Inactive and suspended

After yesterday's post on Kumisolo, the lovely people at Active Suspension have written to say that the label is indeed closed for good now; the album had been a long time in the making and its release was AS's last gasp. At #18 in the catalog it marks the end of an era. The good news is that label owner Julien Rohel is continuing with his other venture Clapping Music, which has also brought about some good stuff of the inde/folk/fractured pop persuasion. In keeping with today's hairy-wild-man-in-the-forest theme, here's a flashback to Clapping's 2006 album by Orval Carlos Sibelius:

My love for you is a cheap pop song

I'm pretty pleased to hear that that Kumi Okamoto of The Konki Duet (and before that the shortlived but sweet J-Pop duo Crazy Curl) has just released her first solo album. Take a look at the (kinda peculiar) clip for single 'Danse Music'.

The appearance of My Love For You Is A Cheap Pop Song takes me a little by surprise, as it's the first Active Suspension release since 2007; the eccentric synthpop/chamber/electronica-ish label had seemed more suspended than active lately. AS, based in Paris like most of its roster, put out some of my favourite records in the mid-decade period, including Domotic's Ask For Tiger, O.Lamm's Monolith and The Konki Duet's Il Fait Tout Gris. It so happens that both Domotic and O.Lamm appear as guests on several tracks of the Kumisolo album, so it's kind of like the entire era is reuniting on one tidy record. With the whole of The Konki Duet self-releasing an online-only EP earlier this year, things seem to be picking up again in Paris. Good stuff.