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PREORDER
Ships When IN STOCK.
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ARTIST
TITLE
The Road To The Sea
FORMAT
LP
LABEL
CATALOG #
TR 578LP
TR 578LP
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
5/2/2025
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LP version. Louis Philippe and The Night Mail return with a new captivating record where the songs are once again faultless. Carrying on the journey away from the classic towards the unexpected with new synths and hand claps adding a sense of the abrupt and, with voices calling from the wings, a sense of play and a lack of fear. Philippe Auclair aka Louis Philippe, Anglo-French singer-songwriter extraordinaire, has been an admired fixture for the past four decades, from his beginnings as protagonist and house producer at Mike Alway's fabled él Records label through his forays into the Shibuya sound and collaborations with the likes of Bertrand Burgalat, XTC's Dave Gregory, High Llamas' Sean O'Hagan and Young Marble Giants' Stuart Moxham right up to his more recent adventures with The Night Mail -- a loose ensemble around bassist/sometime acid jazz artist/encyclopedian of sound Andy Lewis, ex-Death in Vegas guitarist/head of heads at Papernut Cambridge/legacy indie's favorite live and session drummer Ian Button and guitarist/Viennese pop ambassador to Canterbury Robert Rotifer. When Louis Philippe & The Night Mail met again at Rimshot Studio in rural Kent in the spring of 2023 to tackle album number two, the same extended line-up was assembled. Work on The Road to the Sea began with just four days' intense recording under Rimshot's oakwood eaves followed by extensive extra sessions in Andy Lewis' hideaway studio somewhere up in deepest Bassetlaw. As the core duo of obsessives, Lewis/Philippe immersed themselves in the material, adding voices, instruments and effects, interrupted only once by Robert Rotifer visiting to throw in a few more touches of Telecaster. Their mission was to fully realize the sonic and harmonic potential of songs as varied as the partly portentous, partly (deceptively) jaunty opener "The Road to Somewhere", the catchy, XTC-flavoured "Pictures of Anna", the breezy-yet-apocalyptic space age groove of "Where Did We Go Wrong" or the piano-led Francophone waltz of "Une maison sans toit". It all adds up to a colorful mix of delicate textures, subtly sculpted reverb, melodic mellotron madness, Wilsonesque layered vocal harmonies, and the sort of long lost, very English whimsy it would take an anglophile Frenchman to evoke. And yet, in its transparent spaciousness dotted with charming detail, The Road To The Sea also brings to mind the sound of Summer Dancing, Andy Lewis' acclaimed 2017 collaboration with the late, great Judy Dyble.
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