Welcome to the Fruits de Mer Blog. This is where we ramble on about stuff that means something to us, usually doesn't to anyone else, but seemed like something worth jotting down at the time and doesn't fit in anywhere else on the site...
drop Andy a line to find out more...andy@fruitsdemerrecords.com 
Hard-to-believe, but there are people out there who want to talk to Andy Bracken, FdM's co-founder. Actually, they don't, but it's the only way they can find out whose stupid idea this record label was....
The Headfullofsnow interviews:
http://headfullofsnow.com/psychedelic-spotlight-interview-fruits-de-mer-records-part-1/
http://headfullofsnow.com/psychedelic-spotlight-interview-fruits-de-mer-records-part-2/
Psychotropic Zone:
http://www.unimeri.com/PsychotropicZone/interview_017.en.php
Monobrow:
http://monobrow73.blogspot.com/2010/02/legendary-labels-fruits-de-mer.html
Radio WPKN interview:
http://archives.wpkn.org/bookmarks/listen/7840
Radio WPKN home page
http://www.wpkn.org
Radio WPKN on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bridgeport-CT/Radio-Base-Camp/91497903235
At last, we have our first LP, 'A Phase', available for you to buy rather than read about - it looks as good as it sounds - 12" of grey and sometimes mauve vinyl - a bit of a lucky dip but we told the pressing plant to give the tracks a listen and then use their judgement. 300 orders in already and we've only pressed up 500, so don't take too long placing your order!
..."like The Beach Boys playing Silver Machine" - Classic Rock's Geoff Barton on 'A Phase'
As the title implies, 'A Phase We're Going Through' is dedicated to the long-lost art of 'phasing'. Also known as 'phase shifting' or 'flanging', this trick was the darling of drug-fulled bands and their similarly-stoned studio engineers in the 60s. A prime example would be The Small Faces' 'Itchycoo Park' with its sweeping fx which sound like a plane coming in to land. Here we have 11 bands from the UK, USA and Finland interpreting songs by the likes of Jefferson Airplane (Plastic Fantastic Lover) and Jimi Hendrix (Little Wing) and lavishing them with all manner of sonic freakishness. Pick of the bunch is Permanent Clear Light's rendition of The Who's 'In The City', which sounds like The Beach Boys playing 'Silver Machine'. Of the more bizarre covers, Sidewalk Society's version of The Bee Gees' 'Red Chair. Fade Away' apes prime-time Barrett-era Floyd, while The Luck of Eden Hall do The Monkees' 'Love Is Only Sleeping' in the manner of The Banana Splits. If you like the sound of this, you better hurry: 'A Phase' is limited to 500 copies, each on multicoloured vinyl in a suitably psyched-out sleeve.
8 out of 10
Geoff Barton
Classic Rock magazine
..."makes you feel that you're living inside the bong" - Shindig reviews 'A Phase'
Fruits de Mer, the self-described “world’s smallest colour vinyl psychedelia, acid-folk, progressive rock and krautrock” record label is finally releasing its first long-player, after a series of ear- and eye-pleasing seven-inchers. Their speciality is contemporary acts doing covers of late ‘60s/early ‘70s songs of the lysergic variety, and ‘A Phase’ offers a bounty of such delights.
The advance is a teaser that only contains snippets of all but one of the 11 tracks, but it’s enough to let you know what’s coming. Think The Idle Race’s ‘Hurry Up John’ , Can’s ‘Sing Swan Song’, Tomorrow’s ‘Revolution’ and you’ll get the idea. Songs and sounds that make you feel not so much that you just smoked out of a bong, but that you’re living inside the bong.
The artists covered range from those your parents know about (Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, The Bee Gees) to those only serious psych crate diggers are hip to (July, Clouds, Billy Nicholls). The Campbell Stokes Sunshine Recorder’s reading of Caleb’s acid classic ‘Baby, Your Phrasing is Bad’ trades the original’s sludgy feel for an amped-up vibe, like the band asked for Mandrax to help them come down from their LSD trip, and instead were given black beauties.
Shindig magazine
www.shindig-magazine.com
What can I tell you? Vibravoid's new release - 'What Colour Is Pink?' - is out and about - and about sold out.
500 copies pressed up, 500 copies on their way out of Fruits de Mer Towers (however, if you email us at info@fruitsdemerrecords.com, we MIGHT just be able to rustle up a copy, otherwise you're going to have to resort to ebay and pay over-the-odds). Never fear, Vibravoid will hopefully be back with more on FdM before the end of the year.
Coming soon...'A Phase We're Going Through' - our first LP - will be on sale in June (multicolour vinyl, all yours for $25, postage and our gratitude included); if you don't already know all about it and have a copy on pre-order, where have you been?!? Email us now at info@fruitsdemerrecords.com and we'll forgive you.
