Paris Violence has never exactly played standard-issue Oi, but 20 years ago, Flav took things to the next level when releasing L’âge de glace – an album informed by his earlier ‘Chaos en France on a rainy Monday’ sound, but also by the eminently continental ‘cold wave’ genre and NWOBEM (New Wave of British ‘Eavy Metal). The result was arguably one of the coldest and strangest albums linked to the Oi genre, fully living up to its title: ice age.
L’âge de glace has just been rereleased by Common People Records. Matt Crombieboy sat Flav down for a song-by-song account. For an older interview we did with Flav, click HERE. Or else, just read on.
Continue reading
As with Defiant Pose (1991), Red London (1994) and Tainted Love (2005) before it, Stewart Home raided his record collection for this novel’s title, epitomised by mean and moody rocker Kip Tyler’s smouldering classic single. ‘She’s My Witch’ has been covered by several artists since its 1959 release, most notably in a Cramps style by the Panther Burns (1987), woozy garage rockers the Fuzztones (1992) and most recently psychobillies The Radiacs (2010). I mention these only as Home’s own musical tastes and live forays, particularly to Dalston’s Garageland, get frequent mentions and largely fuel the online relationship which unfolds between the novel’s two protagonists, Vespa-riding personal trainer (and former skinhead) Martin Cooper and video editor Maria Remedios, a former dominatrix more likely to be found in bars with Hells Angels and skinheads than behind an editing suite in her native Spain (in one Facebook message she rues how the latter are now all “just fat middle-aged men”). This in itself opens up the time and place of the novel, East London in the post-financial crisis, pre-Brexit era (understandably as this is published on John King’s London Books imprint, the jacket text goes in heavy on this) where personal wellness and the creative industries meet, mutually reinforcing. As London riots then prepares to stage a few weeks of global sport, Martin and Maria get further acquainted on social media and commence the exchange of favoured YouTube clips of garage rock and proto-punk and the odd cult film trailer.
Creases Like Knives 