Here’s a new twist for a re-release. ‘Vote Don’t Vote’ by CANDIDATE is a collection of 16 unpublished songs which never saw the light of day and now represent this duo’s fifth long-player release. 14 years after their demise. These studio recordings cover a period from 1987-1990, although this French combo started life in Nancy as far back as 1981 and swiftly became darlings of the bourgeoning continental electronic movement.
CANDIDATE were singer Cecile and multi-instrumentalist Bidou (a fella), both ridiculously photogenic art punks who created rhythms with their TR 707 drum machine and fleshed out their tunes with fuzzbox guitar and little else. The minimalist arrangement and the tribal mechanics of their beats works for the most part and, ironically, makes them sound even more Teutonic than contemporaries like Propaganda but not as harsh or insistent as Laibach. With Cecile’s sexy near-monotone vocals they could at times be Yello fronted by Nico; for modern reference points you could encompass acts as diverse as Goldfrapp and The Kills.
There is a pop sensibility lurking within CANDIDATE and in truth the better songs are those where Bidou lets his guitar fill out the backing track. Opening track ‘Up and Down’ is a great example of their stylised pop punk with a distinct nod to Bowie’s Berlin period. In fact they cover Iggy Pop’s ‘Nightclubbing’ and it’s impossible to hear any advance in the ten years that separate the versions. Occasionally too strong a whiff of Euro-pop enters proceedings and a couple of tracks swing dangerously close to the sanitised electronic output of Harold Faltemeyer - he of Miami Vice fame – or (heaven help us) Wang Chung. Elsewhere they show they could be on the money with the indie/dance cross-over of the time; the beats of a song like ‘Shades of Red (revisted)’ almost sounding like an Andy Weatherall remix of ‘Hallelujah’ era Happy Mondays.
|
But for all the plus points too much of ‘Vote Don’t Vote’ sounds unfinished and dated, perhaps a reflection of the fact that during the period that these tracks were laid down the duo were beginning to focus their efforts on more experimental paths within theatrical and soundtrack work.
|
