Lunabee: Prenez Garde Aux Flots Bleus

I listened to this album and thought: “A movie, a movie, a short film. This is a short film.” I’ve never thought like this before, listening to an album. I’ve thought (fairly dispassionately, on different occasions) “This sounds like soundtrack music”—yes, I’ve thought that before—but not this—“This is a film”—so clearly that I could almost see the film itself. It is dark blue, it has trees with curled filigree branches, it has fantastic creatures, fairy monsters, someone is lost and enchanted—it might be something like Pan’s Labyrinth, or The City of Lost Children. Pascale Vervolet sounds as if she is singing a story. I don’t know what the story is—she sings in French. The group is Belgian. Her voice is sweet and high, feathery. There are undertones of menace in the music. Not heavy menace—it’s dark but fun. It’s Tim Burton goth electronica. It is a lot of things. It starts with accordions and tango—an electronica Ravel or the Gotan Project with a cobweb soprano. The accordions disappear after a while: there is glitch, there are sound effects—donkeys, cartoon boings, grunting as if someone is constipated. What inspired this album? What do the words mean? What is the film about? It is an album of mystery. A small, unexplained, perhaps inexplicable object that I’ve tripped over by accident. I am enticed.