Roger Melt – L’Am’Ou Dans Bois
From Roger Melt – Pleine Lune
Released on G.K. Records, 1984, U.K.

If you’re into record digging, you cannot ignore the tremendous hype that « Antillais » records now have, from Gwo Ka albums to Electro-Zouk.  A friend who owns a record store recently told us that he was astonished to see how well he was selling records from Guadeloupe or Martinique, people buying absolutely everything, as long as it was recorded in the French Indies, even the lamest, zouk albums (and god knows that there are millions of cheap zouk records out there).

There are of course amazing Creole records, produced by the likes of Cosaque, Brival, or Desvarieux for famous artists or completely unknown musicians, like Raphaël Toiné. Raphael Toine‘s album was mixed by a little known Swiss musician, Claude Lander, who, as a matter of fact, also played the synth on Roger Melt‘s Pleine Lune.

We’ve listened to many West Indies but this one definitively sounds like nothing we ever heard. Mône-Là somehow sounds like a weird Vini Reilly‘s tune sung in Créole, recorded somewhere in « Les Antilles » while L’Am’Ou Dans Bois could have been featured on an album released on Grabaciones Accidentales reminding us of Spanish acts like Finis Africae. This is the only Créole Art-Rock record we know of, and we’re glad that the French Indies still hold great secrets such as these Roger Melt’s experiments ! Soothing…