We seem to have a sudden burst of activity on the Air-Spin Offs front this month. Not content with pitching in with most of the music for deliciously downtempo Parisian flick-chick, Carlotte Gainsbourg’s new ‘5:55’ record (with Jarvis Cocker) and providing Jean-Benoit Dunckel a little timely R&R for his ‘Darkel’ solo project next month, those kindly night owls at Azuli Records have locked the lounge-loving duo in a room with all their favourite records and forced them to come up with twenty or so tracks that they consider perfect nocturnal entertainment for those of a timelessly laid-back disposition. And here they are plundering the archives of all that is soft, slinky and stringy with the emphasis pretty firmly on mellow gold: Scott Walker’s ‘The Old Man’s Back Again’, Japan’s ‘Ghosts’, The Cure’s ‘All Cats Are Grey’, Minnie Ripperton’s ‘Loving You’, Elliot Smith’s ‘Let’s Get Lost’ and The Band’s ‘I Shall Be Released’. Unsurprisingly, there’s also a few twists, not least the sleepily psychedelic ‘Planet Caravan’ from Black Sabbath, the eerie, tortured nursery of Nino Rota’s ‘O’ Venezia Venega Venusia’, Jeff Alexander’s sobbing lament ‘Come Wander With Me’ (taken from an episode of the American television anthology series, The Twilight Zone) and Lee Hazelwood’s cool and nonchalant, ‘My Autumn’s Done Come’.
Whether due to copyright issues, or an indication of the duo rethinking the overall concept of the album, it’s interesting to see that Devo’s ‘Mongoloid’, the Who’s ‘Tattoo’, Joe Jackson’s ‘It’s Different For Girls’, Blur’s ‘Out Of Time’ and Dusty Springfield’s ‘Song For You’ didn’t make it onto the album as orginally planned. However, my own hunch is that Jarvis Cocker’s seminal mixtape selection’The Trip’ had something more to do with it. And quite rightly.
A sumptuous, sountracky selection of seamless melancholia. Perfect for any occasion, not just late nights.