The band's most recent film is I've Been Trying to Tell You (2021), directed by Alasdair McLellan and set to the music of the album of the same name. Unlike their previous films, it was filmed all around England; its premise was memories of teenage years and the late 1990s. [23] Songs in other films and television [ edit ] An exclusive one-sided 7” featuring the original, previously unreleased version of ‘Kiss And Make Up’, featuring ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ singer Moira Lambert. Happy 30th Anniversary to Saint Etienne’s Foxbase Alpha, originally released October 14, 1991. (Note: Select sources cite September 16, 1991 as the official release date.) Was there ever anything truly innovative about Saint Etienne fusing elements from the contemporary rave scene and house music with romantic and summery sixties pop? It's impossible for me to say. At the time Foxbase Alpha was released I had as much interest in club culture as I had in the philosophical teachings of Immanuel Kant. It wasn't until a decade after Foxbase Alpha's release I began to take an interest in the band and by that time Saint Etienne had developed into something more ambient, more twee. (Who knows one of these days I may even get around to studying Mr Kant). One thing that often goes unremarked on in coverage of British indie culture – except in David Cavanagh’s book about Creation – is the importance of Channel 4, which helped repopularise trash culture, the 60s pop art aesthetic, French and continental styles, and mixed it all up with the brashness of contemporary pop culture. So you’d get The Munsters, The Avengers, The Tube and a Godard movie on the same evening. It created a cultural melting point that was really attractive to a certain kind of person.

The people hearing your music don’t know that. They hear a group writing about cool London, filled with carefully chosen references to pop culture they might well not know. They’re getting a display of impeccable taste from people dressed like they’ve come out of Blow Up. Carroll, Jim (28 December 2016). "Saint Etienne – Foxbase Alpha album review: Still brilliant 25 years on". The Irish Times . Retrieved 22 February 2017. I understand where the idea that you were elitist came from. You’re singing about a super-cool London …An exclusive one-sided 7” featuring the original, previously unreleased version of Kiss And Make Up, featuring Only Love Can Break Your Heart singer Moira Lambert. Stanley, Rod (2006). "Saint Etienne: Foxbase Alpha". In Dimery, Robert (ed.). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Universe Publishing. p. 668. ISBN 978-0-7893-1371-3. Remains Of The Day, an exclusive album that gathers together ten rare Foxbase Alpha-era recordings from the period most of which are appearing on vinyl for the first time. Lynskey, Dorian (17 May 2009). "Pop review: St Etienne, Foxbase Alpha: Deluxe Edition". The Observer . Retrieved 22 February 2017. Foxbase Alpha was on the short list of nominees for the 1992 Mercury Prize. It was accompanied by several successful singles, including " Nothing Can Stop Us". The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. [14] Songs [ edit ]

Saint Etienne tease 2021 Christmas single, new album for 2022". Retro Pop. 10 September 2021 . Retrieved 29 December 2021. Most importantly, it felt as if all those people making records were watching Channel 4 at the same time we were. And I didn’t feel scared to talk to people in bands, so I ended up getting to know those people. Obviously, doing a fanzine, I had to talk to them anyway. But it definitely felt like these were my people. Which doesn’t really explain Foxbase Alpha. But it’s part of it. Released on September 16, 1991, Foxbase Alpha bewildered and impressed critics for its genre-bending tapestry of club rhythms, sugary melodies and diverse influences. For Sarah, Bob, and Pete, this dream of releasing their very own album had become a reality."I think more than anything we were just really excited to be making an album," she says. "The first album always has that melting pot thing, which is great. I really love that. You're not sure if you will ever make another one, so you just put every idea you have and cram it in as best as you can, in case you never get another opportunity. I like the fact that Foxbase is so mixed. There are all sorts in there and that makes it a really interesting album. And there is that kind of naiveté to it, which I really like. Obviously [Bob and Pete] were such fans of music they took to it very easily because they're big fans of melody, pop, and melancholy as a deep feeling in a song."

