🎥 PARIS ANGELS

Perfume (Loved Up) | 1990

PICTURES.

As in moving pictures. An ongoing mini-series. Every second Sunday.

Skip past the intro blurb in bold, if you’ve read it already.

Love promo music videos. Always have. Especially ones from the 80s and 90s when they really took off in a big way, following the dawn of MTV and the opening explosions of the hyper-corporatised marketing and PR of the global music industry.

A nice counter-product of that was the emergence of lots of colourful and creative visual accompaniments to artists’ work. Even reasonably small-scale and niche ones, by today’s standards.

These promo videos often providing another insight into another dimension of their creativity and/or the creativity of the artists, animators, directors and visual visionaries they worked with on them.

The weirder and more unusual the better on the music video front for me, unsurprisingly.

Going to be posting some favourites on here, every second Sunday, with a short blurb.

PICTURES #8 - PARIS ANGELS - PERFUME (LOVED UP)

Paris Angels were an often-overlooked Mancunian indie band formed in the late 1980s, often associated with the early 90s Madchester scene.

Among their ranks was the legendary Paul Wagstaff who later went on to be a key member of the post-Happy Mondays project, Black Grape with Shaun and Bez as well as comprising among the reformed Mondays line-up in more recent years. Indie icon. He very sadly passed away the other day. Rest easy, Wags.

The band’s sound blended indie with elements of psychedelia, shoegaze and acid house, as can be heard on this 1990 single, their best one in my opinion - Perfume (Loved Up). This video is a fan-made effort rather than an official promo video, so bending my own rules a bit. That’s what rules are there for though, I suppose… Will try to keep things nice and above board, as much as I can, moving forward… Maybe.

The tune is a personal favourite and one of my standout moments in the overall Madchester and baggy style, loose fit, Madchester adjacent music scenes.

Although the band didn’t achieve the commercial success of some of their contemporaries in this realm, they cultivated a strong underground following with their rich, layered music and unique take on the era's sonic trends.

See also acts like the New Fads for similarly overlooked and interesting output of that variety, that city and that era, beyond the likes of Oasis and The Stone Roses. I love(d) both of those bands too, and still revisit their music from time to time, but they are a bit yawn and there’s a whole world of more fascinating and interesting sounds out there to be discovered by the inquisitive.

Perfume (Loved Up) was their most well-known track and a bit of a cult hit. The song (by name and by nature) captures the dreamy, "loved-up" vibes of the era and genre - blending atmospheric instrumentation with a hazy sense of decadence and romance.

It has a lush, almost trance-like quality, combining dreamy sounds with a catchy rhythmic pulse. Undeniably banging too. The lyrics evoke romantic longing, desire and the feeling of being… again… "loved up"!

Its emotional depth is matched by its expansive sonic layers which create an intoxicating sense of escapism and warmth. Lovely guitar work that is quite typical (not in a bad way) and evocative of the period’s independent beat combo output.

It’s a very fun and playful song too.

This animated video for Perfume (Loved Up) features footage from the Polish short film Lokomotywa, directed by acclaimed experimental filmmaker, Zbigniew Rybczynski in 1976. And it works a treat.

The surreal, madcap and vibrant animation uses abstract and psychedelic visuals to illustrate and bring the song to life. Amazing accompaniment.

The use of animation over live-action creates a sense of otherworldliness, perfectly aligning with the dreamy, trippy quality of the song.

With babies dancing, people smoking, magnets and dogs gurning… among other reasons, it feels VERY 1990 despite being created in the 70s. Magic.

Well done to Vicen Silvero for thinking of combining these arworks then expertly doing so.

The song and video combo offer a gentle yet banging, trance-like experience, blending romantic yearning with a surreal, yet weirdly familiar, visual atmosphere…

Fancy some colourful, silly, psychedelic nonsense for 5 minutes?

It’s up to you…