“I don’t like country & western, I don’t like rock music… I don’t like rockabilly! I don’t like much really do I? But what I do like, I love passionately!!”: CHRIS LOWE
Releasing ‘II’, their only album to date in 2009, the reputation of DESIRE was reinforced when one of its tracks ‘Under Your Spell’ was included on the influential soundtrack to the film ‘Drive’ starring Ryan Gosling.
Fronted by the vivacious French Canadian Megan Louise, DESIRE also feature Johnny Jewel and Nat Walker of CHROMATICS.
Jewel is also the founder of the highly regarded independent record label Italians Do It Better and after a period looking after royalty accounting, Megan Louise became company president.
A second DESIRE long player has been eagerly awaited for some time now and in 2020, a series of singles including ‘Boy’ and ‘Liquid Dreams’ were released as teasers although as with CHROMATICS ‘Dear Tommy’, it did not actually materialise.
But there were several excellent tracks released among these trailers. There was the deviantly amorous ‘Black Latex’ which was a spoken word art piece in French and English inspired by Andy Warhol, while the brilliantly naive escapist electronic disco of ‘Escape’ imagined BANANARAMA fronting NEW ORDER.
Talking of NEW ORDER, when DESIRE embarked on the ‘Double Exposure’ world tour with CHROMATICS and other Italians Do It Better label mates in 2019, they performed a faithful note-for-note cover of ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’. On stage, Megan Louise literally got into the spirit of the song’s title and passionately kissed her live keyboardist Aja of IDIB act HEAVEN in full-view of her beau Johnny Jewel. But for the new DESIRE single ‘Zeros’, Megan Louise has found a new keyboard partner-in-crime in Korean-born model Soo Joo Park.
A gorgeously dreamy electronic dance track produced and mixed by Johnny Jewel, the seductive opening line “Hey Mr Midnight, I’ve been waiting for you” signals the intent and its sunset noir cinematics are captured in the accompanying video shot in the desert of Palm Springs. Directed by Kirill Nong, it sees Megan Louise and Soo Joo Park burying their past. Reflecting the lockdown fatigue many are feeling, there is resignation that things are “Adding Up To Zero Every Single Day”.
Of ‘Zeros’, Megan Louise said: “As the calendar pages fly by, we are all reaching for a new normal on what sometimes feels like an endless loop. The cyclical music echoes flashback sequences of a recurring dream, chanting ‘Falling like a feather… Never touch the floor’. We sampled the incessant strikes of a grandfather clock, stopwatches and digital alarm clocks to keep the time. From sunrise to sunset, every single day is adding up…”
‘Zeros’ is released by Italians Do It Better as a digital single available on the usual platforms
Delayed it may have been but the wait is well worth it. With the release of ‘The Future Bites’, his sixth solo album in just over a decade, Steven Wilson will hopefully and finally put to rest the calls to reform the dodo dead PORCUPINE TREE. Not that I wouldn’t be front of the queue for such a reunion, I would… but the confines of that band project wouldn’t have furnished us with a release as compact, assured and ‘muscular’ as TFB.
Focused on the modern twin malaise of consumerism and identity, this album clocking in at around 41 minutes is no prog rock behemoth. In keeping with the overall concept, premiere of ‘Personal Shopper’ aside, every track does what it says on the tin and gets out of your face almost as quickly as it arrives.
Opening with the just over a minute long ‘Unself’ and segueing into complimentary cut ‘Self’, this will immediately confound expectations, and not just with the briefness of running time. A distant acoustic guitar accompanies a typically melancholy Wilson vocal which reminds us “all love is self…”
‘Self’ concentrates on one of the album’s key themes, the impact of influencers and the like via social media. At a time when the new norm are the twins of self-delusion and the self-absorption, this track asks what is left when all there is the ‘Self’? The answer is very little of value.
‘King Ghost’ is one of the tracks released as a single that has caused apoplexy in certain areas of the prog rock fan fraternity. A wonderful piece of modern electronica that pivots around a marvellous vocal performance from Wilson, the comments that accompanied the release at the tail end of last year actually play into another of the TFB’s key themes, consumerism and the entitlement that comes with that in the modern age. This is the standout track on the album, beautifully produced and played.
