Once in Paris I began the search for Ruth at Bimbo Tower, a specialist record shop  where No Wave is divided into several subsections and they don’t have any records from before 1979. My kind of place. Everything is in mint condition and nothing is absurdly priced even when it should be. It was found tucked away on a little backstreet and with no shopfront so you have to know it’s there in order to find it. I browsed around for a bit and eventually asked if they were familiar with Ruth’s ‘Polaroid/Roman/Photo’. It turned out that he was a regular in the shop himself and played music with two of the guys that worked there. Score!

The next day I’m sat eating pasta with him and outlining my plans for a compilation of music that I really don’t have much knowledge of, just a desire to be involved somehow… Never before had I felt so strongly about a song that I had to meet its creator and buy them lunch. He explained how he’d ‘played’ the polaroid camera, and about how the track featured a singer that he had met the night before the recording. They stayed up all night together and she came to the studio the next day, sang on the track and then left, never to be seen or heard from again. It was this kind of romance that I imagined would be behind all of these songs, and the intrigue deepened.

In Bimbo Tower I discovered some more early 80’s European synth groups, mostly French, and I brought a clutch of records back to London with me that I played a lot over the next few months. One was a 12” by Mathematiques Modernes, one of the more popular acts of this time. A synth duo produced by French 80’s producer du jour, Jacno. I have a feeling that this song may have even charted upon its 1980 release. Entitled ‘Disco Rough’, here it is, click above to play.