Lizzy Mercier Descloux now gets the full reissue treatment from Light In The Attic Records. The Parisian poet, painter, actor and musician finally gets the homage she deserves with this timely repress of her four seminal LPs.

Mambo Nassau skips through styles, embracing mutant funk, disco and punk. There’s even a pastiche of Bavarian oompa music and jazz. The album was intended to help score a record deal that would allow her to record in Soweto, South Africa. She was successful.

Recording Lizzy’s four albums helped her travel the world and embrace local cultures and music. Her influences include music from the Bahamas, Soweto, Ethiopia and Rio. Her music always delivers her own twist though and these LPs still sound fresh. Zulu Rock was recorded in Johannesburg and followed an extraordinary adventure through eastern Africa following the footsteps of 19th century poet Rimbaud through Sudan, Ethiopia, the East Coast, where she tapped into the dance music of Shangaan disco, Soweto jive and mbaqanga.

The location for her fourth album, One For The Soul, was Rio De Janeiro. Notable is the album’s foray into jazz. Master jazz trumpeter, Chet Baker is featured on the tracks Fog Horn Blues and the sensuous Off Off Pleasure.

By the time Descloux recorded her fifth album, Suspense, she’d enjoyed flitting between genres, continents and collaborators and eventually moved away from music to focus on painting. She settled in Corsica, where she died aged 48 of cancer.

Here’s a handy 4 track tour of those albums:

For more, visit Light In The Attic.