BIPPP: French Synth Wave 1979/85 LP

New 2023 copies of the classic BIPPP compilation, originally released all the way back in 2006. Bringing together a wide range of synth'd-up punk bonzers, BIPPP was one of the classic post-punk reissue compilations unleashed during an era where hundreds of bands were—wittingly or not—aping their style two or three decades after this music fell into obscurity. Listening again in 2023, the cuts here are so fresh and, with the exception of a few groups like Deux, Ruth and Casino Music, mostly have still flown under the radar. Cheap copies, this repress is already sold out at the distributor and these won't be around for long!

"Increasingly detached from the original punk formula, the modern and arty youth of the early eighties set itself to jettison an artform that had lost much of the nihilistic and exhilarating energy of its halcyon days, stuck, as it was, in an endless and noisy regression. No Future was the motto of an artform without a cause that no longer echoed with the mindset of the time.

"Disheartened but eager to experiment and create, a new wave of French musician followed the beacon of Jacno’s seminal 79 hit “Rectangle”, a visionary, digital coup de grâce, courtesy of a former punk which dealt the Rickenbacker and Fender era a fatal blow. The cold and robot-like bips of analogic keyboards took over. Casio, Korg MS-10, Arp Omni were the new paraphernalia of the növö generation. The ideal conveyers of its retro-futurist elegance and self-professed cold arrogance. They were pinnacles and symbols which turned as potent a fetiche as the electric guitar in the fifties or the laptop in the nineties. BIPPP recalls the glory of a selected few. The cream of the crop of the shooting stars and cult band that followed in the footsteps of Kas Product, Mathematiques Modernes or Charles de Goal." — Born Bad