Jean-Claude Vannier

Temporary Super Offer! To mark its 2015 ten-year anniversary, the Finders Keepers label presents an improved, remastered repress, with updated liner notes in a gatefold sleeve, of its first release, a reissue of Jean-Claude Vannier's 1972 album L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches. At the time of the 2005 reissue the resurgence of '60s Gallic pop, once known as yé-yé music, had escalated beyond an interstellar height. Without a shadow of doubt, the flagship LP with the best odds on becoming a discerning household object was Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971) by one Serge Gainsbourg, an inimitable 45-minute concept LP handcrafted by a bass-driven psychedelic rock group and a heaven-sent 1001-piece orchestral and choral symphony. The album left hip hop producers and progressive rock aficionados crying out for more and more for years to come. This LP was in a league of its very own... or was it? The seldom-sung musical arranger for Melody Nelson, Jean-Claude Vannier, is the lesser-spotted tell-tale seal of sample-friendly quality when it comes to crate-digging "en Français." Suitably, rumors among French record dealers claiming "the band who played Melody Nelson recorded a follow-up LP" became a legend of psychedelic folklore. Another unconfirmed rumor about JCV taking the remaining outtakes of the beloved Melody Nelson to create a promo-only experimental rock LP left sample-hungry producers and DJs in turmoil... The answers to these mysteries lay between the gatefold sleeve of an undiscovered conceptual album bizarrely titled L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches by a custom-built avant-rock entourage called Insolitudes. So here we have it. For record-collectors looking for that special something, this LP contains the extra-special everything. Peruse the following genres: psychedelic, classical, soundtrack, jazz, hip hop, samples, avant-garde, funk. Then place a copy of L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches in each section. History notes that when M. Gainsbourg first heard the initial bones of this LP he took his poetic pencil to paper and composed bizarre liner notes, thus consummating the most extraordinary concept album of all time. The story "The Child Assassin of the Flies" was to be included as the only information to grace the LP's highly collectible concertina-gatefold sleeve. The story in full is reproduced in its native tongue on this very special re-release package. DJs and producers such as Jim O'Rourke, Stereolab's Tim Gane, and David Holmes have spent sleepless nights in perusal of original copies of this perfect release and now regard it as "One of the Best."