Description
Frank Maston が映画用に書いた楽曲から生まれた7インチ・シングル。ロンドンの湿った空気とパリの光をすり抜けるような Foreign Affairs、そして黄昏の海辺を静かに描く Liaison の2曲を収めた作品だ。どちらも16mm映像作家 Pacôme Henry の映像世界と呼応するような空気をまとい、柔らかな憂いが漂う。
Maston はカリフォルニア出身のマルチ奏者。これまで自宅録音を軸に独自のレトロ・ポップやライブラリー・ミュージック寄りのサウンドを作ってきたが、本作では大規模な生演奏アレンジに踏み切った。パリとロンドンで録音し、ストリングス、フルート、トロンボーン、ヴィブラフォン、女性コーラスなどを大胆に投入。自身はピアノとアコースティック・ギターに専念し、信頼する Elie Ghersinu（元 L’Eclair）がベースを、Oscar Sholto Robertson がドラムを担当している。
A面 Foreign Affairs は Burt Bacharach を思わせる優雅なメロディ運びに、軽い色気を忍ばせたアレンジが光る。ジャジーでクラシカル、そしてほんの少し背伸びした大人っぽさが漂う。
対する Liaison は Martin Denny や Piero Umiliani に通じるエキゾチックな音像を丁寧に磨き上げた一曲。大きく息をつくようなストリングス、柔らかいパーカッション、深い余韻を残すサックスが溶け合い、夕暮れの静けさをそのまま閉じ込めたような世界になっている。
ジャケットにはローマ軍のモチーフをアレンジしたアートワークを採用。近くで見ると武具の旗、少し離れると花束にも見えるという遊び心が、タイトルが持つ二重の意味と響き合う。
全世界500枚プレスの限定ヴァイナル。上品なアレンジと情緒豊かなサウンドが見事に結晶した一枚だ。
A1. Foreign Affairs
B1. Liaison
The perfect accompaniment to that deep fall feeling, Frank Maston's beloved 2025 single finally gets its long overdue vinyl release! As our friends New Commute articulated beautifully, "Foreign Affairs" drifts through London fog and Paris shimmer, its avant-lounge glow wrapping each melody in a wistful ache. On B-side "Liaison," ghostly strings and a solitary piano paint a deserted twilight shoreline, Pacôme Henry's distinct 16mm cinematography hovering nearby." We've pressed just 500 of these gorgeous records so, be quick, Maston always flies.
Originally written for a film Maston was scoring in 2024, he decided to keep it aside for himself. And, well, us all. The song has a vibe Maston has previously flirted with; he wanted to dive in...all the way: "The arrangement is huge, definitely the biggest I've written, and it merited live musicians playing together. Also another experiment, to do it with all live musicians playing my arrangements. I wanted to make something that you'd want to put on when you bring a date back to your place. It's on the edge of sappy but that's sort of the point. I decided to give myself an unlimited budget - just spend whatever was necessary to get the right musicians and record it the best way possible."
It's this dedication to sonic perfection which Maston is rightly lauded for. We couldn't not put this on a cute wee 7" when we heard it.
The A side, "Foreign Affairs", is a brilliant, Bacharach-esque romp with a bit of that unapologetically romantic Morricone angle. Says Frank: "I was trying to synthesize that sort of jazzy/sexy/classy/romantic mature sound, where the edginess is in these surprising chord changes and subtle arrangement cues."
A wonderful complement, the flipside "Liaison", evokes Martin Denny, but Eden's Island was in Frank's head, too. He wanted to take a deep dive into that exotica sound - a genre he'd referenced a bit but never fully committed to - so the piece is lavished with those big sighing strings and a pretty lush arrangement. Happily, it all sounds super rich. Also, "Umiliani is always a reference for this sort of thing (Il Corpo etc.), That almost mechanical arrangement of things moving together and a simple melody over it (something I nicked from Ennio)".
The two songs were recorded in Paris and London in the summer of 2024. Aside from the rhythm section and piano, there's vibraphone, a full string section, trombones and alto and concert flutes. "Liaison" boasts strings, vibraphone, a female choir and tenor sax. Maston played piano and acoustic guitar but that's it (as opposed to playing basically everything on Tulips). His friend Oscar Sholto Robertson played drums and percussion whilst Maston mainstay Elie Ghersinu (formerly of L'Eclair) played bass.
The theme for a lot of Maston's titles is that they have two meanings. So "Foreign Affairs" is both a reference to him living abroad and the idea of constant cultural diplomacy and then there's this sexy/cheeky interpretation of foreign affairs in a literal way - "an affair abroad, ooh la la!". The artwork for this 7" single has Roman campaign flags, referencing the foreign affairs in sort of a sassy way. There's a violence implied. But then if you look from a bit of a distance it looks like a bouquet of flowers. So Frank thought it went with the spirit of the title. Also, he's used a lot of roman motifs now so he kept that theme going, even with the terracotta cover.
This is a vitally important project for our Frank. He explains why, here: "For whatever reason, these songs really resonated with me. I feel like they are either the end of a stylistic era for me or the beginning of a new one. They're sonically the culmination of what I'd been working towards and trying to get better at since I started. If I heard this when I was making Tulips I would have said "YES! *This* is what I want to be doing!". So that's the essence of it. It's a statement and the intended reaction is "This is really good, but why now?". Like the edge to it is the context of someone making this sort of thing in 2025, which I think is a huge strength. The real heads will get it. My music always has like a 2-3 year latency until people really catch onto it, and these ones will have a nice payoff I think."
We couldn't put it better ourselves. So we haven't.
