- See all the Ratings
- Add my Rating now
(Fashion TV/ Creative Vibes)
If you’re well enough off, or perhaps know someone else who is, then you must watch 10 minutes or so of Fashion TV on Foxtel one of these days. Certainly not for the pure entertainment or quality of what’s on offer: for the truth is, this is little more than absolutely dedicated, 24 hour a day, soft European porn. Unless you actually work in this industry (and even then it’s really only suitable for the most battle hardened, fashion industry stalwart), there is little you’ll gain from having this much relentlessly overdone Prada, Gucci and Valentino draped in front of your eyes.
No, the delights of Fashion TV are in fact much more easily understood from the razor-sharp viewpoint of a slightly cynical, media-savvy, tech educated 18-30 year old’s brain (yes, you!), where the sickly sweet, pure pretension of it all will drip from the corners of your mouth like so much unwanted maple syrup. If you can last more than 10 minutes watching these half naked giraffes parading their almost rake-like bodies up and down a raised platform, to the accompaniment of the most banal ‘dance’ music yet written, you are indeed a masochist.
To top it all off, the persistently stupid Fran-glish intros and outros provided by the Parisian production company that create this crap, will have you tearing off what little is left of your raped arsehole and pulling it firmly and squarely down round your ears and over your poor eyes, in abject horror.
Of course, laughing crazily at the childish ridiculousness of it all, as you lay slumped in the couch, you’ll be dreaming (as we young people tend to) about how you can get your fill of all this action. “How do I become a catwalk fashion superstar?”, you’ll ask yourself. “How can I keep with me forever, even when the telly is off, that magical feeling I get when staring at these atrociously overpaid bones, with their damn odd heads and their seriously atrophied brains?” you’ll say. Fair questions. Luckily for you, the geniuses at Fashion TV in France have though of all that and they wouldn’t have you miss your piece of heaven for anything!
Enter, Fashion TV, the album. And enter the even bigger SHOCK that on the evidence of this sampler they’ve provided me with, featuring only 10 tracks out of their native mixed environment, the damn thing is virtually essential to have!!!! (shakes his head)...The world simply doesn’t make sense anymore…..
What should be a complete travesty is not only listenable, it’s coming close to the best popular dance compilation I’ve heard all year. The track selection is absolute gold and even though the sampler I have features only 10 tracks from the 2 CD’s on the retail mix, those tracks are absolute quality. Any comp that checks Underworld’s ‘8 Ball’ is way ahead of the pack for a start. But then load in some Sasha (the slow tempoed ‘Mr Tiddles’ at first seems grossly out of place on this sampler, but the full album appears to mix as many downtempo tracks in as it does housey rump-shakers). Follow up with faster house numbers from Lee Cabrera and Gus Gus and throw some curve balls with tracks like Spirit of the Boogie’s ‘Rainbow Seeker’ and the chill-out like ‘Knuddelmaus’, or Pea Green Boats’ ‘Seesaw’. Now we’ve got a very strange and most welcome compilation forming here!
I can only explain it one way. Pete Tong. The man is a commercial wunderkind, his sensibilities honed from years of playing the very best and worst clubs and crowds in the UK. Experience that counts in situations like this. Pete (in conjunction with the very cool and savvy French label, Wagram) has taken one of the biggest joke brands around and associated them with some real quality music. A complete success. I’m astounded.
A surprising lesson in how NOT to get it all horribly ‘pete tong’. Please Wagram, send me the full album, before I’m forced to buy the thing myself!