’12 Things I Forgot’ could easily have come off of the recent album of BLACKFIELD, one of Wilson’s numerous side projects. At first, it appears to be a simple pop song that wouldn’t be out of place over the end titles of a rom-com but the lyric is way more biting and, to this listener, seems to answer some of the critics that slated the album months before it was released.
Just as you think you have a handle on the album a curve ball arrives with ‘Eminent Sleaze’. This is the kind of thing 10CC would have put out back in the day, tongue-in-cheek with loads of knowing nods to other musical genres. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who listens to Wilson and longtime collaborator Tim Bowness’ wonderful ‘Album Years’ podcast. The breadth of their musical knowledge and influences are wide and this draws on many of those, as does the whole album.
‘Man Of The People’ is a straightforward track that has another excellent vocal performance from Wilson underpinning a mostly electronic backing. This highlights the overall lightness of production in the album; it has a wonderfully wide soundstage that really does reward repeat listening on headphones. Wilson and production partner David Kosten should be commended on refusing to go down the everything louder than everything else route, which worked for MOTÖRHEAD but not many other artists.
The album’s debut single ‘Personal Shopper’ caused another shockwave through the prog world… where are the guitar solos? The ‘real’ drumming? This is idiotic, though when you work with someone like Craig Blundell who is a human drum machine; it’s easy to see how they all got confused!
And is that Elton John?!?! Some of the naysayers are still wiping the tears away with the sleeve of their ‘Selling England By The Pound’ tour T-shirts. Having well-known shopaholic Elton read a shopping list is another nod to the humour that permeates this release. The biggest joke is on those that want another album full of ‘Raider II’s… this is the longest cut on the album.
‘Follower’ delivers the drums and guitars demanded by traditionalists, but it’s more garage punk than grandiose prog. There is even a guitar solo (although it’s not ‘Regret No9’) and some 70s style arrangement in the bridge, but think SPARKS rather than CAMEL. And with ‘Count of Unease’, we reach the end of what in places is a breathless 41 minutes. This has more than a passing nod to the likes of later TALK TALK and the Tim Bowness albums, with brass tones and a vocal that fades off as it arrived in ‘Unself’, in a wash of reverb and melancholy.
The usual Wilson special edition boxset (yes, the irony isn’t lost, no need to over egg it!) adds additional tracks including a wonderful cover of LONELY ROBOT’s ‘In Floral Green’ which originally appeared on the B Side of ‘Eminent Sleaze’. This repays LONELY ROBOT main man John Mitchell’s cover of PORCUPINE TREE’s ‘The Nostalgia Factory’… these should all be looked upon as extras, not as additions to the main album if that makes sense. Most listeners will only consume the core product…
In addition, mention should be made of ‘The Future Bites’ Sessions released on YouTube which has seen Wilson in the studio performing tracks from the album, a couple of earlier songs from his career and a quite wonderful cover of Taylor Swift’s ‘The Last Great American Dynasty’. A truly eclectic artist, it blurs the lines and keeps ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK’s own Chi Ming Lai happy at the same time! ?
Steven Wilson has once again with ‘The Future Bites’, demonstrated why he is held in such high regard. An artist that has the bottle to plough his own furrow and do his own thing should be commended, especially when it is as well realised as ‘The Future Bites’.
In this instance an example of self-belief we can all get behind. An album that, even this early in 2021, will be vying for top spot in many people’s end of the year lists come December.
‘The Future Bites’ is released by SW Records / Caroline Records in limited deluxe boxset, CD, red or black vinyl LP, cassette, Blu-ray and digital formats, available from https://store.thefuturebites.com/
2021 UK tour dates include:
Cardiff St David’s Hall (8th September), Sheffield City Hall (9th September), Manchester O2 Apollo (11th September), Glasgow Concert Hall (12th September), Birmingham Symphony Hall (13th September), Portsmouth Guildhall (15th September) London Hammersmith Apollo (16th September), Nottingham Royal Concert Hall (17th September)
‘Mercer’ is the debut single by new Leeds based duo DEVOIR.
Behind DEVOIR are Imogen Holmes and Jacob Marston; the latter is the drummer with black-clad alternative rock band DEAD NAKED HIPPIES although Marston once confessed “I grew up with New Romantic music dominating the stereo”. Meanwhile Holmes is the talented young lady behind IMI who opened for REIN’s London show in 2019 and released the acclaimed EP ‘Lines’. A product of lockdown, although ‘Mercer’ is entirely electronic, it differs slightly from the music from IMI in its four-to-the-floor construction.
