Guy Lochhead, 10/10/10
A French composer who found mainstream fame with two pretty conventional Eurovision entries – ‘Tom Pilibi’ for France in 1960 and ‘L’amour est bleu’ for Luxembourg in 1967, placing first and fourth respectively (with the latter also becoming a US number one for Paul Mauriat in 1968)- but is now best known for his earlier experiments with production techniques on two albums made for Columbia’s short-lived ‘World of Discovery’ series, ‘Delirium in Hi-Fi’ and ‘Popped!’. These albums were made in collaboration with Pierre Fatosme (initially under the name ‘Elsa Popping and her Pixie Landers’ or ‘Elsa Popping and her Pixieland Band’), whose influence may have led to the more experimental sound of the album, saturated in tape manipulation, multi-tracking, echo and reversal effects. Despite, or perhaps because of, the anomolous nature of those albums in Popp’s discography, those works of Space Age Pop are now his most celebrated pieces. Also worth mentioning are his 1954 instrumental ‘Les Lavandieres du Portugal’, which was pretty widely covered by ’50s bachelor pad groups, and his introduction-to-the-orchestra piece ‘Piccolo et Saxie’. It’s a shame that so little is known about Fatosme because he really sounds like the interesting party here. Then again, if I wanted to include someone for their experiments in production, I’d much rather go with someone exciting all the way through like Raymond Scott, Les Paul, the Radiophonic Workshop, Dick Raaijmakers, Oskar Sala, yaddayaddayadda… Popp has a big fanbase in Space Age Pop and Bachelor Pad Music enthusiasts, but I’m not one of those. ‘Piccolo et Saxie’ sounds sort of interesting though. I’ll try to find out about that, and maybe look up his collaborator for that, Jean Broussole…