5. Les Compagnons De La Chanson‘Les Trois Cloches (The Three Bells)’ / ‘Ave Maria’
It’s a beautiful piece of heaven, sung in French which mystified and hypnotised me even more. Any foreign language when I was a kid transported me to faraway places. I’d always be tuning the radio trying to find different languages and hearing German, Russian, whatever it was. The static inbetween excited me more than hearing the tracks, because it was like I was travelling through space. You can hear Edith Piaf on it, but I didn’t know that it was her. She’s amazing. It’s a very sombre tale, the tone starts off high, and then gradually it’s very quiet by the end. Then her voice is soaring through the centre. You can feel the story very much, the biography of Jimmy Brown that slows down as it approaches his death. I was listening to this when I was about six. It affected me so much.
