Here’s a blast from the future past, via a 30 year old recording “Ex-Futur Album” finally released a few years ago on Belgian label Crammed Discs.
Véronique Vincent was the vocalist from 1980s New Wave band The Honeymoon Killers. Their 1981 album “Les Tueurs de la Lune de Miel” is one of my favourites from this era.
Aksak Maboul were inextricably linked with The Honeymoon Killers through common personnel but their own releases were on the far-out weird-pop fringe of the avant-garde European New Wave, compared to The Honeymoon Killers more accessible avant-pop.
Aksak Maboul’s Marc Hollander was the founder of Crammed Discs and, together with Veronique Vincent, wrote and recorded “Ex-Futur Album” between 1980 and 1983 before the project was abandoned for reasons unexplained.
It’s not a typical Aksak Maboul release by any means. Instead it is typically idiosyncratic European pop, mixing electronic dance music with inventive exotic French pop stylings and goodness knows what else. What I’ve heard of it sounds utterly contemporary. It’s hard to imagine how this would have fitted into any ‘scene’ at the time of its creation, which may explain why it took 30 years to be released.
Here’s the current 2016 version of the band (presently touring Europe), with a song from the recent album of re-visitations of “Ex-Futur Album” by various contemporary contributors (including Veronique Vincent & Marc Hollander).
Pop Lib 