Hello,
Today's artists are a Belgian synthpop group formed in 1978 by Marc Moulin, Dan Lacksman and Michel Moers, with the intention of "making something really European, different from rock, without guitar — and the idea was electronic music... ......N'Joy
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In 1979, mixing the aesthetics of disco, punk and experimental electronic music, they released a stripped-down synthesized cover version of "Twist à St. Tropez" by Les Chats Sauvages. They followed up with an ultra-slow cover of "Rock Around the Clock", a relaxed and dispassionate version of Plastic Bertrand's punk song "Ça Plane Pour Moi", and a mechanical cover of "Dance to the Music", originally by Sly Stone. Telex built its music entirely from electronic instruments, employing joyously irreverent humor. The group's debut album, Looking for Saint Tropez, featured the worldwide hit single "Moskow Diskow".
In 1980, Telex's manager asked the group to enter the Eurovision Song Contest. The group entered and were eventually sent to the finals, although they apparently hoped to come in last.
"We had hoped to finish last, but Portugal decided otherwise. We got ten points from them and finished on the 19th spot."—Marc Moulin
The group's song "Euro-Vision" was a cheerful bleepy song with deliberately banal lyrics about the contest itself.
For their third album, Sex, Telex enlisted the US group Sparks to help write the lyrics. However, the band still refused to play live and preferred to remain anonymous—common practice in the techno music artists the group later inspired but, nevertheless, unusual in 1981. The fourth Telex album, Wonderful World, was barely distributed. In 1986, Atlantic Records signed Telex and released the album Looney Tunes in 1988. In 1989, Telex revisited their old tracks and remixed them to resemble house music and other genres then prevalent in electronic pop. The result was Les Rythmes Automatiques, released in 1989.
After a long hiatus, Telex made a comeback in March 2006 with How Do You Dance on EMI Records. It contained five original compositions as well as five covers. The group's last single was a cover of "On the Road Again", originally by Canned Heat. They also produced remixes for other artists' single releases, including "A Pain That I'm Used To" by Depeche Mode and "Minimal" by the Pet Shop Boys.
Following the death of band member Marc Moulin in 2008, the surviving members of the band announced their retirement from making music with the band's final release, a compilation album titled Ultimate.
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If you are interested in this album, I suspect that you are probably one of 1% of all music listeners in the world who ever heard of this band and I don't need to tell you about this band. Belgium-based Telex is one of maybe 4 or 5 music groups that planted the seeds of modern day electronica. Until Telex came along in the late 70's and early 80's, most recordings with synthesisers/keyboards fell under the categories of space rock or prog-rock or were just filler/background for the guitars. Sure Gary Wright was proud to tell the world that all of his musical sounds were created by keyboards. But Telex took the keyboards, added a toe-tapping beat and a few quirky lyrics to create such early dance classics as "Moskow Diskow" and "Twist A Saint Tropez." Both of those songs are in this affordable compilation. They didn't have the visual (sort of glam) image of some of their contemporaries such as Visage or Human League. They didn't experiment as much as some of their contemporaries like Ultravox and Depeche Mode. They most definitely didn't have the production qualities of today's electronica. You won't hear any heavy reverb, heavy compression, or bass-boosted electronic drumbeats on this album. You will hear a band that had a whole lot fun making music. They didn't have much commercial success outside of the French speaking nations, which is why a majority of the songs on this album are sung in French. But there were a few English translations and some of those are here.
Telex - Looking For Saint Tropez (flac 323mb)
01 Moskow Diskow 4:12
02 Pakmoväst 3:42
03 Café De La Jungle 1:07
04 Ça Plane Pour Moi 5:25
05 Some Day - Un Jour 1:12
06 Something To Say 5:02
07 Rock Around The Clock 3:56
08 Victime De La Société #2 3:54
09 Twist À St Tropez 3:19
10 Moskow Diskow (Maxi) 4:12
11 Le Fond De L'Air Est Rouge 3:21
12 Victime De La Société #1 3:53
13 Quelque Chose À Dire 5:11
14 Ave Fifi 3:58
Telex - Looking For Saint Tropez (ogg 135mb)
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The production here is awesome vintage early 80s. It's vocoder, drum machines, and R2-D2 blips and bleeps swirling everywhere. However, the great pop songwriting that these sounds seem to demand bubbles up only occasionally, such as the beautiful "My Time". Still, this album is worth a spin or twom very good and solid technopop - it is cheaper sounding than their contemporaries (Kraftwerk and YMO) but the catchiness and well-written tunes hold up well. I'd almost say this is an early technopop classic. Bonus tracks include some really great material that was released as singles or B-sides ("Soul Waves", "Lakele", which is my favorite Telex track) and a lot of alternate English versions of the album tracks ("B sides", the English "A/B", just sounds so much better).
