Sep 28, 2018

RhoDeo 1838 Grooves

Hello,


Today's artists are a Dutch-Belgian jazz band, originally consisting of Doc (Ferdi Lancee) and Inca (Barend Fransen). Doc played guitar and Inca played saxophone, while both performed vocal duties. After the pair split in 2013, the band continues working and touring with a different lineup. .  ....N'Joy

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Founders Ferdi Lancee and saxophonist Barend Fransen started their collaboration in 2001 in response to a soundtrack for a one-off lounge evening in Belgium.  The music comes in the hands of the great independent Play It Again Sam in Brussels which leads to the albums (In Search Of) Excellounge (2001) and Kind Of Cool (2002).  Some songs end up on the soundtrack of the series Six Feet Under and the feature film Ghost Rider (released in 2007).  In 2003, Gare du Nord will tour the Netherlands and Russia with a nine-strong band.  The third album, Club Gare du Nord (2005), will be recorded in its own Cell4-Studio in the Netherlands.  On that record, the duo is supported by, among others, the French jazz trumpet player Erik Truffaz and the gospel singers from the American Imani Fellowship Choir.

Dutch guitarist Ferdi Lancee (real name: Ferdy Dousenbach, born October 21, 1953 in Tilburg) and saxophone player Barend Fransen (born January 4, 1959 in Helmond) started working together in 2001, when they started writing lounge music in Belgium. The music comes in the hands of the great independent Play It Again Sam in Brussels which leads to the albums (In Search Of) Excellounge (2001) and Kind Of Cool (2002).  Some songs end up on the soundtrack of the series Six Feet Under and the feature film Ghost Rider (released in 2007). In 2003, Gare du Nord toured the Netherlands and Russia with a newly formed band containing nine musicians. Their third album Club Gare du Nord (2005) was recorded in their own Cell4-Studio in the Netherlands. French Jazz trumpet player Erik Truffaz and the gospel singers of the American Imani Fellowship Choir contributed to the album. Around that date (2005), Barend Fransen left his job as president of Dutch record store chain "Van Leest" to spend more time on the band

On January 12, 2006, during Eurosonic in Groningen, the Underground Station Tour 2006 of Gare du Nord started. The jazz duo made the soundtrack for Stout, a book by Heleen van Royen and Marlies Dekkers.
2007–2008

Gare du Nord recorded the single "Ride On" with British singer Paul Carrack. This song appears on their fourth album, Sex 'n' Jazz (2007). The album is the first part of a so-called love trilogy. In addition to Carrack, the album is vocally supported by Dutch singer Dorona Alberti, as well as soul singer Marvin Gaye in the song "You're My Medicine". The song can be heard in Sexual Healing, an American biographical movie from director Lauren Goodman about the last years of Marvin Gaye's life. The song was also released as a single. On April 28, Gare du Nord received a golden record for their debut album (In Search Of) Excellounge. In late 2007, Gare du Nord went on the Theatre Tour Sex 'n' Jazz. Sales of Sex 'n' Jazz earned the duo a second golden record in October 2007, handed out by fashion designer Marlies Dekkers. On October 15, a Gold Edition of Sex 'n' Jazz was released containing six newly recorded tracks.

Gare du Nord is now an established name on Dutch stages;  founders Fransen and Lancee perform about sixty shows in theaters and pop clubs every year with their seven-piece band.  A contract is signed with the Blue Note Records label.  First comes the mix album Jazz In The City with the hit Beautiful Day that can be heard for months on Dutch radio in 2008.  The album achieves the gold status.  Fransen and Lancee write the song Come To The Ball for Grace Jones.  In 2009 the new album Love For Lunch is released with a cover design by Marlies Dekkers.  Also for this album the duo receives a gold record and later a platinum record.

The band Gare du Nord is now separated from the project Gare du Nord. The band will perform on stage without Ferdi or Barend who are going to focus on the new album and a movie. In 2010, the duo makes a second mix album for Blue Note with tracks by, among others, Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes (Let's Have A Ball).  In the autumn Gare du Nord undertakes a first big club tour with twenty shows in the larger pop rooms of the Netherlands, On October 3, 2011, the new album Lilywhite Soul was presented in Amsterdam, again on the Blue Note label. This album contains a cover of Lou Reed's Perfect Day.

Two songs (a remake of Pablo's Blues and a new song Tarantino's Tango) are submitted for the new Quentin Tarantino movie Django Unchained. These songs are also present on a new soundtrack album, called Rendezvous 8:02 released on June 4.. In October 2012 the first live album is released, entitled Lifesexy. The release turns out to be the very last album Barend and Ferdi work on as a creative team.

