Given my love of French pop and of spooky music, it's almost a little shocking I've never done a French Halloween mix before! Time to remedy that: 'Peur du noir' is a pure horreur français mix. It's over two-and-a-half-hours of vintage French spooktacular sounds. Yes, I do have that much music to fit this specific theme ...come on, of course I do!

The songs here span the late 1950s to the late 1980s, and multiple genres – there's yé-yé, some pre-yé-yé rock 'n' roll and le twist, horror soundtracks, 80s pop, psychedelic rock, haunting instrumentals, and more.

The amazing photo of Françoise Hardy, Jacques Dutronc, and some vampire friends is by Jean-Marie Périer, from the November 1968 issue of Salut les copains. For the full image and some more photos of Dutronc from this spread, see the gallery below the tracklist.

If you choose to listen using the download link and you enjoy it, I'd appreciate if you could give the mix a like on Mixcloud.

Mixcloud | Download (368mb) | Duration: 2 hours 37 minutes

Tracklist (Hide details)

Just a brief post to share some mixed versions of a pair of older playlists I made for Halloween in 2012, 'The Midnight Hour' and 'Strange Shadows'.

The first of the two was an attempt to evoke a kind of eerie, middle-of-the-night, alone-in-a-dark-house, semi-dreamlike feeling. The second one is more ominous, yet more punchy – a shorter, more fun companion to the former's journey of haunting beauty.

This is part of an effort I've been slowly making to give my old playlists a new home. I put a lot of effort and love into creating my playlists on there, but for years 8tracks has been stuck in a limbo of geo-restriction and royalties nightmares. Although the site recently returned after seemingly shuttering for good, it is still only accessible in limited countries and even then, many songs are not playable. Re-listening to some of my efforts there, I think they are worth preserving, so I'll continue to add mixed versions to Mixcloud.

Fun fact: both mix images are screenshots taken from the 1970s Rod Serling television series Night Gallery. 'The Midnight Hour' image is from the intro to 'The House', and 'Strange Shadows' is from a scene in 'Certain Shadows on the Wall'. You can watch this wonderful series for free here (I found that a VPN set to the USA works if you get the 'not available in your location' message).

For more of my earlier Halloween playlists and mixes, visit my playlists page.

The Midnight Hour

Mixcloud | View image | Duration: 1 hour 39 minutes

Tracklist:

Heart-stopping glances. Stolen moments. Giddy highs and melancholic lows. Tender feelings, guilty pleasures. A love affair you can't resist, right or wrong.

The collection of songs on this mix, 'Autumn Rendez-vous', evoke all the beauty, drama and heartache of all-consuming – sometimes forbidden – love. It feels cosy and romantic, but can suddenly leave you devastated.

Mixcloud | View image | Duration: 2 hours 5 minutes

Bien sur, such a mix had to include a good dose of French and French-inspired pop. Who better to set the tone here than Françoise Hardy, the master of wistful longing and comforting sadness? The mix features, and is named for, the English version of her 1966 song, 'Rendez-vous d'automne'. Françoise also pops up duetting with Blur on the alternate version of 'To The End', and her presence is felt elsewhere, like the track from The Yearning's gorgeous 2016 album Evening Souvenirs, which was heavily influenced by Ms Hardy's oeuvre. There are also a few translations of gallic songs here: Jimmie Rodgers 'The Lovers' is a cover of Jacques Brel's 'Les Amants de cœur', Greek sixties girl Tammy interprets Pascal Danel's 'Les Trois Dernières Minutes', and Ethel Azama, under the auspices of Martin Denny, does a show-stopping rendition of Jacques Prevert and Joseph Kosma's 'Les Feuilles Mortes'.

The beautiful cover photo of Françoise is by Jean-Marie Périer.

Tracklist:

| Play on page | Play on Youtube

I have been meaning to post this record for a loooong time – I found notes on it that go back a decade or so! I was certain by now someone else would have blogged it or put it on Youtube. But after a deep search, I see no signs of it. I guess this record really is pretty darn rare!

I'm extra excited to share it now – this is one of my favourite finds ever, and as much as I try not to get territorial about music, I adore this record so much and it so embodies what this blog is about that I must admit I love that it still gets to have its internet premiere here, despite sitting on it for so long. :)

The record in question is an early 1970s Belgian single by a young woman credited simply as Evelyn. I have known a single fact about her since I purchased it in 2007 – that she is the singer who appears on Sharif Dean's 1973 song, 'Do You Love Me?'. This knowledge led me to find out her full name: Evelyn D'Haese (sometimes spelled Evelyne or Eveline).

Mixcloud | View image | Duration: 2 hours 4 minutes

A minor dilemma for me, as a blogger living in a different hemisphere to almost all of my readers, is when to share a mix that seems so perfect for a particular season. I've had this mix in mind as a soundtrack for spring, but wondered whether to post it in your spring or mine? I've decided perhaps this is an ideal time for you and I alike, as my springtime begins, and maybe some of your summery days still linger as it turns to autumn. Whatever the weather, I think this provides some much-needed sunny cheer. It's music for daydreaming out the window.