Telex - Neurovision (flac 422mb)
01 We Are All Getting Old 3:42
02 My Time 4:22
03 Tour De France 4:05
04 Euro-Vision 2:43
05 Plus De Distance 3:31
06 Dance To The Music 4:16
07 Réalité 3:34
08 Cliché 0:45
09 A/B 3:23
10 En Route Vers De Nouvelles Aventures 3:38
11 Finale 0:12
Bonusses
12 "Belgium, One Point" 0:03
13 Troppical 1:50
14 Colonel Olrik Ha Ha Ha 2:12
15 Soul Waves (Version 1) 3:44
16 More Than Distance 3:25
17 My Future 3:36
18 Neurovision 3:19
19 Lakelele (Laquelle Elle Est) 3:19
20 B Sides 3:22
21 Soul Waves (Version 2) 3:38
Telex - Neurovision (ogg 177mb)
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Perhaps a little explainer is in order. "Sex" is Telex's third album, released in 1981. A year later, it was re-released in Britian as "Birds and Bees" with a different tracklisting, though not different enough that I'd consider them two different albums. The 2003 CD is "Sex", plus the extra tracks from "Birds and Bees", then some B-sides and unreleased stuff at the end (including an early version of "L'amour Toujours").
Anyway, this album is perhaps best known for the fact that the lyrics were written by Sparks, which is why the lyrics are wittier and more complex than usual. If you are familiar with Sparks then you will probably notice their presence right away ("If that guy weren't so black, he'd look just like me"). They sound odd coming from Michael Moers, not exactly a natural English speaker, sometimes putting emphasis on the wrong bits. But they still add an entertaining aspect to this album that isn't really present on the other albums. Particularly since a couple tunes here sound like they could have easily appeared on a de facto Sparks album ("Sigmund Freud's Party", "Carbon Copy", "Dummy"). Would've beat the piss out of Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat, that's for sure.
Unfortunately, the music itself is a bit droll and mechanical. Like Sparks I think they kind of dialed down the excitement after they'd become "veterans", especially since sucking the life out of things was kind of Telex's gimmick. But I'm not sure that works so well on a quirky pop album like this one. Now, that said, I think the hooks are generally good enough to survive that, particularly on cuts like "Dream-O-Mat" (one of their best tunes), "The Man With the Answer", and "Long Holiday". I guess it depends on how much you dig Telex's Commodore-heavy synth noises, which still sound like nothing else.
Dan Lacksman, lead vocalist for the group, does not have what you could call a particularly distinctive singing voice, and the bands rhythms or music are far from groundbreaking, but this album easily hits the spot if you are looking for a representative for the eighties synth-pop genre. Quite cleverly writen 'english' lyrics(from a man who's natural language is not English) coupled with some damn catchy pop hooks, earns this highly polished and cleanly produced album a degree of dignity in the world of synth music. Even though (strangely enough) the record resembles the kind of shit digital pop we'd see a lot of in 1986 and 1987. Overall I think this is a solid 3-star record, but with the Birds And Bees album here there's enough good stuff to up it a notch. Like with Neurovision it gives the full story of what the group was up to around this time. Though I think "Basta" is actually from '87, probably included here cuz none of the other CDs had it.
Telex - Sex + Birds And Bees (flac 442mb)
01 Brainwash 4:28
02 Drama Drama 3:57
03 Haven't We Met Somewhere Before? 4:06
04 Long Holiday 2:12
05 The Man With The Answer 3:15
06 Carbon Copy 6:34
07 Exercise Is Good For You 3:35
08 Dream-O-Mat 4:13
09 Sigmund Freud's Party 2:53
Birds And Bees
10 Mata Hari 3:43
11 Dummy 3:46
12 L'Amour Toujours 3:50
13 Loops 3:24
14 Cloches Et Sifflets 3:00
15 Don't Put All Your Dreams In One Basket 2:23
16 I Can't Turn You Loose 3:13
17 Brainwash (Long Version) 5:12
18 The Look Of Love 3:36
19 Basta 2:43
Telex - Sex + Birds And Bees (ogg 174mb)
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Today's artists are a Belgian synthpop group formed in 1978 by Marc Moulin, Dan Lacksman and Michel Moers, with the intention of "making something really European, different from rock, without guitar — and the idea was electronic music... ......N'Joy
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
In 1979, mixing the aesthetics of disco, punk and experimental electronic music, they released a stripped-down synthesized cover version of "Twist à St. Tropez" by Les Chats Sauvages. They followed up with an ultra-slow cover of "Rock Around the Clock", a relaxed and dispassionate version of Plastic Bertrand's punk song "Ça Plane Pour Moi", and a mechanical cover of "Dance to the Music", originally by Sly Stone. Telex built its music entirely from electronic instruments, employing joyously irreverent humor. The group's debut album, Looking for Saint Tropez, featured the worldwide hit single "Moskow Diskow".