So imagine GOLDFRAPP at an Alpine rave in the Hornlihutte basecamp next to The Matterhorn. As the cinematic techno builds, the magnificent voice that graced IMI tracks such as ‘Margins’, ‘The Fence’ and ‘I Feel Alright’ soars and shines, expressing itself at the extremes of alluring spoken word and piercing high soprano.
‘Mercer’ is perhaps the first truly great track of 2021 and accompanying it in monochrome, the simple but highly effective fast motion video sees the pair hard at work in their home studio as the world whizzes by…
“It’s a slight departure from IMI with a lot of similar threads, but hopefully a positive new direction” Imogen Holmes told ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK of the concept behind DEVOIR.
The restrictions on many levels proved to be inspiring; “We were pretty limited in terms of gear when we first started working on this project, so we decided to embrace the simplicity and the entire song ended up being informed by the initial bass line and kick drum” she added, “We also took pretty drastic inspiration from the books we were reading at the time, which ended up being a really refreshing way of approaching writing”.
‘Mercer’ is available as a digital single via the usual platforms
On paper it shouldn’t have worked; a funereal paced reworking of the song that heralded the birth of rock ‘n’ roll smothered in vocoder. But TELEX always had an eccentric sense of irony about them.
Their cover of ‘Rock Around The Clock’ caused much head scratching when it entered the UK Top 40 singles chart in the summer of 1979, although one person listening was undoubtedly Daniel Miller who borrowed the concept for SILICON TEENS and their only album ‘Music For Parties’. So it is no big surprise that the Belgian trio are to have their back catalogue reissued by Mute Records, beginning with a compilation ‘This Is TELEX’ which bizarrely omits their biggest UK hit!
TELEX began their account in 1978 with another rock ‘n’ roll cover in ‘Twist à Saint Tropez’ made famous by LES CHATS SAUVAGES fronted by French singer Dick Rivers; their manifesto stated their intent of “making something really European, different from rock, without guitar”. With their embracement of synths and a tongue-in-cheek championing of pop and disco, TELEX enjoyed baiting the ideologically-rigid rock press, especially with their cover versions.
This continued on their debut album ‘Looking For Saint Tropez’ released on Vogue Records. It included a KRAFTWERK styled reinterpretation of ‘Ça Plane Pour Moi’ by Belgian faux punk Plastic Bertrand who Lacksman had provided all the synth instrumentation for on his electro-disco favourite ‘Tout Petit La Planète’. Other highlights on ‘Looking for Saint Tropez’ included the hypnotic ‘Pakmowäst’ with its treated robotic vocals and ‘Something To Say’ which didn’t sound unlike one of YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA’s vocal tracks.
Like YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA, TELEX were already experienced hands by the time of their formation; Marc Moulin was a jazz musician with two albums to his name and the boss of the Belgian FM radio station Radio Cité, while vocalist Michel Moers had been a member of prog folkies NUIT CALINE A LA VILLA MON REVE.
The most electronic inclined of the trio, Dan Lacksman was a noted studio engineer who had recorded three solo long players using his Moog IIIP modular system and provided the Roland System 100 sequence programming to the huge worldwide disco hit ‘Born To Be Alive’ by Patrick Hernandez, with whom a young Madonna was once a backing vocalist for.
But TELEX’s wider breakthrough came via The Blitz Club and its resident DJ Rusty Egan who played the self-penned ‘Looking For Saint Tropez’ opener ‘Moscow Diskow’ alongside KRAFTWERK, YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA and SPARKS to signal a new phase in electronic dance music that had been seeded by the Giorgio Moroder produced ‘I Feel Love’ in 1977.
Taking the Trans-Siberian Express to Moscow and adding a funkier groove compared with KRAFTWERK’s ‘Trans Europe Express’ excursion, the track became a cult international club favourite and proved that TELEX were more than just a novelty covers act.
The second TELEX album ‘Neurovision’ in 1980 continued with the deadpan electronic covers and a gloriously metronomic take on ‘Dance To The Music’ showcased the trio’s irreverent humour and penchant for mischievous subversion. But this mischief came to its head with their lampooning number ‘Euro-Vision’, which they actually entered for 1980 Eurovision Song Contest!
