The London/Philly-split series triangulates French Post-Punk & New Wave as coming from francophone countries France, Belgium, and Luxembourg in the ’80s, and kicks off with a 1980-1983 set running down from Talking Heads imitators to cosmic-angled experiments via wiry minimal and cold wave. As to be expected with french music, and at risk of stereotyping; a lot of it is driven by a certain gallic moxie and pelvic thrusts rather than pogoing, with the tendency to melodic overdrive that makes it all translate well no mind if you parlez the lingo or not.

Sometimes it’s charmingly hammy, like the one that sounds a bit like The Inbetweeners theme a few tunes in, or the stacks that smack of extremely tight stone wash jeans and unobtainable exchange students chonging Gauloises. But for every bit of fromage there’s killer bits of pissed up wave spangled with spuming synth FX and rutting bass revs, or nipped to new wave pep-step and disco-not-disco adjacent grooves, particularly on the B-side strewn with acts who clearly heard The Human League or Soft Cell once and were quickly sold on punk musics from across the channel.