Saint Etienne – Fox Base Beta

Saint Etienne released Fox Base Alpha in 1991, when I was aged 5. And I’m sad to say, that for the rest of my life the album passed me by. However, this does, in a way, make me the prime target audience for Richard X’s remix of the album ”“updating a classic album with a new lease of knob-twiddling life.So when it comes to what’s been added, taken away, nipped, tucked, surgically enhanced or simply desecrated, I really couldn’t tell you. Judging the calibre of the artists involved though, I can’t imagine that there’s any kind of defilement going on.Sarah Cracknell is the proud owner of one of those effortlessly alluring voices that turn men folk into gibbering wrecks and give girls someone decent to aspire to (step back Cheryl Cole, Lily Allen et al). On the ethereal ‘London Belongs To Me’, Sarahs sweeping multi-layered vocals wash over perfectly like a summer breeze, and on ‘Spring’ she’s the perfect pop princess.From the glorious ramshackle ramblings of Countdown, sweets, buses, and gangster films in ‘Wilson’ and ‘Etienne Gonna Die’ to the moody Massive Attack-esque ‘Carn’t Sleep’ to the city shuffle of ‘Spring’ , the influences on Fox Base Beta wander across genres and decades. But from all of them, there’s a definitive Saint Etienne sound carved out from it, which Richard X has added to rather than distracted from.At 13 tracks it’s the perfect length for an album that literally does take you on a journey (a rather cheap taxi ride, in fact) in a meandering sort of way ”“ you’ll giggle at the film and tv samples, float away on a sea of synths, and be moved by heartbreaking lyrics and scratch your head at others.. It’s chill-out music when chill-out music meant trip-hop and lo-fi, not Zero 7, and an album that paves the way for the indie-dance genre.If you’ve never heard this album before, or indeed Saint Etienne, this is a perfect starting place. And if you have, no doubt that this will bring a classic album into a whole new light thanks to Richard X.Saint Etienne on MySpace