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Wiggs’s son is heavily into Suede, he adds – he seems to find this strangely funny – “out of nowhere… but what’s strange is we don’t hear it that much. We normally think of teenage bedrooms with loud music coming out - kids these days are always using their headphones. And they can access so much music so easily, which of course we couldn’t, so they have these very intense, private worlds.” They sense that this way of consuming music – being able to access any period, at any time – has also broken down the generation barrier. Wiggs talks about how his daughter came home from school recently, dying to talk to her dad. “The teacher was showing some examples of good basslines in music and he put on the video for [Saint Etienne’s 1990 single] Only Love Can Break Your Heart and there I was in her classroom! The teacher didn’t know!” How did your daughter feel? He answers shyly, but happily. “She said she was proud.” The album includes one of the group's best-known songs: a cover of Neil Young's " Only Love Can Break Your Heart". The cover quite differs from the original in that the original's mostly major chord progression is turned here into mostly minor, which emphasises a more melancholic feel. It is also arranged in 4/4 (as opposed to the original's waltz time), with a driving piano-bass-drum section. Andrew Weatherall later remixed the song to further emphasise the dub bassline; this remix was featured on both releases of the single and on the compilation Casino Classics (on American and European versions of the single, a Flowered Up remix is erroneously featured instead of the Andrew Weatherall mix). The follow-up single "Kiss and Make Up" was also a cover version, of a song written and originally recorded by The Field Mice. Ian Catt was the engineer/co-producer on both versions. Archived copy". Archived from the original on 12 September 2007 . Retrieved 19 August 2007. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title ( link) Petridis, Alexis (6 November 2009). "Saint Etienne: Fox Base Beta". The Guardian . Retrieved 24 July 2016. Formed in London in 1990 by fellow music aficionados and journalists Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, Saint Etienne was one of the period’s most intriguing acts, if not one of the era’s most unlikely success stories. Neither Stanley nor Wiggs was a musician by trade, but they founded the group based on their mutual affection for pop music in its various forms and an open minded acceptance of sonic experimentation. “I never thought I’d be in a band,” Stanley recently confided to RTÉ, Ireland’s National Public Radio. “I wasn’t a musician and it was technology that made it all possible because we were all big pop fans and we had fairly large record collections and when sampling came along it was a gift.”

By 1988 – 1989 (the so-called Second Summer of Love), everybody and their dog was dropping E’s and streaming as one to the empty airfields where huge open air all-night ‘secret’ raves were taking place. It was a truly exciting time to be young – and not so young – as there was a palpable sense of optimism at the imminent passing of the decadent and materialistic 1980s which in turn ushered in a new found optimism for the new decade to come. And in many ways it felt like that, with the first signs of the death throes of Thatcherism happening. The much reviled Prime Minister stepped down in 1990 after the Poll Tax Riots – a mass national revolt of defiance partly instigated by the same clubbing community that acid house raves galvanised into action to resist and challenge authority – effectively brought her tenure to an end. Ware, Gareth (4 March 2013). "OMD: Of All The Thing We've Made: 'Dazzle Ships' At 30". DIY. Archived from the original on 26 January 2016 . Retrieved 21 May 2021. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL ( link)Saint Etienne announce 10th album 'I've Been Trying To Tell You' ". om. 27 July 2021 . Retrieved 10 September 2021. Clever’s a bit of a problematic word. Does it mean arch? We used to be called ironic all the time. We didn’t like things that suggested we were using reference points because we thought they were funny, rather than because we liked them. I remember in that interview he refused to believe we liked Dazzle Ships by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, which these days is accepted as a great record. That album was a huge influence on us – a massive pop group putting together two or three recognisable pop songs and loads of found sounds. But what’s clever? Where does that come from? I guess C86 was exciting, then, because it felt like it was “ours”. For people who had been too young for punk and found goth a bit unappealing. It also, if you were a nice kid, didn’t feel dangerous. No. We needed someone to do it. We had to go to Ian Catt’s studio. Most good engineers can play most instruments reasonably well, and Ian’s certainly one of them.