Lyon-based Babylon Circus is music laced with ska, gypsy, rock, vaudevillian antics, dancehall and reggae. Their first Australian East Coast tour in 2008 saw the nine piece band sell every show out. They feature on the So Frenchy So Chic compilation. We asked them to tell us about their favourite music right now, and they started with Django Reinhardt’s Minor Swing [listen below]: ‘Backstage, home, in the bus, cooking or having breakfast, is there a time you wouldn’t love to hear this one? We love it anytime, any style, too, as it’s been remixed and rearranged so many different ways. Still, we love the original best’.

Django Reinhardt / Minor Swing
Backstage, home, in the bus, cooking or having breakfast, is there a time you wouldn’t love to hear this one? We love it anytime, any style, too, as it’s been remixed and rearranged so many different ways. Still, we love the original best.

Negresses Vertes / Zobi La Mouche
The one band we feel the closest to, touring the world, as we did in the late 80s, doing their own mix that sounds so French. The lyrics brings together the best that French can offer.

Gainsbourg / Aux Armes et Cætera
One of the greatest French singer-song writers ever recorded. This anti-war reggae version of the French national anthem brought both reggae and this provocative artist to light.

Teddybears Sthlm / Cobrastyle
This is the kind of party sound we like to hear. I never got the chance to see them live and couldn’t find much info about them, which is a pity.

Dub Pistols / Cyclone
Another great mix styles, definitely not as organic as the kind of traditional things we bring together. But they’re one of the bands that have influenced us lately as far as mixing influences goes.

The Streets / I Love You More
I’m not even sure that this is my favorite one on the album, but this special “kitsch” cheesy chorus, combined with his Birmingham accent, is worth listening to it. And I love it — more and more.

Rachid Taha / Rock el Casbah
A version of the legendary Clash song by French-Algerian, Rachid Taha. It has a very special taste of what North African youth are like these days. We like Rachid Taha and love the Clash for what we inherited from them. That’s enough to have it in the list.

Seeed / Top of the City
One of the best dancehall sounds comes from … Germany. They manage to make their language sound so good and their sound is so strong that they ended producing lot of tracks for Jamaican artists. Can you believe it!

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We name-checked them as having one of the top five albums of 2007, and with good reason. I speak of Nashville band, The Silver Seas. We caught up with guitarist and vocalist Daniel Tashian. Your music’s like a chronology of the last 60 years of music, taking in old rock n roll, with some 60’s/70’s folk and right through to 2008’s brand of catchy, feel-good indie-rock. A band of all ages then? ‘I don’t know. I feel it’s a strength and also a weakness. Like, not many people can put on their record, and someone will say: “That sounds like the Lovin Spoonful!”, because that’s a very hard thing to do, but then again, nobody really cares how hard something is, really, so, you have to ultimately go with what feels and sings good. Some songs want more modern lyrics, others seem to beg for cliches’. Hailing from Nashville, you’re clearly well pitched to capture middle America in an album. Do you draw heavily on the sights and sounds around you? ‘Well. I suppose it’s impossible not to. But as a kid, I was surrounded by country music, and I thought it wasn’t cool, so I kept the psychedelic furs on in my walkman all the time, sort of like a buffer against all the steel guitars, you know, but now, I have grown to love it, and so maybe if there’s a bit of country in the music, I don’t mind so much’. There seems to be a theme of escapism running through a lot of your lyrics – quite common for bands hailing from your area. Why the need to leave? ‘I don’t know. Maybe when you’re writing a song, you need to have somewhere to go, other than: “Here we are, isn’t this great?” That song would get boring in 2 seconds, and trust me, I have a song like that. No, I think the idea of a song is: “Wouldn’t it be nice!”, you know, like you’re sort of after something, yearning a bit, you know?’