ALBUM BY ALBUM

FROM S&M-TINGED DISCO TO ATMOSPHERIC MOOD PIECES, GOLDFRAPP REMAIN ONE OF POP’S ULTIMATE SHAPESHIFTERS

MARK LINDORES

FELT MOUNTAIN STALLED AT NO.57 IN THE UK, A DISAPPOINTING POSITION FOR AN ALBUM OF SUCH QUALITY

For an album so deeply entrenched in the past, Goldfrapp’s debut still sounds fresh and innovative more than two decades after its release.

Taking in classical, leftfield electronica, Brechtian cabaret, folk and 60s pop, Felt Mountain is an ambitious piece of work, a feat made even more remarkable by the fact that Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory were still virtual strangers when they began recording it in the autumn of 1999.

Alison, who had previously collaborated with Tricky, Orbital and Dreadzone, and Will, who’d worked with Tears For Fears, Portishead and Peter Gabriel, were introduced by a mutual friend after Will heard one of Alison’s early versions of Human and thought her voice would be perfect to sing on a score he was working on. That project didn’t come to fruition, but the pair realised that they shared similar musical tastes and developed a working relationship by sending each other tapes of songs they were into and began writing together.

A deal with Mute Records was signed in September 1999 and the duo rented a secluded bungalow nestled deep in the Wiltshire countryside where they immersed themselves for six months to create their debut LP.

The decision paid off with the countryside permeating the feel of the music – the lush and sumptuous soundscapes conjuring up imagery of dewy meadows and misty woodlands, wildlife and snowy drifts, all enhanced by Alison’s astonishing vocals, which veer effortlessly from hushed sensuality (Paper Bag) to operatic grandeur (Utopia), with a hint of whistling and even yodelling.

Album opener Lovely Head creates the ambience, with its distinctive lonesome whistle hook and gentle shuffling drum beat luring the listener into a seductive, cinematic experience that transports us from the pastoral baroque of Paper Bag to the sinister, mambo-esque Human and soaring Pilots, both of which evoke John Barry’s best Bond themes, while the sparse Deer Stop and Horse Tears are piano-based songs with distorted vocals resulting in an eerie, haunting atmosphere. The glorious opera-meets-electronica of Utopia is transcendent.

Released on 11 September 2000, Felt Mountain stalled at No.57 in the UK, a rather disappointing position for an album of such quality. Alison Goldfrapp later explained that the band failed to receive radio support on account of the music being too slow and difficult to categorise.

The album sold subsequently on the back of Goldfrapp’s later successes and benefitted from a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize. It remains afirm fan favourite.

FELT MOUNTAIN

Released 2000

Label Mute

Chart position

UK: No.57 US –

BLACK CHERRY REMAINS A GLEAMING PINNACLE OF THEIR IMPECCABLE DISCOGRAPHY

After a year on the road in support of Felt Mountain, Will and Alison found themselves frustrated with their “static” live show, not only because they had just nine songs of their own, but because of the emotional toll it took to perform those intense torch songs, night after night.

It was particularly frustrating for Alison who, before getting into music, had studied fine art and toured Europe with a theatre company and was keen to introduce more of a performance aspect into Goldfrapp. In a bid to lift the mood, they closed their sets with radical reworkings of Olivia Newton-John’s Physical and Baccara’s Yes Sir, I Can Boogie (on which Alison famously performed a theremin solo with her crotch). It was these performances, as well as a foray into DJing for Alison, that proved the catalyst for the daring new direction in which they headed on their second album, the sublime electro-eroticism of Black Cherry.