Fuse

First production of the band, Fuse was released in 1994 and it brought something fresh and new to the French rock scene. The syncopated rhythm of the drums, the use of bizarre samples (crowd voices, people speaking the wrong way round, and so on), and a peculiar high-pitched guitar sound: everything was gathered here to make a original and innovative record. The version of "You Cry," a song that also appears in the album Plug (that time recorded by Steve Albini), and that was usually played live as the final encore song, is for many people better in the present disc than in the first LP. "Radio Hill Man" is probably the best composition ever delivered by the group, with its entrancing riff and in counterpoint the little guitar note restarting the melody. The break of "Radio Hill Man" is also very interesting in the sense that it is different from what the band did in every other composition. Too bad somebody mixed up the titles on the sleeve — or on the record — for "Sticky Trail" is in fact in fourth place after "Personality Wedge." Anyhow, it is nothing that important; it is just too bad since it undermines somehow the perfection of the whole. Fuse was and still is the promising first disc of a promising band: it remains nostalgically for many the best thing Sloy did.