Foxbase Alpha

Product Information

The album includes one of the group's best-known songs: a cover of Neil Young's " Only Love Can Break Your Heart". The cover quite differs from the original in that the original's mostly major chord progression is turned here into mostly minor, which emphasises a more melancholic feel. It is also arranged in 4/4 (as opposed to the original's waltz time), with a driving piano-bass-drum section. Andrew Weatherall later remixed the song to further emphasise the dub bassline; this remix was featured on both releases of the single and on the compilation Casino Classics (on American and European versions of the single, a Flowered Up remix is erroneously featured instead of the Andrew Weatherall mix). The follow-up single "Kiss and Make Up" was also a cover version, of a song written and originally recorded by The Field Mice. Ian Catt was the engineer/co-producer on both versions. The people hearing your music don’t know that. They hear a group writing about cool London, filled with carefully chosen references to pop culture they might well not know. They’re getting a display of impeccable taste from people dressed like they’ve come out of Blow Up.

Happy 30th Anniversary to Saint Etienne’s Foxbase Alpha, originally released October 14, 1991. (Note: Select sources cite September 16, 1991 as the official release date.)Formed in London in 1990 by fellow music aficionados and journalists Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, Saint Etienne was one of the period’s most intriguing acts, if not one of the era’s most unlikely success stories. Neither Stanley nor Wiggs was a musician by trade, but they founded the group based on their mutual affection for pop music in its various forms and an open minded acceptance of sonic experimentation. “I never thought I’d be in a band,” Stanley recently confided to RTÉ, Ireland’s National Public Radio. “I wasn’t a musician and it was technology that made it all possible because we were all big pop fans and we had fairly large record collections and when sampling came along it was a gift.”

Carroll, Jim (28 December 2016). "Saint Etienne – Foxbase Alpha album review: Still brilliant 25 years on". The Irish Times . Retrieved 22 February 2017. It’s hard to believe that a quarter of a century has passed since our debut album first appeared in record shops and we hope you’ll like what we we have on offer to celebrate this special anniversary. An exclusive one-sided 7” featuring the original, previously unreleased version of ‘Kiss And Make Up’, featuring ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ singer Moira Lambert.In addition to the Richard X collaboration on the "This is Tomorrow"/" Method of Modern Love" single, 2009 also saw the limited release of Foxbase Beta, the producer's reworking of the band's debut album Foxbase Alpha. [21]

Stanley has said that with hindsight it was "a bit stupid" that the band "didn't release another single for two and a half years". [14] Instead, they released a compilation album, Too Young to Die (1996), [3] contributed a song to the Gary Numan tribute album Random the following year, and then returned in 1998 with Good Humor, which de-emphasized the contemporary dance music influence on their previous work, replacing it with a more traditional sound. Also in 1998 they covered " La, la, la" on A Song for Eurotrash, a compilation of re-imagined past hits from the Eurovision Song Contest. [15] (The song can be found on Fairfax High.) Released on September 16, 1991, Foxbase Alpha bewildered and impressed critics for its genre-bending tapestry of club rhythms, sugary melodies and diverse influences. For Sarah, Bob, and Pete, this dream of releasing their very own album had become a reality."I think more than anything we were just really excited to be making an album," she says. "The first album always has that melting pot thing, which is great. I really love that. You're not sure if you will ever make another one, so you just put every idea you have and cram it in as best as you can, in case you never get another opportunity. I like the fact that Foxbase is so mixed. There are all sorts in there and that makes it a really interesting album. And there is that kind of naiveté to it, which I really like. Obviously [Bob and Pete] were such fans of music they took to it very easily because they're big fans of melody, pop, and melancholy as a deep feeling in a song."By 1988 – 1989 (the so-called Second Summer of Love), everybody and their dog was dropping E’s and streaming as one to the empty airfields where huge open air all-night ‘secret’ raves were taking place. It was a truly exciting time to be young – and not so young – as there was a palpable sense of optimism at the imminent passing of the decadent and materialistic 1980s which in turn ushered in a new found optimism for the new decade to come. And in many ways it felt like that, with the first signs of the death throes of Thatcherism happening. The much reviled Prime Minister stepped down in 1990 after the Poll Tax Riots – a mass national revolt of defiance partly instigated by the same clubbing community that acid house raves galvanised into action to resist and challenge authority – effectively brought her tenure to an end. We're in the City" from the Places to Visit EP is featured in Jamie Babbit's 1999 film But I'm a Cheerleader. Also in 1999, "Wood Cabin" from the Good Humor album appeared in " I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano", the first season finale of The Sopranos. [25] Biography Saint Etienne (named after the French town's skillful football team of the 1970s) formed when Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, two childhood friends turned music journalists, teamed up to make music. Their early singles, notably " Only Love Can Break Your Heart", a Neil Young cover, were modest hits in the United Kingdom, and by the time they released their debut LP Foxbase Alpha, they were at the forefront of a growing indie dance scene in the UK. Tiger Bay (1994) represented a change of direction: the entire album was inspired by folk music, combined with modern electronica. [3] Although the album reached No.8 in the UK Albums Chart, the singles performed disappointingly, with " Pale Movie", " Like a Motorway" and " Hug My Soul" reaching No.28, No.47 and No.32 in the UK Singles Chart. In a 2009 interview, Bob Stanley said that in retrospect the band "got ahead of ourselves a bit" by releasing such an uncommercial album, which "definitely could have done with a couple more obvious songs". [14]

The album also explores a time where Britain last felt optimistic, they say, although it was tempered by disillusion even shortly after New Labour was elected. “We must be near the bottom of it for politics now, though,” says Stanley. Saint Etienne: Foxbase Alpha". Q. p.139. Fusing '60s girl group pop with cut-ups and samples, their records reimagined Burt Bacharach as a house producer. Richards, Sam (16 September 2016). "Was September 1991 the best month ever for albums?". BBC Music . Retrieved 18 September 2016. One thing that often goes unremarked on in coverage of British indie culture – except in David Cavanagh’s book about Creation – is the importance of Channel 4, which helped repopularise trash culture, the 60s pop art aesthetic, French and continental styles, and mixed it all up with the brashness of contemporary pop culture. So you’d get The Munsters, The Avengers, The Tube and a Godard movie on the same evening. It created a cultural melting point that was really attractive to a certain kind of person. Mercury Music Prize: Short Listed Albums - photographic image" (JPG). Static.guim.co.uk . Retrieved 11 September 2021.Propelled by multi-layered dub basslines, house rhythms, piano loops, and pounding drum breaks, the group’s interpolation sounds little like Young’s 1970 single, save for the equally plaintive power of Lambert’s ruminations. While the album version stuns, the various remixes orchestrated by the likes of the late Andrew Weatherall and Masters at Work are worth seeking out as well. In the interviews around the original release of Foxbase Alpha, you all talk about how you made that music to share your tastes. Was that why you worked in record shops? Or was it just to get discounted records? Petridis, Alexis (6 November 2009). "Saint Etienne: Fox Base Beta". The Guardian . Retrieved 24 July 2016. I think C86 is the part of Foxbase Alpha that people ignore, in favour of the clubbing part of it. Because I think, in sensibility, it’s very much an indiepop record, even if it doesn’t sound like one. Especially in its fetishisation of the 60s. What it reminds me of more than any actual record is the collaged covers I used to do for mixtapes with bits from 60s Penguin book covers – the photos and the quotes that are all unrelated but work together.