Sebastien Tellier
Sexuality Lucky Number
(Record Makers)
Tellier's first album, 2001's L'incroyable Verite (The Incredible Truth), came with instructions to listen to it strictly in candlelight. The French non-conformist multi-instrumentalist followed that up with 2005's Politics, featuring his celebrated piano and string-driven La Ritournelle, with Nigerian drumming genius Tony Allen.
Sexuality is Tellier's 11-track take on love-making and the act of sex, described by its creator as an attempt to inspire the emotional effect of witnessing pornography for the first time. Indeed, there are times when this borders on porn music for the digital age, with Tellier cast as a sweatier, heavier breathing, Casio-stroking Serge Gainsbourg. His most prominent instrument here are the moans of female orgasm that feature heavily on Kilometer and Pomme. The latter is the closest thing here to Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin's notorious Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus.
Yet it's ironic that Tellier treats a subject that demands a sense of adventure with some of his most conservative music yet, with various rhythms and influences filtered into the electro fetish of producer Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo of Daft Punk. This also has its benefits - the likes of Une Heure, Roche and the climactic Jean Michel Jarre-influence of Sexual Sportswear are laced in a perverse synthetic darkness, while Fingers of Steel has echoes of the 1980s electro-erotica of Imagination.
