Album: Various Artists

Nuggets: Luke Vibert's Selection, Lo

This Nuggets bears scant relation to the celebrated series of the same name documenting the garage-psychedelia excesses of such as The Seeds, Standells and Count Five. Indeed, it might better have been titled "Noodles", comprising as it does the better examples of "library music" (off-the-peg sonic snippets intended for film and TV soundtracks) recorded in the Seventies, mostly by a gaggle of Gallic producers at Ganaro Studios in Versailles. It's that era's equivalent of the Fifties mood-music of Les Baxter, Martin Denny and Juan Esquivel, updated to include synths and rock guitars. The closest it gets to that kind of languid exotica is Nino Nardini's "Tropical", tastes having changed to favour instead the kind of fussy jazz-funk drumming, wah-wah guitar and gurgling clavinet characteristic of Seventies cop shows (Richard Demaria's "Next Episode") and some splendidly cheesy sci-fi synth excursions that, at their farthest extremes (Cecil Leuter's "Electronic Track 15", Johanna Group's "Strange Love Action") border on the lunatic space-scapes of Sun Ra. Elsewhere, the popcorn synth of Anthony King's "Electrostalactites" and Eddie Warner's "Telex" recall Raymond Scott and Gershon Kingsley's electronic experiments of the previous decade, while several tracks seem infused with the questing spirit of Can, if not their quality control. The missing link between Krautrock, synth-pop and modern techno, perhaps.