"Twist à Saint Tropez"
46,9 sec. - 92 Kb.
song : Salvet, Lafitte, Solal
Produced : Telex
Year : 1979
Record co.: RKM
"Rock around the clock"
30,3 sec. - 60 Kb.
song : M.C.Freeman, de Knight
Produced : Telex
Year : 1979
Record co.: RKM/WEA
"Eurovision"
51,5 sec. - 101 Kb.
song : Telex, H. Dierks
Produced : Telex
Year : 1980
Record co.: RKM/Vogue
The group was formed in the middle of the seventies and consists of Marc
Moulin (musician, producer, radio-presenter and businessman) who came
from the jazz-scene (e.g. his work as a pianist in the sixties, and with Placebo
in the seventies), but had been experimenting with bringing elektronics into jazz
for a long time.
The other members were sound-technician Dan Lacksman
(who also had a solo-career before - and after Telex) and Michel Moers
(architect, designer and text-writer).
From "Wit-lof from Belgium" : "Although the group has borrowed
a lot from Kraftwerk and such, it is very often referred to a being one of the
founders for what was to become commercial electropop."
Gain a lot of popularity with their first album "Looking for Saint Tropez",
which mainly consists of electronic and funny adaptations of songs from other
groups : e.g. "ça plane pour moi", "Twist à Saint-Tropez"
(from Les Chat Chauvages) and "Rock around the clock" (from Bill Haley
& The Comets"). The album sold surprisingly well in Great-Britain. The
disco song "Moscow disco" became a huge hit from Brazil to Australia
in 1979.
As Humo wrote in a review of the 1994 compilation "Belgium ... one point"
: "Once in the history of the Eurovision song-contest, it almost was
fun to watch. The RTBF had delegated Telex to The Hague in 1980 with a beat that
was called "Eurovision" and that mildly mocked the Olympiad of Bad Taste.
Telex was doing a sort of disco for intellectuals since the end of the 70's. On
their best songs their "thing" was a sort of musical translation of
Hergé's "ligne claire", on their worst they were a carbon-copy of the
German computerpop groups which were "trendy" for some time. The trio
had a cult reputation to defend when they went to represent Belgium. Telex had
it's fans from Tienen to Tokyo, but still they decided to participate "for
the fun of it" Marc Moulin : "We had hoped to finish last, but Portugal
decided otherwise. We got ten points from them and finished on the 19th spot".
The music of Telex : You love it, or you don't. Telex is more brain than
heart. More concept than blood, sweat and tears. But luckily enough humor is never
far away. The covers (Sly Stone, Bill Haley, Otis Redding, Plastic
Bertrand ...) are covers, and not copies. And their own music has something
unique, although we've been searching all day to find a way to describe that uniqueness."
Experimental and funny, the group wasn't always understood by the public :
"we have always been very ambitious" said Marc Moulin, "on the
humor-side and on what we wanted to express with our music, but our music was
at the same time very superficial, very pop. We were not recognized at the time
because what we made wasn't beautiful music."
This recognition came later, in the 90's. As Marc Moulin explained at the time
of the release of the box "Belgium : one point" : "we released
this box because so many people were asking us things about Telex. Even Pizzicato
Five wanted us to do a remix ... We were wrong to follow the technology. People
tell us that it's the oldest titles that sound the freshest. We'll probably hook
up to these roots again".
Buy CD's of this band at
Albums :
- Looking for Saint-Tropez (RKM/Sire) - 1979)
- Neurovision (RKM/WEA - 1980)
- Sex (Ariola, 1981)
- Wonderful world (WEA, 1984)
- Looney Tunes (Indisc - 1988)
- Les rhythmes automatiques (Play It Again Sam, 1989) Compilation :
- Belgium ... one point (4 CD-Box) (Sony Music - 1994)
- I don't like music - the remixes (1998)
- I don't like remixes - the music (1998)
Members :
- Marc Moulin
- Michel Moers
- Dan Lacksman
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