Serge Gainsbourg & Jean-Claude Vannier - Les Chemins De Katmandou LP

Label: Finders Keepers

After decades in the making, Finders Keepers present the first-ever pressing of Serge Gainsbourg's most elusive studio recordings in Les Chemins De Katmandou. This was co-written, arranged and orchestrated by the genius Jean-Claude Vannier (the arranger behind 1971's Histoire De Melody Nelson) during what many consider to be the dynamic duo's most definitive creative period. It was believed that these recordings had been lost in a studio fire by Gainsbourg enthusiasts for over forty years (a myth that also shrouds Morricone's lost Danger Diabolik soundtrack). The misplaced master tapes for the drug-fueled/road-movie Les Chemins De Katmandou (1969) have been widely considered the final audio jigsaw piece in the Gainsbourg / Vannier discographies, thus earning this soundtrack a bona fide holy grail status amongst the most avid disc detectives.

Featuring the original crack team of Paris based players now recognized as French library music royalty, this album epitomizes the inimitable musical direction and expert psychedelic pop musicianship that graced classic Gainsbourg / Vannier soundtracks like La Horse (1970), Cannabis (1970) and Sex Shop (1972). The sound laid the stylistic, future-proof foundations for subsequent decades of forward-thinking Gallic funk mastery. Comprising Vannier's signature recipe of thick plucked bass lines, close-mic'd drums, biting clavinet and Eastern influenced strings and percussion (and a sprinkling of subtle traditional French instrumentation), the soundtrack to Les Chemins De Katmandou (alternately titled in English as "The Road To Katmandu" or "The Pleasure Pit") captures Vannier and Gainsbourg in the first year of their creative partnership capturing their unique embryonic energy. The music on this record contains the full extent of the music found on the newly discovered studio tapes. It has since been preserved through the "baking" process, re-emulsified, transferred, remastered, recompiled and sequenced in accordance with the original screenplay in close collaboration with Finders Keepers and Jean-Claude Vannier.