In 1980, Telex's manager asked the group to enter the Eurovision Song Contest. The group entered and were eventually sent to the finals, although they apparently hoped to come in last.
"We had hoped to finish last, but Portugal decided otherwise. We got ten points from them and finished on the 19th spot."—Marc Moulin
The group's song "Euro-Vision" was a cheerful bleepy song with deliberately banal lyrics about the contest itself.
For their third album, Sex, Telex enlisted the US group Sparks to help write the lyrics. However, the band still refused to play live and preferred to remain anonymous—common practice in the techno music artists the group later inspired but, nevertheless, unusual in 1981. The fourth Telex album, Wonderful World, was barely distributed. In 1986, Atlantic Records signed Telex and released the album Looney Tunes in 1988. In 1989, Telex revisited their old tracks and remixed them to resemble house music and other genres then prevalent in electronic pop. The result was Les Rythmes Automatiques, released in 1989.
After a long hiatus, Telex made a comeback in March 2006 with How Do You Dance on EMI Records. It contained five original compositions as well as five covers. The group's last single was a cover of "On the Road Again", originally by Canned Heat. They also produced remixes for other artists' single releases, including "A Pain That I'm Used To" by Depeche Mode and "Minimal" by the Pet Shop Boys.
Following the death of band member Marc Moulin in 2008, the surviving members of the band announced their retirement from making music with the band's final release, a compilation album titled Ultimate.
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
If you are interested in this album, I suspect that you are probably one of 1% of all music listeners in the world who ever heard of this band and I don't need to tell you about this band. Belgium-based Telex is one of maybe 4 or 5 music groups that planted the seeds of modern day electronica. Until Telex came along in the late 70's and early 80's, most recordings with synthesisers/keyboards fell under the categories of space rock or prog-rock or were just filler/background for the guitars. Sure Gary Wright was proud to tell the world that all of his musical sounds were created by keyboards. But Telex took the keyboards, added a toe-tapping beat and a few quirky lyrics to create such early dance classics as "Moskow Diskow" and "Twist A Saint Tropez." Both of those songs are in this affordable compilation. They didn't have the visual (sort of glam) image of some of their contemporaries such as Visage or Human League. They didn't experiment as much as some of their contemporaries like Ultravox and Depeche Mode. They most definitely didn't have the production qualities of today's electronica. You won't hear any heavy reverb, heavy compression, or bass-boosted electronic drumbeats on this album. You will hear a band that had a whole lot fun making music. They didn't have much commercial success outside of the French speaking nations, which is why a majority of the songs on this album are sung in French. But there were a few English translations and some of those are here.
Telex - Looking For Saint Tropez (flac 323mb)
01 Moskow Diskow 4:12
02 Pakmoväst 3:42
03 Café De La Jungle 1:07
04 Ça Plane Pour Moi 5:25
05 Some Day - Un Jour 1:12
06 Something To Say 5:02
07 Rock Around The Clock 3:56
08 Victime De La Société #2 3:54
09 Twist À St Tropez 3:19
10 Moskow Diskow (Maxi) 4:12
11 Le Fond De L'Air Est Rouge 3:21
12 Victime De La Société #1 3:53
13 Quelque Chose À Dire 5:11
14 Ave Fifi 3:58
Telex - Looking For Saint Tropez (ogg 135mb)
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The production here is awesome vintage early 80s. It's vocoder, drum machines, and R2-D2 blips and bleeps swirling everywhere. However, the great pop songwriting that these sounds seem to demand bubbles up only occasionally, such as the beautiful "My Time". Still, this album is worth a spin or twom very good and solid technopop - it is cheaper sounding than their contemporaries (Kraftwerk and YMO) but the catchiness and well-written tunes hold up well. I'd almost say this is an early technopop classic. Bonus tracks include some really great material that was released as singles or B-sides ("Soul Waves", "Lakele", which is my favorite Telex track) and a lot of alternate English versions of the album tracks ("B sides", the English "A/B", just sounds so much better).
