David Fenech - Suspicious Moon '2022

Tracks list

       Unexpected and lokey brilliant Elvis covers from french troubadour David
Fenech and cult instrument builder and composer Pierre Bastien.

As you might expect from the names involved, their take on Elvis is radically
oblique and serves to reset the coiffed rock ’n roll god’s legacy
in a much smokier, Gallic light. As that implies, the songs are relatively
straight-played - they’re not taking the piss - but completely drained of
hip-thrust and Brylcreem and replaced in a starker, noirish mise-en-scene,
limned by Pierre Bastien's unusual but excellent use of prepared trumpet, and
given shape and texture by Fenech’s arrangements, which relate as much to
his work with avant crooner Ghédalia Tazartès as they do to a sequin-clad
Presley. 

Trust that, beyond some avant working men’s club in Durham or David
Lynch’s most fetid fantasies, you’ve never heard Elvis songs quite
like this before. Drawing for the biggest hits, Fenech & Bastien exert singular
spin on the originals, variously morphing ‘Fever’ into an
experimental jazz club hush, and reducing ‘Jailhouse Rock’ to
creepy vapours and bass thrum, while adapting the feel of ‘Are You
Lonesome Tonight’ to something like a music box lullaby, and dialling
down ‘Love Me Tender’ to its barest essence of heart-broken blues,
while centrepiece ’Suspicious Minds’ is wholly transported
Eastwards to recall a fantasy jam between CS + Kreme and Coil in a Bangkok jazz
bar where daylight does not penetrate. Og and then there’s that
water-boarded version of ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’, with Bastien
bleating his trumpet into a bucket of water. 

Tracklist:
1.01 - David Fenech - Jailhouse Rock (3:40)
1.02 - David Fenech - Heartbreak Hotel (3:59)
1.03 - David Fenech - Are You Lonesome Tonight (2:38)
1.04 - David Fenech - Hound Dog (3:17)
1.05 - David Fenech - Love Me Tender (2:27)
1.06 - David Fenech - Suspicious Minds (5:09)
1.07 - David Fenech - Don't Be Cruel (5:21)
1.08 - David Fenech - Blue Moon (5:40)
1.09 - David Fenech - Bridge Over Troubled Water (2:47)
1.10 - David Fenech - Fever (4:25)
1.11 - David Fenech - In The Ghetto (5:30) 

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