St Germain – Rose Rouge

9th June 2021 · 2000, 2000s, Dance, Funk, Jazz, Music, Soul

Here’s another tune taking its inspiration – and its main sample – from Marlena Shaw’s Woman Of The Ghetto, this time by Ludovic Navarre, a Frenchman whose recording alter-ego is St Germain.

Unlike others who have sampled her song, he does not take the scat singing as his starting point but uses the opening “I want you to get together… put your hands together” as a mantra throughout his hypnotic groove.

Leaning firmly towards the jazz end of his trademark jazz-house fusion, it was the opening track on his 2000 album Tourist, and is very different from his comeback album in 2015, which was a collaboration with musicians from Mali, and makes for perfect chill-out music too.

For those that like this sort of thing, Navarre has been making music since the mid-Nineties under various monickers in addition to St Germain, among them Subsystem, Deepside and Modus Vivendi.

However, he is nothing to do with the Saint-Germain-des-Prés Café compilation series – although, confusingly, he does have a track on the first of them.