After that? FdM volume 12 will be a double single from 'Hausfrauen Experiment' (check them out on myspace). Eno, Hawkwind, Silver Apples and even Cockney Rebel get uniquely interpreted by the girls and their own personal Svengali, Alan Tench. If it sounds a bit, well, modern for us, so did 'Metropolis' when Fritz Lang came up with some storyboards for the film studio. Email us,etc....you know the score, but we're only pressing up 300 of these luxury items and they'll hopefully surface before the end of June, so don't hang around too long, because they won't.
After that - FdM's other-half, Andy Bracken, has a single from Cranium Pie coming out on Bracken Records (genius bit of naming, that). It's already been played on BBC Radio Wiltshire - make of that what you will - get over to www.brackenrecords.com to find out more.
After that - we'll take a few weeks rest over the summer, then we'll be back with a spacerock compilation of a yet-to-be-decided diameter and at least one more single from...I'll tell you more next time, meanwhile spread the word and the word is fruitsdemer.
so now it can be revealed - Fruits de Mer Volume 9 has come and gone like a thief in the night, or one more X-Factor winner called Brian, William or Kevin.
FdM volume 9 was 'We Come Bearing Gifts', an incredibly-limited and suitably-retro cassette, produced exclusively for bands, friends and fans of Fruits de Mer and Bracken Records.
Just 100 of the little blighters, mailed free, gratis and for nothing to the artists we've worked with, a few like-minded souls running magazines, websites, radio shows and shops who've taken an interest in what we're doing, but most of them posted with our eternal gratitude to the merry band of Fruits de Mer and Bracken fans who have supported us from our first FdM single back in 2008 and bought everything we've released direct from us and so helped keep the wolf from the door (along with Tracey, our bank manager).
Our thanks go out to the artists who kindly contributed tracks to the compilation and enabled us to produce something that we'd rate alongside 'Bumpers', ‘Elpea’ and 'You Can All Join In', only much, much cheaper.
We'll get round to posting the track-listing in due course, just so you know what you've missed if, indeed, you didn't get a copy…..and we might just have a handful of CDrs of the compilation to spare if you email us sharpish and give us a bloody good reason why you need and deserve a copy – having bought FdM 1-8 direct from us and we, or the postal system, having failed you being a pretty obvious one; owning one copy of each of FdM 1-8 and correctly answering the question, "Who is featured on the insert to FdM Volume 1", being another).
Will we repeat this act of random kindness at some point in the future? Possibly, but the only way you'll ever know is if you join our our mailing-list pronto and buy our 2010 releases direct from us. Bribery? Nah, it was a cassette for goodness sake and next time it might be a beermat, but we really do want to build up our mailing-list so that we can give FdM fans and friends a heads-up on what we have in-store - so it can't do any harm to send your email address to info@fruitsdemerrecords.com and sign up to the most pointless label invented since 'please do not bend'.
Go on, you know you want to.
ALSO, new 60s psych compilation - coming soon from Fruits de Mer
Hours after Apple unveiled their new i-pad, we tell you about our plans for a new Fruits de Mer compilation - to be released sometime in spring 2010. And guess who gets all the publicity?
'A Phase We're Going Through' will feature some of the best new bands on the planet breathing new life into sixties classics that either featured judicious mounts of phasing and studio trickery at the time, or drip in the stuff in our new versions, or at least would have done if only we'd been paying proper attention and explained to the bands in advance what we were aiming for.
Anyway, it's going to be brilliant - and we should know (actually, we know b*gger-all, but we didn't get where we are today by knowing what we're doing - see, you knew there was an explanation for this shambles). It's either going to be a 10" or 12" vinyl extravaganza - we're not sure which, but it'll definitely be bigger than a 7", and you can't say fairer than that.
We'll give you more details just as soon as we get our collective act together, but we can guarantee:
1. if you like what we've released to-date, you'll love it
2. it'll look as good as it sounds
3. there is no point 3
4. we'll press up a stupidly small amount and they'll disappear faster than the latest X-Factor winner
If you want to be first in the queue for more details, or get us to set a copy to one side for you, either send us a message via myspace or drop us a line to info@fruitsdemerrecords.com ....... NOW!
A Fruits de Mer Primer
Bands wanted for Fruits de Mer's 'spacerock' compilation... We're currently working on a couple of 60's/70's 'covers' compilations for release in spring 2010.
One of these is will be a 'space rock' special - new interpretations of classic cosmic tracks originally by the likes of Hawkwind, Pink Floyd, Brainticket, the kosmische end of krautrock and maybe some less obvious tracks recorded with a spacerock feel. If you think you might be able to put a stunning 5 minutes together (we might just stretch to a couple of minutes longer), then why not email us with one or two track suggestions, and we'll see whether things develop from there.
