Currently enjoying “Tourist” by St. Germain

Remember when this album came out ten years ago? The timing was definitely right for such a well-crafted blend of jazz and electronic music, and it’s no wonder it was such a big hit in record stores and gigantic bookstores alike.

Ten years later, it still holds up. Maybe that’s because it was very much of an earlier age to begin with, or maybe I’m just a fan because it personally brings back positive memories of campus pubs and the earliest of DJ gigs. Or maybe it’s because it’s just a very strong album.

Strangely enough, I got turned back onto this album by a different record that I’m afraid I didn’t enjoy nearly as much. In a review of the latest Funki Porcini release that I wrote a couple of weeks ago for Chart, I noted that one of the tracks on that disc “sounds an awful lot” like “Rose Rouge,” the opening track on Tourist.

The press release for On admitted as much, as if it were something to brag about. Supposedly, listening to the track in question “is like hearing St. Germain on mushrooms whilst watching an aural time-lapse film of a Zebra Crossing.” I can’t vouch for that, since I’ve obviously never done that bullshit combination of things. But what I can tell you is that it’s a redundant retread of a superior track that achieved international success a full decade ago.

Now, I don’t want to keep dumping on an album that I’ve already panned – without even having produced a better album of my own, I might add – so let’s forget about Funki Porcini for the moment. Indeed, if I were to give anyone involved in that whole debacle a hard time, it would be all the third-rate reviewers and PR hacks out there whose idea of great music criticism is a useless bunch of aggressively “creative” combinations of references. Honestly, having to suffer through that crap is like waking up with a hangover in the back of a DeLorean being driven by Jonathan Richman to the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah.

I mean, seriously! Doesn’t it piss you off when people do that? I asked you to tell me about the record, not prove that you’ve heard of Shonen Knife!

All right, I ended up going off on a bit of a thing there, but the St. Germain record is great. It was inescapable when it first came out – at least in the college town where I bought it, played it, and couldn’t escape it – and yet it never seemed to overstay its welcome. The simple, almost dub approach it takes to its source material resulted in an album that was timely when it hit the shelves, and which has proven timeless since. And that’s a pretty neat trick.

Posted in Currently Enjoying