A bouncy electropop tune, ‘Euro-Vision’ had deliberately banal lyrics about the whole charade itself. With Lacksman’s Moog modular behind them, the trio had even choreographed swaying and clap movements while Moulin cheekily mimed his MicroMoog polyphonically. The Situationist performance concluded with Moers stoically taking a photo of the bemused audience in The Hague.
With the sole intention of coming last, TELEX were sitting in that very position with just four juries to vote. But Portugal awarded “dix points” and TELEX ended up 17th out of 19 entries ahead of Morocco and Finland!
Featuring a song called ‘Tour De France’ three years before KRAFTWERK and a pulsing jazz tinged Schaffel in ‘En Route Vers De Nouvelles Aventures’, ‘Neurovision’ saw TELEX’s profile raised although they declined to perform live. However, their sophisticated electronic sound would have been very difficult to replicate at the time, a situation which also saw SPARKS unable to perform their Giorgio Moroder produced albums ‘No1 In Heaven’ and ‘Terminal Jive’ in a concert setting.
With many things in common, for TELEX’s third album ‘Sex’ released on Ariola in 1981, the Mael brothers were invited to contribute lyrics to all of its nine tracks and begin a fruitful friendship. Experiments in swing on ‘Sigmund Freud’s Party’ displayed a sophisticated vintage musicality and the brilliant ‘Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before?’ was the hit single that never was.
Meanwhile, like KRAFTWERK meeting YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA, ‘Brainwash’ was quite obviously the blueprint for LCD SOUNDSYSTEM’s ‘Get Innocuous!’ and ‘Drama, Drama’ reinterpreted the latent funk of Bowie’s ‘Fame’ in synthesizer form.
However, the tracklisting was considerably revamped for the UK release in 1982 as ‘Birds & Bees’ with new material; one of these numbers ‘L’ Amour Toujours’ was a wonderful exploration of latter day ROXY MUSIC if Bryan Ferry had opted to venture into electronic pop. However, ‘Holiday Holiday’ amusingly sounded like a synthy Chris De Burgh on holiday in the French Riviera! But ‘Birds & Bees’ confused the TELEX story and a reworked ‘L’ Amour Toujours’ ended up also opening the fourth TELEX album ‘Wonderful World’ which only came out in Germany and France despite a new deal with Warners.
Although it possessed a vibrant title song, the album sank without trace but TELEX were still in demand and signed by Atlantic Records for the 1988 album ‘Looney Tunes’. From it, ‘Beautiful Li(f)e’ was an oddball sampling experiment akin to YELLO that showed Moulin, Moers and Lacksman were still willing to explore the possibilities of new digital technology, despite electronic pop being out of vogue and the public seemingly preferring house and techno.
With TELEX going into hiatus, Michel Moers released a solo album ‘Fishing Le Kiss’ in 1990 before becoming a video director and photographer. However, Marc Moulin and Dan Lacksman had maintained parallel production careers during TELEX. Working together in the studio, the pair had scored several domestic hits including ‘Amoureux Solitaires’ and ‘Le Banana Split’ with the sexy Belgian starlet Lio.
SPARKS continued their association with TELEX and wrote English lyrics for the Canadian edition of Lio’s ‘Suite Sixtine’ album and in return, Moulin and Lacksman did a 12 inch remix of ‘Music That You Can Dance To’. Meanwhile, Lacksman engineered SPARKS’ ‘In Outer Space’ LP which spawned the Jane Wiedlin duet ‘Cool Places’ that became the Mael brothers’ biggest US hit and Thomas Dolby’s second album ‘The Flat Earth’.
Although Moulin produced several tracks on the self-titled debut of Anna Domino released on the Belgian boutique label Les Disques Du Crépuscule, it was Lacksman who was to have the most lucrative post-TELEX career as a producer, notably working with CAMOUFLAGE on their ‘Methods Of Silence’ and ‘Bodega Bohemia’ albums, as well as producing French ethnic electronica project DEEP FOREST who had a worldwide smash hit with ‘Sweet Lullaby’.
TELEX reunited in 2006 for the ‘How Do You Dance?’ album on Virgin Records; it featured five cover versions including a downtempo take on the Mexican folk standard ‘La Bamba’, a vocodered ‘On The Road Again’ which appeared to replicate ROCKETS’ 1978 version and in tribute to their old mates SPARKS, a superb deadpan interpretation of ‘No1 Song In Heaven’. Welcomed back by the artists who had they had helped lay the electronic foundations for, TELEX did remixes for DEPECHE MODE and PET SHOP BOYS.