What do you call a tiny record label that thinks 7†vinyl is the format of the future, believes that there are buried treasures from the sixties and seventies that deserve to be dusted down, polished up and shred, and cheerfully loses money on every release just to prove it’s right?
We call ourselves Fruits de Mer - you can find us at our most commercial here at our webshop, and at our most meandering at www.myspace.com/fdmer (at even at www.myspace.com/fdmer2 if you just can’t get enough of us).
In our first two years of existence, we’ve featured artists such as long-lost 70’s acid-folk poster boy Mark Fry, lead singer with Mellow Candle Alison O’Donnell (whose album ‘Swaddling Songs’ is one of the rarest UK folk rock albums ever released) and Vibravoid, described by Record Collector magazine as “hairy psychedelic motherfuckers from Dusseldorfâ€.
We’ve worked with artists who have breathed new life into tracks originally recorded by Van der Graaf Generator, The Small Faces, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Nick Drake, Caravan, Kraftwerk, The Beatles, Dantalian’s Chariot and Can; our latest release – as you’ve probably already guessed - is a Swedish acid-folk version of the Pink Floyd classic, ‘Julia Dream’.
Fruits de Mer is about as small and independent as you can get – two guys with a lifelong obsession for music – one in Washington DC, the other in Walton-on-Thames – working with artists who are happy to share their love of classic psych, acid-folk and progressive rock with a small-but-perfectly-formed-and-gradually-expanding band of followers – for whom every 7†colour vinyl release is a reminder that there is more to music than X-Factor and i-Tunes.
Thanks for passing by, hope to see you again soon and please tell your friends about us – word-of-mouth is really important to a label like us (and word-of-any-other-orifice is just not the same).
Sincerely yours, Keith
Us & Them are Anders and Britt, and they’re Swedish. Britt sings and Anders plays instruments. They will be featured on Fruits de Mer Volume Eight, sometime in December. This is how it came about.
Us & Them had two stunning covers of Tudor Lodge “Home To Stayâ€, and “Dialogue†by Jackson C Frank (also known as “I Want To Be Aloneâ€). That was simple enough – the two tracks would make a sensational 7†single, all done with minimal effort as they were already in the can and just needed a little tweaking on the mix. I was immensely pleased with that. Both tracks have beautiful instrumentation and arrangement, all topped off by Britt’s exquisitely intimate vocal.
Tudor Lodge, of course, produced a classic, and highly collectible, British acid-folk album on the Vertigo label in the early 70’s, although “Coming Home†comes from a reunion of the band in the late 90’s, and was penned by Lynne Whiteland, who became a Lodge member in the early eighties. “Dialogue†is one of Jackson C Frank’s masterly-crafted pieces. He had an influence on Nick Drake, and was a similarly tragic figure. He reputedly persuaded Sandy Denny to pack up nursing and take up music full time! ‘Dialogue’ comes from his 1965 album, produced by Neil Simon, and is one of his darkest tracks.
That was it – we had a brilliant record. Sorted.
Enter Jonesy. See, Keith has this thing whereby he always wants more. It’s a good trait to have, if a little annoying at times. So, Jonesy starts muttering about getting a cover out of Us & Them by a ‘bigger name’ band. Thus a brainstorming session ensued between all parties whereat various suggestions were thrown into the pot. I think we were all subliminally drawn to Pink Floyd because of the band name. Now, I have a confession to make. I’m not a Pink Floyd fan post-Syd. Keith is. This is one of the most divisive topics in camp FdM (along with the merits of Pet Sounds). I don’t own a Pink Floyd record that doesn’t feature Syd Barrett in some way. That said, I like “Paintbox†a lot, and I have a really soft spot for “Julia Dreamâ€. I even recall hearing it for the first time after picking up a copy of Relics on a US Harvest label a few years back. As it so happened, an acquaintance of Us & Them had once mentioned “Julia Dream†as ‘a good track for them to cover’, and so Anders and Britt threw it into the mix. Keith and I raised no objections, and so it was agreed. Everyone was happy.
Then I remembered something I once read, about how the melody was based on the British traditional lullaby “All The Pretty Little Horsesâ€. I don’t know where that memory came from, and a quick thumb through ‘Madcap’ and ‘Crazy Diamond’ doesn’t appear to make any mention of it. Still, a quick internet search and a site that rhymes with Dicky-Media confirmed everything, though they claim the lullaby as being American, I’m not having it. As it happens, myself and Us & Them are fond of such things in music, and mention was made of the “Fuzzy-Felt Folk†album out on Trunk a few years back. And so it was agreed, the final piece in the puzzle would be a merging of the tracks to give us, “Julia Dream (Of All The Pretty Little Horses)â€. Away Anders and Britt went with a concept, and two weeks or so later, a rather nervous email with an attached file arrived from Us & Them, along with a Swedish quote about ‘buying a pig in a sack’ (bought unseen, in other words).
