Mystery. Enigma. Cipher. Riddle. These are all words, followed immediately by periods, that describe the nature of Alison (the singer for Orbital)'s last name.
The first question must be this: what, exactly, is a "frapp"? What is its origin, its etymology? Most of us are familiar with a Goldberg, or Goldman, or Goldstein. But we all know what men, bergs and (if we speak even a bit of German) steins are. But "frapp" comes out of the blue, like a parking ticket. It bears no apparent relation to anything.
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READER EMAIL "There was occluded truth on your pondering of the etymology of Frapp..." [more] |
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According to Webster's to "frap" is to draw tight, as with ropes or cables. But why would this particular verb, assuming "frapp" is a variant, be gold? Or any color whatsoever, for that matter? And a "frappe" is a partially frozen (fruit) drink, clearly a non-suitable origin for someone's family name.
The web was scarely more helpful. There is, amazingly, a frapp.com, but it was written in some foreign language that strongly resembles German. It was also exceedingly mysterious, and creepy.
Hotbot (note: there is actually no URL for "Hobot.com"; this could be your chance to cash in) was slightly more helpful, providing links to numerous random German pages, and a homepage for Korn.
Finally, consultation with a very good German-English dictionary produced the following results:
striking -- frappant
striking -- frappierend
to astonish -- frappieren
to strike (struck,struck) -- frappieren
The verdict: either Ms. Goldfrapp's last name refers to an astonishing golden whack, or she's some sort of mysterious agent of an alien race, sent to Earth to seduce the techno-literate with her delicious, intoxicating space-moans.
And sensible listeners can only have one sensible reaction to that: "booyakah-cha."
(For a review of Goldfrapp's Felt Mountain see below)
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