Barend and Ferdi split and go separate ways; Ferdi quit the public music business and Barend set up a completely new live band together with singer Dorona Alberti and guitarist Aron Raams. By the end of 2013 Universal Music releases the 3-cd box Collected. The new Gare du Nord band tours the Netherlands for the 35 City Live Tour. The shows feature guest appearances by classical harpist Lavinia Meijer. In January 2014 Lavinia Meijer presents a multi platinum award for the Sex 'n' Jazz album, a platinum award for Love For Lunch and a gold award for Lilywhite Soul to the band in a fully packed Muziekgebouw Eindhoven. Songwriter Barend Fransen starts writing new songs with several contemporary composers for a new 10-song songcycle to be premiered live on stage as Gare du Nord:

The band is touring in the new line-up of 30 Dutch theaters for the Undressed tour.  Barend Fransen writes together with Aron Raams and Lennaart Raams repertoire for a completely new album that will be released on October 30, 2015.  The album is called "Stronger!"  and testifies to the changes that the band has undergone in recent years.  The album also contains two French-Lancee compositions.  Key composition on Stronger!  is the 23-minute suite La Dolce Vita, which covers the whole of the album on the vinyl version of the album.  La Dolce Vita emerged as the soundtrack of the book Iglo In de Sahara by Barend Fransen.  In the novel Fransen describes the ten years that he had contact with Guus van Hove, former director of the Tilburg pop stage 013. A contact that ended in 2011 when Van Hove and his girlfriend were mysteriously killed in Joshua Tree National  Park during a three-week round trip through the United States.  The book will be published in 2017, more than five years after the unclear events.  At the end of 2015, Gare du Nord started the Stronger! Club tour that will bring the band back to the Dutch clubs.

With a new keyboardist, Ferry Lagendijk, the band dives into the theater and clubs for the 15th Anniversary Live Tour.  During the tour it is known that the album Stronger!  has been nominated for the Edison Audience Award 2016. In the spring of 2017, the Dutch tour will be continued in another 25 theaters, with the band collaborating with trumpet player Eric Vloeimans as special guest.  The year 2017 will be dominated by A Decade Of Sex 'n' Jazz: the ten-year jubilee of the Netherlands' most successful popular jazz album of all time: Sex 'n' Jazz.


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On their debut, In Search of Excellounge, Ferdi Lancee and Barend Fransen slip elegantly through several easy listening styles as Gare du Nord. The focus lays mainly on jazz and downtempo, but the majority of the tracks have some good ways to distinguish themselves. Opener "How Was It For You" has a bright and sunny feel to it due to the addition of the smooth keys and the latinesque guitar and ditto percussion. "Taxi Au Moulin" goes more to the jazz side with its cool saxophone and smokey hihat ticks, while the poppy "Tune Up" switches impressively between gentle funk and dreamy beauty. "Pablo's Blues", probably the best-known track, brings down the tempo of the beat drastically and shoots fascinating hard-to-understand blues lyrics into the air, while the soulful acoustic guitar fills up the gaps skillfully. The strike goes on with "Excellounge Bar" of which the airy feeling and the stunning synths in the middle part are notable. Unfortunately, the second half is not as strong as the first one. "Disco-Tèk" is fairly standard disco house, and the ultra slow "Room 69... Moi?" hardly offers anything to be enjoyable. The nice and dramatic melody on "Serge Gainsbourg" is almost screwed up by some dumb French voice samples. But that's nothing compared to "Poem Rouge", which almost entirely consists of weird spoken-word nonsense. Still, this shouldn't keep you from adding the excellent first half to your excellounge collection.



 Gare du Nord - In Search of Excellounge   (flac  245mb)

01 How Was It For You 5:17
02 Taxi Au Moulin 4:31
03 Tune Up 5:14
04 Pablo's Blues 5:01
05 Excellounge Bar 4:34
06 Disco-Tèk (Boogie All Night Long) 4:49
07 Room 69... Moi? 4:42
08 Searching Gainsbourg 3:38
09 Poem Rouge 4:16

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One year after their - quite surprisingly - successful first album, Gare du Nord serves another cocktail of their jazzy easy listening formula. Opening with "Kind Of Cool 1", a lightly groovy rhode-shuffler with smart and catchy muted trumpets and a brilliant vocal sample, the album appears to be promising. However, on the tracks that follow, the band go on using much more vocals. A part of them succeed, like on their mysterious cover of "Sold My Soul" (note that they made two versions of this track). The guitar-driven "I'm Not A Woman..." stays on the good side of tastefulness too, although the vocals occasionally are a little over the top. Some of the  tracks go for original ideas. "Dark Chill" sets bluesy guitars in front of haunting samples of the 9/11 disaster, with thrilling effect. "Kind Of Cool 2" approaches the first track in a comfortingly latin way. The most beautiful moment on the album - and possibly of Gare du Nord's whole discography - comes with "¿Yo... Que Pasa?". Here, a wonderfully played acoustic guitar guides the listener over smooth latin rhythms. The sensitive keys inbetween create a very pretty melancholy mood, a real gem .



