Social is holding a month long party to celebrate its tenth birthday. Here, we’re thrilled to announce the full lineup which includes extra special performances from The Charlatans, Saint Etienne, Magic Numbers and Annie. Not to mention TLOBF’s club night ILL FIT – which moves from East London boozer the Old Blue Last to The Social on October 20th.

Full details on all events below, events likely to sell out quickly are highlighted in pink.: Continue Reading

Photo credit: Ket Majmudar

Latitude is routinely referred to as the middle-class festival. By which they mean there’s a poetry tent, Kasabian won’t be playing and nobody’s going to throw beer over you. Henham Park, a calf-shredding venue that enforces a 25 minute walk from entrance to main arena, has its own natural beauty that contributes to affairs. With a lake and wooded areas, as well as the little touches around all that (from artworks to orchestral performances on a lakeside stage to the celebrated coloured sheep) it gives Latitude a cosmopolitan touch. The weather had a go at spoiling proceedings with daily overnight rainstorms, but average temperatures remained high and even the most trampled on parts somehow remained merely spongy rather than outright muddy. Latitude has the air of an overgrown family-friendly event, and apart from the odd strain of Skins kids, there’s very little to fear from your surroundings, littered as they are with the artistically curious and the weekend day-tripper. Continue Reading

Much loved pop trio Saint Etienne returned earlier this year with their London Conversations album. It was a comprehensive anthology which tracked their career and hit home how revered and influential their melancholic Anglo electro-pop has been.

A deluxe reissue campaign of their whole back catalogue is now imminent, with each original album featuring a bonus cd of b-sides, rare tracks, and unreleased material. These will be released in pairs over the next few months.

First up are Foxbase Alpha – their genre-defining debut album of cut-ups, sampledelia, and hugely melodic pop – and Continental. This was the parent album to pan-European hit ‘He’s on the Phone’, but was only released in Japan, for dark and mysterious reasons, back in 1997. It gets its first domestic release (and its first Heavenly catalogue number) this year.

Saint Etienne will be playing Foxbase Alpha in its entirety at the following shows in May:
13 Glasgow ABC
14 Sheffield Leadmill
15 London Bloomsbury Ballroom
16 London Bloomsbury Ballroom

Following on from these inaugural re-issues will be So Tough and Sound of Water in the summer, Tiger Bay and Finisterre in the autumn, and Good Humour and Tales from Turnpike House in early 2010, along with all of their remixes on Casino Classics.

Foxbase Alpha Deluxe Edition:
CD1 – Orignial Album
This Is Radio Etienne
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Wilson
Carnt Sleep
Girl VII
Spring
She’s The One
Stoned To Say The Least
Nothing Can Stop Us Now
Etienne Gonna Die
London Belongs To Me
Like The Swallow
Dilworth’s Theme

CD2 – Bonus Material
Kiss & Make Up – 12″ Version
Filthy
Chase HQ *
Sally Space *
The Reckoning *
Speedwell
Parliment Hill
People Get Real
Sweet Pea *
Winter In America *
Fake 88
Studio Kinda Filthy
Kiss And Make Up – Sarah Version
Sky’s Dead
* previously unrelease

Continental Deluxe Edition:
CD1 – Orignial Album
Shad Times
Burnt Out Car
Sometimes In Winter
Winter Melody
Public Info Film
The Process
He’s On The Phone
Stormtrooper In Drag
Star
Down By The Sea
The Sea
Lonesome
Angel

CD2 – Bonus Material
Accident
Is It True?
Where Did Our Love Go – Demo *
Groveley Road
How I Learned To Love The Bomb
Postal Interlude *
Cant Stop Now
Under Her Spell *
Saturday Remixed
Suburban Autumn Lieutenant
We Could Have It All – Demo *
Lover Plays The Bass
Home – Demo
Burnt Out Car – Demo
* previously unreleased

Saint Etienne has occupied a particular niche in British indie, long flirting with the mainstream but never quite breaking into it, maintaining a certain fashionable credibility all the while. Marrying a 60s (French) pop sensibility to post-acid house dance beats, Saint Etienne were committed to the ideal of the 3-minute ‘pure pop’ song. London Conversations, their Best Of, is often a nostalgic listen, reflecting particular music fashions in the capital for more than a decade: from the fantastic, early 90s indie-dance ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ (a Neil Young cover) and the breezy electro-house of ‘Like A Motorway’, to flirtations with acid jazz, chamber pop, neo-soul, trip hop and Balearic. It’s a contemporaneous affair: the Italian-house of ‘He’s On the Phone’ – a style revisited periodically throughout their career - sounds most dated now, while ‘Filthy’ transports me to the Heavenly Social circa 1994, when the Chemical Brothers were the Dust Brothers and Big Beat provided a beery dancefloor alternative to Britpop. Continue Reading

Saint Etienne, the much-loved trio who soundtracked London in the nineties, will have their career, in all its multi-layered, multi-coloured glory reviewed on London Conversations – a Very Best Of collection out September 29th.
Continue Reading