Deux Filles "Silence & Wisdom / Double Happiness" 2xLP (2021)

Details: Dark Entries latest reissue: the dreamt-up duo project that was Gemini and Claudine (aka Simon Fisher Turner and Colin Lloyd Tucker of The The) reissued August 16th, 2021 on double vinyl. The duo released four albums together including the 2013 and Dark Entries 2016 remaster and issue of the double compilation that brings together their 1982 and 1983 albums "Silence and Wisdom," and "Double Happiness." New stock, new reissue, sealed.

Description: "The short, mysterious career of the female French duo Deux Filles is bookended by tragedy. Gemini Forque and Claudine Coule met as teenagers at a holiday pilgrimage to Lourdes, during which Coule's mother died of an incurable lung disease, and Forque's mother was killed and her father paralyzed in an auto accident. The two teens bonded over their shared grief and worked through their bereavement with music. However, after recording two critically acclaimed albums and playing throughout Europe and North America, Forque and Coule disappeared without a trace in North Africa in 1984 during a trip to visit Algiers. The short and terribly unhappy lives of Forque and Coule are at the root of the small but fervent cult following the mysterious duo have gained since their disappearance, not least because the placid, largely instrumental music on the duo's albums betrays no hint of the sorrow that framed their personal lives.

This would be a terribly sad story if a word of it were true. In reality, Deux Filles were Simon Fisher Turner, former child star/teen idol and future soundtrack composer, and his mate Colin Lloyd Tucker. Turner and Tucker left an early incarnation of The The in 1981 to pursue another musical direction. Turner claims that the idea of Deux Filles came to him in a dream, and he and Tucker strictly maintained the fiction throughout the duo's career. Not only did they pose in drag for the album covers, the duo once even played live without the audience realizing that the tragic French girls on-stage were actually a pair of blokes from south London. Deux Filles released two albums through Turner and Tucker's Papier Mache label, 1982's “Silence & Wisdom” and 1983's “Double Happiness”. Both albums are included here, and blend watery piano, ghostly vocals, sheets of synthesizers, processed guitars, and the barest minimum of percussion. Drifting and wistful, they’re a pair of lost ambient gems from a time when the genre had yet to mature, an excellent example of post-Eno, pre-Orb ambient music.

All songs have been remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The vinyl comes housed in gatefold sleeve with original front covers of both albums, and a centerfold of archive images and the original liner notes. Each LP includes a sticker of the Lino cuts by Adrian Gill that was included with the original pressing. “Like an early French film soundtrack with melodramatic overtones, the sound is jagged and disjointed but never harsh. Lilting guitars and ample use of echo smack of Vini Reilly, relying on the hypnotic qualities of the sound rather than abrasive noise" (Sounds, 03/1983)

Grade: M (new stock)

TRACK LISTING SIDE A:

A1. The Letter
A2. L’Intrigue
A3. Drinking At A Stream
A4. Oakwood Green
A5. Children Of Clay
A6. Sur La Plague
A7. Her Master’s Voice

TRACK LISTING SIDE B:

B1. The Draw Room
B2. She Slides
B3. Fleur’s Dolls
B4. Mortuary 
B5. The City Sleeps
B6. Birds
B7. Silence & Wisdom
B8. Festival 

TRACK LISTING SIDE C:

C1. Our English Friends 
C2. Piroette 
C3. The Third Move
C4. Play Room
C5. Starboard She Said
C6. Los Esterellas (The Stars)
C7. Albert The Mud Fish
C8. Who Art In Heaven
C9. Shackleford Breeze
C10. 2 Blind 2 See
C11. Zazinthos 

TRACK LISTING SIDE D:

D1. Air Tube
D2. Little Brown Jig
D3. Tongues
D4. Shalama
D5. The Sun On The Sea
D6. Interlude 
D7. The Snow Falls And The Village Is Overflowing With Children
D8. Double Happiness