When radio DJ/jazz musician Marc Moulin, programmer/sound engineer Dan Lacksman and vocalist Michel Moers got together in 1978 with the deliberate goal of forming an all-electronic disco pop band, they couldn't have chosen a better (or worse) moment: after all this was a year when New Wave, guitars, seriousness and political content were ruling. Telex expressed articulate, militant views on the essential lightness of pop, and their tongue-in-cheek championing of disco was not always well understood at the time by the ideologically-correct rock press... which didn't keep their first three singles ('Twist A Saint Tropez", "Moskow Diskow" and "Rock Around The Clock") from becoming genuine hits in the UK and in the rest of Europe.

Telex had a typically Belgian, self-deprecating sense of humour. They were influenced by the famed Brussels school of comics (Tintin etc.). For their initial press shots they had gone for a bizarre, faceless image (later also to be assumed by the likes of Devo and The Residents), but when one of their singles jumped into the UK Top Forty, they soon found themselves appearing on Top Of The Pops... Their career as performers hit an unparalleled peak when they entered the Eurovision Song Contest in 1980, and performed for millions of stunned viewers a synth+vocoder song appropriately entitled "Eurovision", which actually talked about the fact that they were performing on the Eurovision...

Telex went on to make five albums (the last one came out in 1986 on Atlantic Records US), and many of their 12" achieved cult status in the clubs, especially in America.

Telex had claimed at the time that "the best compliment anybody could pay us is that our music is disposable - that's what all music should be", and the press sometimes took the same view ("Of course this is completely disposable music: next month it will hold no interest. It says no more, and no less, than a pair of Courrège peep-toe boots", wrote the Melody Maker in 79).

Ironically enough, the future proved them both wrong, as some of their tracks just simply wouldn't go away... they seem to have exerted a crucial influence on many eminent members of the Detroit & Chicago house and techno crowd, who keep quoting them among their all-time favourites...

Telex since 1986

Marc Moulin went on to produce many pop albums. He is one of the head programmers on Belgian national radio. He writes plays and books. His early jazz-funk albums (Placebo, Sam Suffy) are being rediscovered by groove/breakbeat DJs, and have been recently re-released.

Dan Lacksman has been running Synsound, a successful studio complex in Brussels, where he recorded and co-produced scores of albums (including the first Deep Forest album, and his own Pangea project).

Michel Moers is a photographer, he's had several exhibitions and works a lot for advertising. He also directs videos, and records the sound of cicadas in Provence.

Discography

Albums

* 1979: Looking For St. Tropez
* 1980: Neurovision
* 1981: Sex
* 1984: Wonderful World
* 1986: Looney Tunes
* 2006: How Do You Dance?

Radio

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