LES FLEURS DU MAL - "LES FLEURS DU MAL" LP

Exactly what you want from 80’s DIY obscurity. It’s been impossible to find much information on this one, this is all we have - “Previously unreleased early 80's new wave punk featuring members from France and the UK.” And I’ll tell you, the mystery works for me. I’m obsessed. Contained within are five songs sounding like they were recorded to 4-Track. If you can imagine a blend between Desperate Bicycles and Les Rallizes Denudes, that’s what it feels like. The simple guitar lines disappear into the aether, the drums were definitely at the other end of the room and the vocals might have been recorded on a couch with eyes desperately closed to make oneself invisible. Musically it feels like all of the ideas could have come from the Joy Division catalogue, if you isolated that bass it would certainly pass as demo material for Peter ‘Hooky’ Hook and the lads, but the atmosphere is something else to be sure. The vocals, sung by a woman in what I think is French except for a few choice drops of venom in accented English, swing between being tender as a dew drop and rude protestations. If you are the type of person who enjoys letting your imagination run wild while you’re listening to a record, and you’re also a fan of that Cleaners From Venus all-cassettes-all-the-time sound quality, then I reckon you’ll be able to get as lost in this artefact as much as I currently am. There is no audio online that I’ve been able to find (if anyone reading has it on SLSK write me) but I will say that it is part of the charm. Access to nearly everything nearly all the time is cool, and you can call me old-fashioned, but digging through crates and reading about rarities you’ve never heard of then feeling the urgent need to seek it out is also pretty cool. In this instance, it feels right.