The Breakdown
It’s been thirty three years since Telex frontman Michel Moers released a solo album, with 1991’s ‘Fishing Le Kiss’. During that time he’s been consumed by photography and architecture but still making music on the quiet.
Often described as “the Belgian Kraftwerk”, Telex’s emergence in the 70s marked them as leftfield players in Electronic Pop’s pantheon, their vision shot through with surrealist humour and deadpan delivery. The trio’s penchant for taking upbeat anthems and deconstructing them into downtempo grooves was startling, with ‘Rock Around the Clock’, ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘La Bamba’ all getting the treatment. Not to mention representing Belgium in 1980’s Eurovision with a song called ‘Euro-Vision’ and a staunch mission to come last.
So what sparked this return? Well partly last year’s six-album boxset released by Mute Records, where Moers and fellow band member Dan Lacksman painstakingly remastered and remixed their back catalogue (sadly without Marc Moulin, who passed in 2008), “reactivating their ears” in the process.
Album opener, ‘Les Gens Sont Affligeants’ (People are Disappointing) is a reworking of a song from his first album, with both the sound and the sentiment enhanced by technological advances since. It’s a gentle reflective shimmering number, which is followed by a collaboration with Propaganda singer Claudia Brücken on ‘Microwaves’, an electro-pop ballad recounting the mental stress of re-heating pies (and hearts) with radioactive heat-vision and the ensuing resultant headaches (really! Well, the Belgian humour is never far from the surface).
Despite the songs being written at widely different points in time there’s a real cohesion to the sound and atmosphere; pulsing and brooding, deceptively downbeat only to suddenly softly erupt into grooviness, so stealthily you didn’t hear it coming.
Fellow countryman Daan makes an appearance on ‘Back to Then’, invited along for his “cowboy’s voice”, (“When I say Daan has a ‘cowboy’s voice’ I mean the deep voice of a man perceived as tough, discovering his hidden child, awaiting to be healed.”) and there’s a twangy feel of New Order at their more introspective moments.
‘Pixels’ and ‘R.E.M.I.X’ up the BPM and euphoria a notch, whilst keeping a steady hand on the tiller, and final track, ‘Tu T’endors’ has a dreamy Eno quality.
All in all, this is an album that won’t reveal all its secrets in one sitting, but with repeated listens, tiny flashbacks, motifs and understated references to the vast canon of electronic music will make their presence known like polite guests at a dinner party. Oh, and the album title is a canny reference to A.I. Very classy, and very Belgian.
Released on 19/04 on Freaksville Records, ‘As Is’ is out now on clear/orange vinyl and download.
https://freaksvillerec.ffm.to/asis
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