That was 3 days ago, and I haven’t stopped listening to “Julia Dream (Of All The Pretty Little Horses)†since. It is absolutely unbelievable. As I sit here on a late September afternoon, I can look up and out of a window that offers me a snapshot of a copse of trees out the back of my house. It’s amazing what that little line of trees, just a couple of hundred yards long and less than 25 wide, can support. A multitude of birds, squirrels, rabbits, mice, foxes, all manner of insects, a small colony of bats and a tortoise, all dwell harmoniously out there, and they’re just the creatures bold enough to permit me to see them.
And this time of year, as the trees change colour and the leaves carpet the back lawn, they scurry about looking for the provisions that will sustain them as they prepare for a winter bunkered down, awaiting the next spring when we’ll all have a chance to start afresh. We lofty humans have an inherent tendency to want to hibernate. It’s why SAD exists. And if I were to hollow out a leaf-covered winter retreat for myself, I know that one of the things I would want with me would be this record. Indeed, if I were to be told I could only take 5 records with me for the long dark winter months, I’d ask for 5 copies of the Us & Them EP. It is sustenance for life.
Britt was raised in Sorsele, a small village in the north of Sweden, near the Arctic Circle. A place which is dark almost all day and night in the winter and it never gets dark in the summer. Anders is from Motala, Sweden’s first industrial town, a fact that still characterises it. On their own they developed a big interest for music in general. In their early years they both became very fond of England, and especially English music. For many years, they’ve been based in Sweden’s capital, Stockholm.
In their own words, “Us & Them is a combination of experience and newly found curiosity. Anders played and made records with a couple of bands during the years. Britt has worked as an actress, and to sing and play herself is a new thing for her. For the both of them Us & Them is fulfilling a dream. Anders has always got a passion for folk, psycedelica and baroque pop which wasn’t always the easiest thing to convince his earlier band colleagues that it was the way to go. Britt, who always loved music, has a way to practise something she always wanted.
“Us & Them’s music is dreamy and otherworldly but at the same time there is an everydayness and intimacy which give the same feeling as a letter from a long gone friendâ€.
Welcome, all who read this – hope you’re well? It’s all go, here at Fruits de Mer. The Mark Fry singles are in, and mostly out, and will have you shaking it all about. They’re sizzling hot (…Fry…sizzling…I just made that up…!). Grab one of them there purple platters whilst you can, or you’ll be spitting mad if you miss out. Go, go, go - $8 shipped anywhere in the world.
The Vibravoid “Krautrock Sensation EP†is just in, as well, and you need that because it’s wunderbra, as I think I’ve heard it said, but perhaps that’s just in the kind of German films Jonesy makes me watch, the vinyl is $8 to your door, and if you order direct from us, we’ll lob you a free Krautrock Sensation EP POSTER (while stocks last).
Volume 7 in the FdM series will be by Cranium Pie, with their covers of “Baby You’re A Rich Man†by an obscure band called The Beatles, coupled with their interpretation of the much better known Dantalian’s Chariot’s “Madman Running Through The Fieldsâ€. Email us to reserve – much interest in this one, as with the Pie themselves, but more on that when it happens.
Volume 8 is also progressing nicely. Welcome US & THEM (from Sweden), who are currently Allen-keying together something lovely by Pink Floyd, Tudor Lodge and Jackson C Frank. Seriously looking forward to this one, so don’t be left in the dark, make like a Volvo and keep your lights on (metaphorically speaking, obviously), and reserve via email.
What else? A tube of Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles is a bit like good radio, I’ve decided. No, no, bear with me. See, what makes Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles superior to other tubes of sweets, is that the flavours come in random sequence. Ergo, it’s possible to get two green ones together, or a black, yellow, black combo thing going on. Take your Opal Fruits (or Starburst, for the under 25s reading this who can read), and they come in regimented form – 4 flavours, 3 of each, in sequential order. Not nearly as exciting, I know you’ll agree. It’s the element of surprise, you see!
Similarly, there’s nothing quite like hearing a track you like on the radio – it always sounds better than when you play it at home, purely because you weren’t expecting it. If only more radio DJs weren’t so Opal Fruit in their approach to the music they play, eh? So, to summarise, Fry Kraut Pie for Us & devour Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles with yer ears…
Pleasant and orderly,