This mix was inspired by, and shaped around, the simple, escapist joy of the song 'Up, Up and Away'. Written by Jimmy Webb and originally recorded by The Fifth Dimension, the harmonic slice of breezy listening was a big hit around the world in 1967. I wanted to create a mix with a feeling of pure escapism and floating away from troubles. Is there any song that better epitomises this?

The version I decided to include here is the less familiar Supremes' cover from their 1968 album Reflections, which is a little sweeter and more buoyant to my ears, and of course has Diana Ross' irresistibly silken vocals. It's nestled among a collection of songs I find uplifting, comforting and sometimes achingly beautiful (wow, that Aretha cover of 'Over The Rainbow').

Welcome back to the blog for another year - and decade! I hope 2020 is finding you content and well. If not – well, music is a great elixir, and there are a ton of beautiful tunes in this post to help soothe what ails you :).

As has become tradition, my first post of the new year is a look back at my favourite records of the previous year, with a playlist for you to sample songs from each. As a bonus, I've added a playlist of my favourite releases of 2018 as well, since I wasn't blogging this time last year, but had been saving a list of records I loved.

Wow, there were some killer albums that came out in both 2019 and 2018. Once again, I'm extremely heartened by the state of new music – it just takes a little digging to find the good stuff ;).Here are my lists of top 10 albums for each year (in no real order, except for the top 3 in each list):

Now onto the fun stuff - the playlists! These represent what ended up being a fairly random number of my favourite releases. For the 2019 playlist, I was ready to go with a nice, neat 25 albums and 5 EPs and singles, but discovered I'd forgotten a couple of essential inclusions, and struggled to cut anything further. Then I realised one of the benefits of running my own blog is I can do whatever the fuck I want! So, 27 albums it is! (or 32 releases including EPs and singles).

If you are new to my contemporary music tastes, what you can expect is lots of neo-psych, avant-pop, shimmery dream pop, pop noir, and otherwise songs with irresistible melodies and strong songwriting, usually in a retro or classic vein. My playlists tend to be female-dominated - it's not by design, it's just that somehow my tastes lead me to more women making the type of music I love. I've never liked to make a statement of it; in some way, I think it's more interesting and powerful not to point it out, because why should it be unusual? That said, I am pleased to celebrate some extremely talented, sometimes overlooked female artists and present them to an audience who may not yet know them.

These were made on Spotify (RIP my fave playlisting service, 8tracks), but if you have another preferred streaming platform, visit the Soundsgood link beneath the playlist artwork for more listening options (the playlists, however, may be incomplete on some platforms).

Best of 2019: Spotify playlist | Soundsgood (more listening options)

A psychedelic mix just in time for Christmas! There's not much I need to say about this that the title doesn't already tell you. All I will say is, on playing it through, I noticed it's kind of an odd blend of cheerful and sinister – but hey, that seems apt for Christmas! It's named for a song by The Smoking Trees from the superb Active Listener Christmas Album from 2012. (A name-your-price download on Bandcamp, it's well worth grabbing). Oddly, I only noticed after compiling this that there are quite a few tracks from 2012, for some reason. Apparently that year was a fine vintage for Christmas psych!

Hello all! Been absent from the blog for much longer than intended, I'm sorry to say. But I hate to miss another Halloween, especially since my blog is named for a Halloween urban legend. So I've managed to squeak in a mix just in time!

'A Curse On You' is in a similar vein to my last couple of mixes: more of a haunting atmosphere than strictly horror-themed selections, though there are a few of those as well. I like to make my mixes a bit of an emotional journey through different moods and sonic textures, especially when fairly long like this one, which comes in at two hours and eight minutes.

This mix is packed with vintage European soundtracks, moody experimental pop, electronic forays, an abundance of 60s psych rock, and more. There's some of the sensual, affecting vibe of my previous mixes, but with more of a gritty, dirty punch - at least that was the aim!

Please enjoy this trippy spookfest! Here are the artists and songs featured in this mix (click 'Hide details' to see a simplified tracklist):

Mixcloud | Alternate link | View image

Here's an all-France Gall mix, featuring some of my favourite songs of hers from 1963 to 1972. I say some of because, well, I love pretty much all her stuff from that era - it took some restraint to only choose 38 songs! You'll find some of her absolute classics here, as well as some lesser-known songs that are equally wonderful. After making the mix, I realised I drew a lot from my favourite album of hers, the 1967 psych-pop classic, 1968. I also seem to have included every song where she does her adorable version of scatting, which is really just the best thing ever. As well as her French songs, I've included a few of her German tracks, the Japanese version of 'Un prince charmant' and the Italian version of 'La Quatrième Chose'.

I've already gone into what I love about France Gall's music, so I'm not going to get descriptive here, but just let the music speak for itself. My hope is these selections would make someone new to her music fall in love with it as much as I did. And perhaps there are a few things here that are not so readily familiar to established French pop fans.