Wax Tailor

Just when you thought trip-hop was dead, here comes Wax Tailors' debut album, Tales of the Forgotten Melodies. Hailing from the land of cheese, wine, croissants and those delicious baguettes, Wax Tailor (aka JC Le Saout) is no stranger to the French hip-hop scene. Since the early ’90s, he's been rapping, composing, producing and managing, gaining notoriety with his band La Formule and the series Breaking the Wave, Breakbeat and The Breathing Under the Water project with Swedish band Looptroop. Recently he gained a lot of accolades with the release of two EPs — Wax Beat:Lost Highway and Que Sera/Where My Heart's At. Tales is a solid album from start to finish, following the sounds of DJ Shadow, Portishead, Herbaliser, RJD2 and the like, as a soundtrack of down-tempo beats with layered instruments and tons and tons of vocal samples. Rising US hip hop group the Others bring conscious lyrics to tracks "Where My Heart's At" and "Walk The Line." "How I feel" is a chop up of Nina Simone's "Feeling Good," "Hypnosis Theme" features haunting vocals by Marina Quaisse and "Our Dance" features Charlotte Savary from the French band Clover. Most of the other tracks are purely instrumental with all kinds of audio samples scattered throughout; check out the joint "Damn That Music Made My Day" for a sample of Tailor's hip-hop knowledge. Tales of the Forgotten Melodies is not an album you'd freak out over and tell everyone about, but it's a very decent, full journey of sound.