VARIOUS ARTISTS - NI D'EVE, NI D'ADAM CD review

Various Artists:
Ni D'Eve, Ni D'Adam:
Les Disques Du Crepuscule:
CD:
Out Now from LDDC direct

A 35 year anniversary CD is as fitting a way as any to celebrate any label's successes in order to future-proof its legacy - in co-founder Annik Honore's untimely absence, the current guardian of Crepuscule's more favourable catalogue, James Nice, has co-ordinated this intriguing new collection with the other original co-founder Michel Duval, who also composed the sleeve-notes.

Eighteen tracks, many familiar names, a few special guests and a fetching cover design combine to make this as enjoyable as other older Crepuscule compilations. Ni D'Eve, Ni D'Adam joins the label's previously-issued From Brussels With Love, the follow-up Fruits of the Original Sin, Moving Soundtracks, Ghosts of Christmas Past and The Quick Neat Job as an important audible document of the imprint's wares.

Established acts include Antena with their advert 'hit' Le Spinner (Samsonite, since you ask), Blaine L. Reininger's lustral Anstrigone (from his double CD Commissions), The Names' austere My Angel of Death (from glorious new album Stranger Than You) and Paul Haig's excellent cinematic instrumental Four Dark Traps. Allied artists are represented by the likes of Section 25 who offer up the punchy RSD 7" Mirror (with vocals from ACR's Simon Topping) and Wrangler with the busy urbane Harder from the must-have 2014 set L.A.Spark.

But it's the newbies who prove to be the poppiest and upbeat these days. Marnie's The Hunter is wide-eyed synth-pop while Marsheaux's Ghost/Hammer is enough to incite vests off at a thousand paces, such is its spirited glitter-disco euphoria. The designer of the cover is Clou whose May The Force Be With You radiates pleasingly and the curiously-monikered Les Panties proffer the pristine Diving. And it's great to have those doyens of pastoral eccentricity Deux Filles back with the brand new Her New Master (album forthcoming in 2016, I hear).

This wouldn't be a Crepsucule collection without a couple of high-brow post-classical pieces - Pascal Comelade's Despintura a Fonica is a quiet playful afternoon in a Gallic grand-place of your choice, while Maxence Cyrin's take on Bryar's beautiful Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet suits solo piano perfectly.

Add in 23 Skidoo's elegiac Calypso, Ultramarine's sprightly techno from Essex's estuaries (acid marsh?) in the form of Eye Contact and the exclusive Detail For Annik from The Durutti Column (recorded in 1980) and you have a near-perfect 78 minutes.