Ross Blake – Pretty en Rose (Horse Arm)

Ross Blake’s soundtrack to Pretty en Rose evokes the magical, odd and unmade of European cinema, and is reissued on limited edition white vinyl

An EP of remixes was the bait. In fact, this was going to be a review of the Pretty Encore set of electronic revisions of tracks from Ross Blake’s 2017 debut LP. I would have praised the maverick interpretations by the likes of Mike Lindsay, A’Bear, Vanishing Twin and PRIZUM. I might have highlighted how Blake’s exotica soundtrack gems had – through varying alchemical processes – been transformed into lopsided ambient cuts. I’m pretty sure the implication would have been that you should go and buy it. But this is not a review of Pretty Encore after all; you will have to listen to that without accompaniment.

So what happened? The remixes naturally led back to the source: Pretty en Rose, Blake’s soundtrack to Angélique Bosio’s documentary about Parisian fashion figure Fifi Chachnil. It was being re-released on limited edition white vinyl around the same time as the EP, which was more than enough reason for a close listen. That it turned into a slight infatuation is hardly my fault.

“Ages” half-awakens from a dream accompanied by harp and guitar. As voices rise from synthesiser depths, it evokes a woozy, weird and unmade epic of European cinema. Alice in Wonderland meets Ennio Morricone with a dose of Jodorowsky perhaps. Getting smaller and stranger still, “Karen Black” is an organ ditty whispered about in cosmic corridors. Its spoken word samples – hinting at memories of Boards of Canada’s “One Very Important Thought” – interrupt the flow, suggesting a layering of worlds and the thin places between.

The gleaming loungecore of “Golden Spherics” conjures moving images of François Truffaut films and Céline and Julie Go Boating, its cello and vibraphone drawing magic from the air. “Night Song” is then a sea shanty from the underworld or else work song of the little people – either way, torn from the pages of earthy myth. “New Water” deftly exits with sleight of hand, like Tristram Cary at his most melodic as interpreted by Goblin. It is quiet and synthy and strange.

Pretty en Rose might just be where Edda Dell’Orso meets Antoine Duhamel in a collaboration with Broadcast. Not the review I was expecting to write then, but the review I needed to.

rossblake.bandcamp.com