TELEX

Synth-pop trio from Brussels.

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".

Members :
- Marc Moulin
- Michel Moers
- Dan Lacksman

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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)

Websites :
- Jun Okamoto's Telex Index
- Telexmania

Forum :
- Lees de berichten over Telex
- Voeg een bericht, vraag, cd- of concertverslag ... over Telex toe