filles fragiles is a compilation of French demoiselles.
compiled by Guuzbourg , a monsieur on a mission : introducing the world to whispering, sighing, moaning and even singing filles. This October, the second edition of Filles Fragiles will be released, featuring Berry, Niagara, Poney Express, Loane, Barbara Carlotti, Liesbeth List, Leine and Bardo State. The introduction text on the cd was written by Dutch tv-journalist and francophile Matthijs van Nieuwkerk.
But wait, there's more! On November 13 and 14, three bands will play the Filles Fragiles theater concerts, presented by Ronald Giphart. Buy tickets for Leidse Schouwburg HERE , buy tickets for Sugar Factory Amsterdam HERE .
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Filles Fragiles is released by Essential dance music . Distribution in Holland and belgium via Coast to Coast. In Germany, France and beyond via ZYX.
Filles Fragiles 2 can be ordered via Bol.com ; Dustygroove.com ; Amazon.de . REVU lezers kunnen de cd met flinke korting bestellen via www.zester.nl/revu
Filles Fragiles 1 can be bought online via Amazon.de , Plato.nl or Bol.com , Play.com and Fnac.com .
Acclaimed Dutch writer Ronald Giphart invented the term 'Zuchtmeisjes' or Sighing Girls. The best way to discribe the singing filles on this cd. They're girls who sigh, and make you sigh. Especially for Filles Fragiles, Giphart wrote a short story about his 'sighing years'. This story could be basis for a beautiful song by all singers involved, because it is about love, lust, rejection and tears.
Looking back, I call them the 'years of sighing'. My friends and I were students, but that didn't mean we had much to do. In fact, we had very little to do. I remember the summers back then when we slept in every day, went to classes on occasion, had lunch in the afternoons and browsed bookshops looking for cheap books. At around 1 or 2 pm we would hang out at a terrace on the Oudegracht, or Old Canal in Utrecht and watch women, girls, babes, dolls, mademoiselles, maidens, frauleins, misses, broads, wenches, bitches, princesses and indescribably feminine femmes fatales go by. We had a yes/no system: no matter what we were talking about, we would nonchalantly throw in a 'yes' or 'no' in the middle of our sentences. 'Yes' meant we liked a woman, 'no' meant we were less charmed by her. We almost always said 'yes' because we had big hearts. "I love all women and that is great sorrow," Hans de Booij would sing later on, but we beat him to it, since we also had love for just about every woman we saw. Every woman didn't really love us, which was our greatest sorrow. Once in a while one would breeze by, but we were too young, too eager and still too full of the wonderful life ahead of us. We were inexperienced novices, and when we were stood up, it was bad for us, but good for the stories and poems we wrote. Sometimes, we would sit for hours staring at the Old Canal where unbelievably beautiful girl students passed by, and our sighs could be measured at the weather station on the Japanese island of Fukkimagni.
One of my 'girls to sigh for' at that time was D, who I don't remember where I met anymore and who I saw sometimes in the city. It was odd that we barely greeted each other in Utrecht, but when I ran into her in Amsterdam, we nodded enthusiastically to one another, as if we had lost sight of each other after years of profound friendship. We had a chat and I don't remember why anymore, but she invited me to have dinner at her place once. She lived in the hall of a student dorm, her kitchen was an old mailbox, the toilet was in a weather-beaten eyeglass case and she slept in a broken microwave oven. "Everything at her house was dirty except her," a writer we admired had written, a sentence that could not refer to anyone else but her. Everything about her smelled strong: her perfume, clothes, neck, sweat and even feet. Eventually D and I started a carefully regulated non-relationship, a non-relationship that was consummated once or twice a week, without dates, without obligations, no strings attached, no cure no pay, like ships passing each other in the night. Sometimes, we had dinner, other times we went to the movies, often we ran into each other at Tivoli or De Woo.
One afternoon I was sitting at our usual terrace with my friends and D came by and joined us. It was after the heyday of our dating, but we didn't know that yet. After a while she asked, "could you do something absolutely terrible for me?" a question you can't avoid. That evening her mother was going to a subsidised theatre performance at the municipal theatre. She had counted on her two daughters coming with her, but now D's sister had cancelled just in time. "My mother asked whether I knew someone who could come with us," said D. "I won't survive an evening of subsidised theatre without someone like my sister – or like you." She looked at me full of expectation. I shrugged my shoulders and nodded that I would go. "There is just one problem," D said. "You are going to meet my mother." She meant that I wasn't supposed to get any ideas. You can easily have a very satisfying non-relationship, but when you meet the parents, the non-relationship takes a dangerous plunge into the deep. "I won't get any ideas," I promised.
The municipal theatre in Utrecht is built so that nobody could ever be comfortable. The rock-hard seats have no back support and the legroom is limited to an absolute minimum. The theatre was terrible, as was meeting D's mother. "Hey, finally my son-in-law," she said when she met me, at which time I looked at D and we actually both knew that this wasn't the case. The theatre performance started and exceeded our most sombre expectations. While the rest of the audience enjoyably let the unintelligible flow of words wash over them, D and I sat next to each other in the dark theatre. I smelled her strong scent and placed my hand on her thigh. She took a deep breath and sighed with every fibre of her body. There was much emotion in that sigh: resignation, sorrow, disappointment and irritation. Even though D and I continued to see each other for a few months, it was clear that at that moment what had never actually been between us was over.