Gare du Nord - Kind of Cool (flac  339mb)

01 Kind Of Cool 1 (Inner City Groove) 5:07
02 Sold My Soul 5:50
03 L'Hotel Beat 4:15
04 Panchira (Rasa Clinic, 1962) 6:09
05 Profondo Blu 5:30
06 Dark Chill 4:12
07 Kind Of Cool 2 (Miles Et Juliette) 4:58
08 Chinese Whispers, Japanese Strings 4:36
09 You're So Tight 3:37
10 ¿Yo... Que Pasa? 4:45
11 I'm Not A Woman, I'm Not A Man (Berlin Beat) 4:27
12 Tres Cool 1:13

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Although it can be described as 'lounge', it has little to do with the boring and repetitive tracks that make up the bulk of the music in this genre. Gare du Nord is different. A blend of warm, jazzy grooves and bluesy samples. Electronics are used sparingly and altogether they create some beautiful and all in all very suave tracks. Now, as to Club Gare du Nord: It's an album needs to grow on you. Especially after the amazing Kind of Cool album (which didn't contain one single less-than-perfect track) you cannot expect this to sink in very easily. The influences of world music seem to be gone, for a large part. So what's new? The delta blues, Tom Waits, Steely Dan, and Erik Truffaz on the trumpet. An altogether balanced album, with some good and some not so good tracks. But definitely worth picking up.



Gare du Nord - Club Gare du Nord (flac  230mb)

01 Are You Coming With Me? 3:42
02 What's Up? 4:37
03 It's In The Mind, Not In The Eye 3:19
04 Poor Boy's Blues (For Nick Drake) 3:59
05 Exquis-it, Baby 3:46
06 Somethin' Like That... 4:18
07 Tom's Song 3:50
08 (Watch Your Step) Mind The Gap 2:56
09 Go Back, Jack! 3:15
10 Ou Est Ton Singe? / Where Is Your Monkey 3:04
11 We Still Grow 5:58

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Gare Du Nord, together with St Germain, have been the French King Class of the lounge / triphop scene for years.  They always deliver (just like now) class products, where you especially in the summer can dream away in your lazy chair, hammock or bed.

On the album, Barend Fransen (Inca) and Ferdi Lancee (Doc) combined elements of jazz, soul, a unique piece of Motown sound, delta blues and of course the chill style shot from lounge jazz in a warm melting pot of carnal and spiritual well-being.  Singer Dorona Alberti turned out to be a hit for the sultry - but by no means banal - vocal atmosphere and the guest list was expanded with Paul Carrack (on the track Ride On) and trumpeter Erik Truffaz (Hey, Mr Glider)  .

Still unique is the 'duet' that Dorona was allowed to sing together with Marvin Gaye.  A tape with the bare vocals of his well-known track Sexual Healing, written by Gaye in his former home in Ostend, found its way to Gare du Nord.  Even before the very valuable rights for the use and bastering of the song were obtained, the track You're My Medicine was recorded, on which the originally Italian singer got the - until now - unique opportunity to work with the late Marvin Gaye to sing. State of the art remastered, this landmark edition of Sex 'n' Jazz sounds as crispy as ever.



Gare du Nord - Sex 'N' Jazz (Blue Note Remaster) (flac  304mb)

01 Marvin & Miles 3:49
02 Somethin' In My Mouth (Sex 'N' Jazz 1) 3:48
03 Ride On 3:47
04 Summer Breeze 0:28
05 Beautiful Day 3:43
06 You're My Medicine 4:15
07 More Medicine 2:11
08 Chet's Chat 4:16
09 Quiet Storm 0:48
10 I Want Love 4:24
11 Lobster For Love (Sex 'N' Jazz 2) 3:41
12 Hey, Mr Glider 4:21
13 Hot Glue 5:56

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1 comment:

Giovanni Pancetina said...

Rho-Xs, please reupload the albums.

Grazie.