Ai Yamamoto: Played a bit at the wonderful, once-annual What is Music? festival. It’s gone too professional now.

Camille: She of the triumphant Angel Place show in Sydney at the beginning of 2009, on the back of a surprisingly well-charting entry in the JJJ Hottest 100. The French Bjork, if you will.

Charlotte Gainsbourg: See you soon!

Keren Ann: Essential. Joe’s Pub show, magnifique.

If they can, so can I. Bienvenue to the podcast. It’s been a long, long time.

Theme for this first one is all about the ladies. Tracks from some of my favourite places including Sweden, Japan, France, Australia, the US and more.

Some things you can dance to and some things not, starting out with the kind of track you might sway to from Fever Ray, to the subjects of one of my favourite music videos of all time (of all time!) Cibo Matto, then Australian electronica and Ai Yamamoto. We stay down under for Decoder Ring before heading east around the globe to Rachel’s. Staying there for something new from Erykah Badu, and Georgia Anne Muldrow which I picked up when last in Amsterdam.

A step back in time with the blues before we hit the French set to close it out.

No voiceover or idents so enjoy au natural, with my shoddy mixing sans studio…

Seven – Fever Ray (Rabid)
Sugar Water – Cibo Matto (Warner)
Dark Crystal – Ai Yamamoto (Onomatopoeia)
Out of Range – Decoder Ring (Inertia)
Systems_Layers – Rachel’s (Quarterstick)
20 Feet Tall – Erykah Badu (Universal)
King’s Ballad – Georgia Anne Muldrow (Ubiquity)
Sometimes – Bessie Jones
Ol Pleut – Emilie Simon (Barclay)
Master’s Hands – Charlotte Gainsbourg (Because)
Ta Douleur – Camille (Virgin)
Diagonals – Stereolab (Elektra)
Caspia – Keren Ann (Blue Note)