Fruits de Mer Records

In the world of cinema, remakes are usually dismissed as a sign of the lack of creativity within the film industry moneymaking machine. The same can’t be said for music. If an artist covers another’s tune it’s called a tribute, and, dependant upon the song and diversity of the arrangement or “reinterpretation”, sometimes hailed as a “work of genius”.

So what if you’re a record label and all you do is release modern re-recordings of psychedelic, prog rock and acid-folk tunes from the late 60s and 70s? Well Fruits de Mer Records is one such label (possibly the only such label), and like the bumblebee with its disproportionate bodyweight to wingspan ratio, it shouldn’t work, but somehow does.

Fruits de Mer Records put out these little curios on limited edition, coloured 7″ vinyl, harking back to the age of the A-side and B-sided single with a repertoire of songs from such HFoS-friendly acts as The Zombies, Van der Graaf Generator, Caravan and The Rolling Stones.

Performing these tracks are a variety of modern day psych and prog apologists, including The Flaming Gnomes, Vibravoid and Stay; and in the case of Mark Fry, the original artist re-recording tracks from his seminal, though relatively obscure, acid-folk reverie Dreaming With Alice.

The 11-track sampler sent to HFoS towers absolutely bristles with energy, as these new acts inject old favourites with a renewed vigour, rendering something that sounds nowhere near as bad as the concept might suggest.

For instance, Schizo Fun Addict’s version of The Small Faces’ ‘Ogden’s Gone Nut Flake’ adds an ethereal female vocal,  whilst cutting back on the original’s heavy phasing, firing it onto a new plain. Elsewhere, the aforementioned Stay, a neo-psych band from Spain, take credible shots at Strawberry Alarm Clock’s ‘Rainy Day, Mushroom Pillow’ and The Rolling Stones’ ‘2000 Light Years From Home‘.

Mark Fry’s version of the haunting title track from his Dreaming With Alice album is notable for appearing in one continuous form as opposed to the fragmented, album-straddling original, but loses nothing for it, sounding as though it was recorded in 1968 (despite the original album’s slightly out of time recording of 1972). Juxtaposing this gentleness is the barking mad, phased out psychedelic rock of Cranium Pie, chucking out a blistering rendition of Dantalian’s Chariot’s ‘Madman Running Through the Field’, complete with spectral vocodered chorus and backwards vocals.

Fruits de Mer and its roster of artists are doing a splendid job. Their multicoloured range of mind-bending musical platters is well worth checking out.

You can find out more at the Fruits de Mer website or sample some of the tracks on their MySpace page.

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feature, prog rock, psychedelic rock