Telex - Neurovision (flac 422mb)
01 We Are All Getting Old 3:42
02 My Time 4:22
03 Tour De France 4:05
04 Euro-Vision 2:43
05 Plus De Distance 3:31
06 Dance To The Music 4:16
07 Réalité 3:34
08 Cliché 0:45
09 A/B 3:23
10 En Route Vers De Nouvelles Aventures 3:38
11 Finale 0:12
Bonusses
12 "Belgium, One Point" 0:03
13 Troppical 1:50
14 Colonel Olrik Ha Ha Ha 2:12
15 Soul Waves (Version 1) 3:44
16 More Than Distance 3:25
17 My Future 3:36
18 Neurovision 3:19
19 Lakelele (Laquelle Elle Est) 3:19
20 B Sides 3:22
21 Soul Waves (Version 2) 3:38
Telex - Neurovision (ogg 177mb)
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Perhaps a little explainer is in order. "Sex" is Telex's third album, released in 1981. A year later, it was re-released in Britian as "Birds and Bees" with a different tracklisting, though not different enough that I'd consider them two different albums. The 2003 CD is "Sex", plus the extra tracks from "Birds and Bees", then some B-sides and unreleased stuff at the end (including an early version of "L'amour Toujours").
Anyway, this album is perhaps best known for the fact that the lyrics were written by Sparks, which is why the lyrics are wittier and more complex than usual. If you are familiar with Sparks then you will probably notice their presence right away ("If that guy weren't so black, he'd look just like me"). They sound odd coming from Michael Moers, not exactly a natural English speaker, sometimes putting emphasis on the wrong bits. But they still add an entertaining aspect to this album that isn't really present on the other albums. Particularly since a couple tunes here sound like they could have easily appeared on a de facto Sparks album ("Sigmund Freud's Party", "Carbon Copy", "Dummy"). Would've beat the piss out of Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat, that's for sure.
Unfortunately, the music itself is a bit droll and mechanical. Like Sparks I think they kind of dialed down the excitement after they'd become "veterans", especially since sucking the life out of things was kind of Telex's gimmick. But I'm not sure that works so well on a quirky pop album like this one. Now, that said, I think the hooks are generally good enough to survive that, particularly on cuts like "Dream-O-Mat" (one of their best tunes), "The Man With the Answer", and "Long Holiday". I guess it depends on how much you dig Telex's Commodore-heavy synth noises, which still sound like nothing else.
Dan Lacksman, lead vocalist for the group, does not have what you could call a particularly distinctive singing voice, and the bands rhythms or music are far from groundbreaking, but this album easily hits the spot if you are looking for a representative for the eighties synth-pop genre. Quite cleverly writen 'english' lyrics(from a man who's natural language is not English) coupled with some damn catchy pop hooks, earns this highly polished and cleanly produced album a degree of dignity in the world of synth music. Even though (strangely enough) the record resembles the kind of shit digital pop we'd see a lot of in 1986 and 1987. Overall I think this is a solid 3-star record, but with the Birds And Bees album here there's enough good stuff to up it a notch. Like with Neurovision it gives the full story of what the group was up to around this time. Though I think "Basta" is actually from '87, probably included here cuz none of the other CDs had it.
Telex - Sex + Birds And Bees (flac 442mb)
01 Brainwash 4:28
02 Drama Drama 3:57
03 Haven't We Met Somewhere Before? 4:06
04 Long Holiday 2:12
05 The Man With The Answer 3:15
06 Carbon Copy 6:34
07 Exercise Is Good For You 3:35
08 Dream-O-Mat 4:13
09 Sigmund Freud's Party 2:53
Birds And Bees
10 Mata Hari 3:43
11 Dummy 3:46
12 L'Amour Toujours 3:50
13 Loops 3:24
14 Cloches Et Sifflets 3:00
15 Don't Put All Your Dreams In One Basket 2:23
16 I Can't Turn You Loose 3:13
17 Brainwash (Long Version) 5:12
18 The Look Of Love 3:36
19 Basta 2:43
Telex - Sex + Birds And Bees (ogg 174mb)
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5 comments:
Many thanks for Telex! Very much appreciated
JC
Obscenely, criminally underrated. If anybody wants to tell me who else might run a VERY close second to Moroder in terms of being the original Eurodisco synth king other then Dan Lacksman, I'd love to hear who that might be. (Spoiler alert - there is no such person.)
thanx Rho, this a very funny underrated band from belgium. i have the first Lp and it's a pleasure to find it here, re-thank you
jm from france
Wonderful!!! Don´t remember if I thanked you properly for the Nits posting. Have you by chance ever posted Style Council's Cost of Loving?
I believe I've seen other ALBUMS BUT NOT THIS ONE. I leave you this inquiry in case you have it in store. Thanks from southern Patagonia.
A re-up of Looking For Saint Tropez would be wonderful. Cheers.
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