Performing guitars on "La Femme Plastique" album by Miam Monster Miam and the Loved Drones.
Recorded at Fortress Studio by Ed Peffers, august 2009, London, mixed in Paris by Gilles Martin. 13 tracks released on Freaksville Record including (a. o.) a cover of "J'écoute une K7 de la vedette", originally written and released by La Variété in 1993 (listen to the original here).

• Miam Monster Miam and The Loved Drones : La femme Plastique.

Link to SoundCloud.
Link to iTunes.

The Belgian Rock debate is dead and buried. Its Phantom now haunts the dark streets of England...

After the solo album "L'homme Libellule" in 2007, critically acclaimed for its arrangements, and three collaborative albums by the Phantom project (namely Lio, Jacques Duvall and Marie France), producer Miam Monster Miam returns to the fray all engines firing !

Abandoning American Garage Rock and the Liège nucleus of his Freaksville label, this time he heads for England : throwing his cowboy persona in the Thames and replacing it with a power-pop King's Road swagger. Here the glamourous seedy smog of The Stranglers permeates the keyboards, alongside the rhythm section of The Only Ones, pulsating like an East End pub on match night. Add roguish charm, radioactive layers, licks as sharp as a dart and it's a potent cocktail, shaken not stirred.

He's accompanied by The Loved Drones, his Anglo-Belgian backing band as featured in Phantom, as well as the cream of Wallonian pop : producer Marc Moulin on piano, Marc "Morgan" Wathieu (founder of band Les Tricheurs) on guitar, Girls in Hawaii bassist and singer of Hallo Kosmo, Daniel Offerman but also guests like Marie France, theremin retro-futurist Man From Uranus and the mysterious Marie Ange... So, a real English dish, served up with a pint of stout on the side.

The Freaksville spirit is ever-present, primarily through insistent guitar but also in the comic universe it creates. In addition to cover of La Variété ("J'écoute une K7 de la Vedette") and lyrics by Michel Moers of Telex ("J’aurais Ta Peau") and Jacques Duvall ("Le Roi des Paranos", "Le Pseudonyme"), the words look towards a weird and twisted future, a cyber-wallonia of 2035 where a computer finds love, the perfect woman arrives from another galaxy, and a ventriloquist is dumped by his dummy.

This is the universe that The Love Drones unfolded in the hands of Ed Peffer of Fortress Studios in Provost Street (stomping ground of such groups as Primal Scream, Death In Vegas, Spiritualized et Magazine) and then mixed by Gilles Martin (Front 242, Polyphonic Size, Minimal Compact as well as Venus and Girls In Hawaii).

The end result is electrified rock'n'roll played by strange machines that bounds along like a bubble-gum red double-decker bus.

Play It Again, Miam !

Freaksville Records.
Miam Monster Miam and The Loved Drones in London : my photos on Flickr.
Miam Monster Miam Et Les Love Drones : La Femme Plastique on Discogs.
Miam Monster Miam (Wikipedia).