Kekeland

For this 1998 release, Brigitte Fontaine teams up with an unlikely cast of collaborators from across the '90s' avant-pop spectrum, enlisting Sonic Youth, jazz legend Archie Shepp, the singer simply known as M, French rock groups Noir Desir and les Valentins, as well as the production team Sound Orama. The pick of the tracks here is her work with Sonic Youth, who were clearly great admirers of her '70s albums. The New York avant-garde rockers play an empathetic collection of pieces mixed by Jim O'Rourke, whose expertise intuitively fuses the disparate avant-pop sensibilities into a cohesive and dynamic collaboration. Elsewhere things wander off into a casually eclectic mix of styles that fails to congeal with any one particular design. This melting pot of ideas does, however, have its share of brilliant moments that are well worth checking out. Newcomers to Brigitte Fontaine should look to her '70s work for an introduction -- it is recommended to have a contextual understanding of her wayward pop before exploring the more idiosyncratic works she produced in the '90s. ~ Skip Jansen