Artist: Duo
Career: debut
Language: English
Genre: Electronica / Pop
In truth Alison had never felt comfortable with the humans. Maybe it was the fact that she was a two-headed woman. Maybe it was cause she lived way high on a secluded mountain range and only ventured down for festivities in the local pig farmers’ village, dancing to the ancient oompa music till she convulsed in seizures or the natives brought her sacramental flower offerings, whichever arrived first. For years she felt no strong connection to the species, the constant chatter between her two brains enough distraction from the eternal snow way up on the mountain. On one dance festival, however, she noticed a small boy crying. It set off a complicated series of philosophical discussions between her brains, each amazingly advanced in the fields of logic and analysis, but entirely lost in the field of emotions. As the winter progressed, all roads and communication lines to the world below were severed and Alison’s only occupation was playing a droning harmonium accompaniment to the ever more puzzled attempts of the two brains to explain the young child’s tears. She almost understood, she felt, but in understanding she was forced to grasp outside of her own identity to such an extent that she soon lost herself and in truth, never regained her grip on reality, but roamed the hills like a mad two-headed babbling phantom. To the villagers there was no difference, they simply stopped going up there.
For once, the cover (front and back) is exactly right – it sounds like a two-headed woman having a quiet nervous breakdown on a secluded mountain peak. Totally alien, and totally amazing.
Of course you can tear it apart all you like: spy movies, ‘50s sci-fi, Dr Who theme tunes, Wicker Man folk, short wave pops and crackles, trip hop, a very British translation of continental arty detachment, big band ballad singers. But it doesn’t really matter. Goldfrapp aren’t just the sum of their influences. I totally believe this is who they are – why would anyone artificially induce themselves to sound like this?
I had the pleasure of submitting myself to the Goldfrapp live experience a couple years later (around ‘Supernatural’ I’d think), but I never imagined they’d come from this eerie, cold blooded landscape. There’s something quizzical at the heart of it, like some otherworldly entity puzzling over human emotions and losing the plot. She’s tripping.
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