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Apparently I needed another seventeen years and the reassuring hand of a trusted record label before taking any action. What finally pushed me towards the Telex back catalogue was when they began a partnership with Mute Records, who reissued the band’s discography. If Telex were good enough for Daniel Miller, I reasoned, they were good enough for me.
This is, of course, a slightly daft system of quality control, as Mute have signed plenty of artists I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole, even if the barge pole came with a limited-edition coloured vinyl pressing. Still, the remastered albums were very reasonably priced, and principles become surprisingly flexible when an LP costs less that twenty pounds.
Telex’s debut album dates from 1979, yet much of it sounds as though it could have been recorded yesterday. Admittedly, it would have been recorded yesterday by three eccentric Belgians surrounded by vintage synthesisers, wearing expressions that suggested they knew exactly how silly pop music could be and intended to prove it. Even so, the album has aged remarkably well. Its electronics are crisp, minimal and playful rather than lumbering, while its detached vocals make everything sound both sophisticated and faintly absurd. It is music that keeps a perfectly straight face while quietly moving the furniture behind you.
“Moskow Diskow” is the epitome of European electro-disco, driven by a pulsing bassline, vocoder rasps and French-language vocals that make catching a train sound like the height of continental glamour. There is also a wonderfully odd cover of “Rock Around the Clock”, and I still can’t decide whether it is an affectionate tribute, an elaborate joke or a genuinely inspired reinvention. The answer is probably all three, which is very much Telex’s preferred operating model.
Another cover arrives in the form of “Ça plane pour moi”, a version of a song that already sounded like a parody and is therefore subjected to the musical equivalent of placing a hall of mirrors inside another hall of mirrors. It is still well worth sticking around for. My favourite track, though, is “Victime de la Société”. Its riff is so strong that it could have been written by Vince Clarke in his pomp, while Michel Moers’ spoken vocal oozes effortless cool. He sounds less like a singer performing a song and more like a stylish European stranger calmly informing you that your evening plans have changed.
In 1979, the album’s extensive use of synthesisers must have made it sound startlingly modern. By the middle of the eighties, when electronic pop had become shinier, grander and polished to within an inch of its life, Telex may have seemed almost terribly naïve by comparison. Now, of course, artists spend considerable time and money trying to recreate precisely that unpolished character, sometimes using software designed to imitate equipment Telex probably bought because it was all they could afford. As a result, the record has completed a full circle. It now fits neatly into the zeitgeist, sounding fresh because it is old and modern because it refused to behave properly in the first place. The history of electronic pop, encapsulated in one mischievous Belgian album. 4/5
