Nancy Fortune – First Operation
Happy birthday et joyeax anniversaire Nancy Fortune!
For the unaware, Nancy is a French electro singer and producer, who happened to make my favourite record on The Hague electro/disco label Viewlexx; The Secret Life of Nancy Fortune. I paid a small fortune for the 12″, a few years before it was repressed along with several other rare Viewlexx records, and it’s not left my record box once since.
I don’t think there is a single bad record on Viewlexx, but this one particularly stands out to me…unusual (and heavy) drums and rhythm patterns with dark dark but hauntingly beautiful synthesizer-lines, with vocals to match — Nancy has a great voice but the vocals on this record are something else; they have a real other-wordly quality, strong female vocals but with a ghostly edge which i’ve often heard described as if they were recorded under water. But instead of sounding horrible and overproduced like it could have easily done, it compliments Nancy’s unique voice and music.
I always thought the music was written by I-F and the vocals by Nancy, the beats certainly have a bit of an I-F sound, but I found out later that the tracks are credited as being written and produced by Nancy herself, and engineered by S-Y-D from Clermont-Ferrand, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I-F did play at least some part in the production.
Since the 12″ was repressed, you can probably pick up a copy for a reasonable price, though it’s sold out over at Clone. They do however have available the record she recently did with my homeboy from The Hague Mr. Pauli, a classic industrial edged disco funk/track where Nancy did vocals back and forth with Fred Ventura. The other tracks are banging too, so check it out here: Mr. Pauli – Jap Fab.
First Operation also appeared on Nancy’s recent album Crystallised, which was originally meant to be an LP on Viewlexx sublabel Holographic, but was unfortunately released as digital download only for now (though i’m hoping that Viewlexx or Clone might press it to vinyl *cough* do it).
You can buy the album from iTunes, and definitely should — every track on it is amazing (My highlights would be the last track Walking which is just beautiful, it really blew my mind, along with Coeur Synthetique and another old favourite Holographic Voice with I-F).
