LTM Recordings

Home News Mailorder Catalogue LTM Shop Avant-Garde Art Contact

Deux Filles \ Silence & Wisdom + Double Happiness (2xCD) [LTMCD 2577]

Back in 1982, many were happy to believe that Deux Filles really were a pair of tragic French orphans named Claudine Coule and Gemini Forque. In reality, the ambient/instrumental duo comprised Simon Fisher Turner, former child star/teen idol and future soundtrack composer, and songwriter/technician Colin Lloyd Tucker.

As Deux Filles the pair released two highly regarded albums: Silence & Wisdom (1982) and Double Happiness (1983), both of which are included in this deluxe digipack 2xCD package. Guests include Matt Johnson (The The), Annia Hogan and John Porter.

Remastered by Colin Lloyd Tucker, the booklet features interviews with Turner and Tucker along with archive images and the original liner notes.

2xCD tracklist:

1. The Letter
2. L'Intrigue
3. Drinking at a Stream
4. Oakwood Green
5. Children of Clay
6. Sur la Plage
7. Her Master's Voice
8. The Draw In Room
9. She Slides
10. Fleur's Doll
11. Mortuary
12. The City Sleeps
13. Silence & Wisdom
14. Festival

1. Our English Friends
2. Piroette
3. The Third Movement
4. Play Room
5. Starboard She Said
6. Los Estrellas
7. Albert the Mud Fish
8. Who Art In Heaven
9. Shackleford Breeze
10. 2 Blind 2 See
11. Zazinthos
12 Air Tube
13. Little Brown Jig
14. Tongues
15. Shalama
16. The Sun on the Sea
17. Interlude
18. The Snow Falls and the Village is Overflowing With Children
19. Double Happiness

Available on 2xCD only. To order CD please first select correct shipping option (UK, Europe or Rest of World) and then click on Add To Cart button below cover image.

Reviews:

"Drifting and wistful, they're a pair of lost ambient gems dragged back into the limelight. With excellent sleeve notes and period photos, this reissue should be snapped up. 4 stars" (Record Collector, 02/2013)

"Sultry atmospheres, dreamy layers of music" (Uncut, 02/2013)

"The actual musical content of the two albums by Deux Filles is largely ignored, due to the strange circumstances of their conception and release: Simon Fisher Turner and Colin Lloyd Tucker created the personas of two tragic French women, even appearing in gauzily-photographed drag on the album covers. The tongue in cheek deception so fascinates reviewers that the actual contents of the albums go all but unnoticed. This is a shame, because Deux Filles' 1982 debut Silence & Wisdom is a lovely album with much to recommend it. Ambient pop in the tradition of then-current artists like the Lost Jockey and Virginia Astley (whose From Gardens Where We Feel Secure this album strongly resembles in its use of found sound and ambient recordings), Silence & Wisdom blends watery piano, occasionally ghostly vocals, sheets of synthesisers, heavily processed guitars, and only the barest minimum of percussion into an excellent example of post-Eno, pre-Orb ambient music. Much more structured than Eno's early experiments in the style, these 15 brief pieces are surprisingly varied, from oddly rhythmic exercises to tranquil piano meditations. The few vocals, mostly by Turner, are almost swallowed up by the music, not only to hide their essential non-female qualities, but also as a stylistic choice that fits the mysterious, hard-to-grasp nature of the album. Silence & Wisdom is highly recommended, not just to Simon Fisher Turner fans, but to anyone fond of this style of ambient pop" (All Music Guide, 2013)

"With numerous friends, including versatile Matt Johnson and Annie Hogan, the girls have built an insular solitude which breathes calm and order. 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)

"The short instrumental pieces on Silence & Wisdom were fragmentary and immersed in a cloud of echo from which incorporeal voices emerged then retreated with unnerving suddenness. At other times the music sounded as though it were borrowed from a chamber piece and re-scored for an ethereal ensemble of recorded whispers and ticking clocks. There was a dreamlike solemnity to the music that suggested Fisher Turner and Lloyd Tucker had assumed the characters Claudine and Gemini while recording the album, and that the ghosts of les deux filles inhabited the songs... There was a discernible difference between the sound quality of Silence & Wisdom and Eno's Music for Airports, but the music shared a calming quality" (Richard King in Original Rockers, 2015)