(No Wave, Post-Punk, Avantgarde Pop, African, Soul-Jazz, Samba, Rumba) [WEB] Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Collection (3CD) - 1984-1988 (reissue 2016), FLAC (tracks), lossless

SOUND
Produced by Adam Kidron
Associate Producer Michel Esteban
Executive Produced Michel Esteban
This reissue 2006 Selected & Produced by Michel Esteban
Digitaly Remasterd 2006 from analogue master tapes
by Charlus de la Salle at South Factory Studio
The copyright of this selection Sound & Artwork is owned by ZE records
MUSICIANS
SOUTH AFRICA
Sammy Kiaas • Guitar
Richard "bugzie" Hadebe • Guitar
David Mabaso • Bass
Desmond Malotana • Organ
Domesani • Organ
Hayward (Maichala) Mahlangu • Percussions
Fats Mlangeni • Drums
Allian David • Accordion
Javas Magubane • Sax
Thomas Phale • Sax
The Tiyimeleni Youngs Sisters • Background vocals
The Roadworkers • Background vocals
Peter Mottico • Whistle & Background vocals
John Galanakis • Music co-ordinator
Recorded at Satbel Studio, Johanesburg, South Africa 1983
Phil Audoire • Engineer
Special Thanks to Peter Mottico & Julius Levine
MUSICIANS
LONDON
Steve Siewell • Trumpet
David Snell • Harp
Henry Krein • Accordion on « Les Dents de L'Amour »
« Momo in My Mind » & « Wakwazulu Kwezizulu Rock »
Ross McFarlane • on « Les Dents de L'Amour »
Ross Me Kein • Background Vocals
Cassia Kidron • Background Vocal
Aditional Recording & Mixing at Berry Street Studio, London 1984
Brad & Brian • Engineer
Steve • Mixing Engineer
Original sound recording made by CBS ©1984

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In the course of three albums, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, the rogue poet, artist, and singer-songwriter, traveled 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.

MUSICIANS
Lizzy Mercier Descloux • Lead vocals
Drums • Billy Perry & Paulo Braga
Bass • Jamil Jones Dos Santos / Jorge Degas / Harry Bruce
Cavaquinho • Alceu Maia
Accoustic Guitar • Doudeth "Neco" de Azevedo
Electric Guitar • Vitor Biglione & Zeppa
Percussions • Djalma Correa / Marcelo Salazar
/ Paulo « chacal » Périra / Alceu Maia
Saxophones • Leonardo Gandelman
Bass Clarinette • Moacyr Marques da Silva
Trumpet • Chet Baker
Accordéon • Sivuca
Piano • Luiz Femando M. Lima
Keyboards • Vincent Bouvot
Violin • Michel Cron
Backing Vocals • Jose Luiz Mazziotti / Chet Baker / Alcieu Maia /
Adam Kidron / Slim Batteux / Lorenza Tohnson / Lizzy
SOUND
Recorded at Polygram studios Rio de Janeiro, Brasil July / August 1985
Engineer Marcio Gama.
Oringinaly Mixed at Marcadet studio, Paris Sept./Oct.1985
Engineer Olivier de Bosson
Tracks 4/5/8/10/12/13 remixed by Dominique Blanc-Francard
Project co-ordinator, Associate Producer & Executive producer Michel Esteban
Produced by Adam Kidron
Remixed & Remastered by Charlus de la Salle 2008, South Factory Studio
Original Sound Recording Made by Polydor © 1985
Licenced to ZE records © 2004
This compilation Selected and Produced by Michel Esteban
(p) & © 2009 ZE Records Mundo Ltda

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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 5 tracks including “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.

MUSICIANS
Lizzy Mercier Descloux • Lead & Backing Vocals
Bruce Smith • Drums
Durban Betancourt Laverde • Bass
Greg Jiritano • Brass Master, Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Dobro Guitar
Mark Cunningham • Trumpet, Bass & Keyboard on « Once Upon aTime Out »
Geoffrey Scantlebury • Percussions
Kim Burton • Accordion
Bernie Clarke • Piano, Organ, Keyboards
Julian Stewart Lindsay • Keyboards, Programmation Fairlight
David Munday • Guitar, Keyboards , Harmonica on « A Room In New York »
Stuart Gordon • Viola, Violin, Cello
Tim Sanders • Tenor Sax & Soprano Sax
Constanza Burg • Clarinet Bass
Marilyn Davis • Backing Vocals
Sandy McLelland • Backing Vocals
Volodia Boukortt • Backing Vocals on « La Voie Lactée »,
Roddy Lorimer • Trumpet on « Gueule d’Amour » , « La Voie Lactée »,
& Bugle on « L ‘Heure Bleue »
SOUND
Recorded at Loco Studio, Walles, Georgetown Studio Sutton Courrtenay/
Firehouse London • Engineer John Brand • Assistant Chris Hufford •
Mixed by John Brand at EMI Studio, Paris • Assistant Jacques Ehrhert & Volodia Boukortt
Producer by John Brand, Mark Cunningham & Lizzy Mercier Descloux
Remastered by Charlus de la Salle 2008, South Factory Studio
Original sound recording made by Polydor © 1988
Licenced to ZE records © 2004
This compilation Selected and Produced by Michel Esteban
(p) & ©2016 ZE Records

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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.