5. Francis The GreatRavissante Baby
I only discovered this record two weeks ago. My friend John Gray phoned up and said, "Have you heard this record?" and my jaw dropped when I heard it. The cover is a tribal village with a young kid lying in front of it. It’s a two-track record, like a lot of these records were, and both tracks are incredible. The one that is just mental and exciting and surreal is ‘Look Up In The Sky’. The reason I say it’s incredible is because there’s a five-year-old child singing on these records and it’s extraordinary. I bought it in Honest Jon’s and I don’t know who played it first on the radio, but, again, it’s a reissue. It’s come from Paris I think [the album was reissued this year by Hot Casa Records], it’s just this mad hypnotic groove. This child sings almost like a fairytale over the top of strange experimental stuff. It’s like early Michael Jackson – the voice is like that.
I just had to put it on the list because it’s going to be one that I’m going to be playing for a long time from now on. Some people might go, after five minutes, "It doesn’t do anything", but I like records like that sometimes. A lot of the records I like are growers. I do like pop music, but things that I’m going to play at home often are things that are suddenly heavy drops. This is something else, I’ve never heard a record like this. Everyone was talking about it in Honest Jon’s when I went in – a lot of people had heard it and luckily I got the last copy.