Sadly Marc Moulin passed away in 2008 and TELEX was retired. Since then, Michel Moers returned to music in 2013 to provide his Gallic nonchalance on ‘Will I Get to Your Heart?’ for Danish musician NATTEFROST and has been recording solo material. In 2015, Dan Lacksman collaborated with the late Florian Schneider on ‘Stop Plastic Pollution’ to highlight the issue of ocean environment conservation as part of the campaign Parley For The Oceans and continues his studio career.
TELEX have certainly left an impressive legacy linking them with some of the biggest names in electronic music. Their time to be discovered by a new generation and established music fans who may have missed them first time round comes via this new partnership with Mute.
While ‘This Is TELEX’ does not include ‘Rock Around The Clock’ or ‘Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before?’, it does feature a good selection of their career highlights. Long-standing TELEX enthusiasts will be tempted by the new mixes from Lacksman and Moers, although as the former explained “We simplify, we take away, to create something more efficient, more TELEX.” while Moers added “We’re so glad to have signed with Mute. We couldn’t have done better.”
“Beaux messieurs, belles dames: musique au programme…”
In memory of Marc Moulin 1942- 2008
‘This Is TELEX’ is released by Mute Artists on 30th April 2021 in CD, double shrimp pink or fern green coloured vinyl LP, cassette and digital formats
With an album named after a lyric from ROXY MUSIC’s ‘True To Life’ off ‘Avalon’ and describing her music as “New Wave. New Romantic. Art Rock. Escapism.”, Suffolk based Sophie Mahon undoubtedly wishes she was in another time, another place.
Before DEPECHE MODE, SOFT CELL and the programmable technology revolution, bands who used synths like VISAGE, ULTRAVOX, JAPAN, SIMPLE MINDS and DURAN DURAN had conventional rhythm sections and it was this juxtaposition of electronics with inventive approaches to more rockist forms that created an accessible retro-futuristic sound which dominated mainstream music between 1979-82.
As with the clientele at The Blitz Club, stylish movie stars Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Sean Connery and Roger Moore are also a key influence for Mahon. So it’s unsurprising that ‘Xenon Nights’ opener ‘Black Tie’ is a winner; a sophisticated slice of art pop, it glistens with synths alongside conventional backing while Mahon showcases her fine contralto voice with the occasional Ferry-ism to outline her manifesto.
No doubt borrowing the title from the DURAN DURAN instrumental which was itself influenced by the William Blake poem, ‘Tiger Tiger’ uses the first “burning bright” line from that very prose and parties like it’s 1972; with its bursts of piano and sax, it could be subtitled ‘2RM’.
Despite a gloriously swooping synth in the intro, ‘Poster Boy Smile’ nods more towards the new wave power pop like BLONDIE and TALKING HEADS. Perhaps paying tribute to ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’, the mid-paced funk of ‘Mr Newton’ takes a diversion and is centred around an almost jazzy offbeat bass and drum jam.
Meanwhile, ‘Blue Eyes’ is punctuated by a big treated snare; a ‘Re-Make/Re-Model’ for today, it was inspired by Mahon’s unrequited childhood crush on a Simon Le Bon lookalike! But ‘The Beautiful & The Damned’ is rockier with dominant guitar and organ stabs; it actually comes over like TEXAS if the Glaswegians had been regulars at The Blitz Club.
Moving from dusk till dawn, a ballad in the shape of ‘Carousel’ recalls Roxy’s ‘A Really Good Time’ while over a shimmering bed of synths, the sparse ‘Night Circus’ offers greater air time for Mahon’s accomplished voice as the song itself moves away from the Roxy template towards the rosy prairie of TEXAS, but without the Ry Cooder aesthetics and using electronic squelches instead.
This latter phase of the ‘Xenon Nights’ sees Mahon in more like a conventional singer-songwriter territory and despite the use of synths, ‘Angel Of Stone’ does come over like a TEXAS album track in their ‘Rick’s Road’ phase, while the album closer ‘Splendid Isolation’ could be mistaken for Tanita Tikaram or Jacqui Abbott.
Sophie Mahon takes a flesh and blood approach to her influences and while some veteran fans of the New Romantic era may only find the first handful of tracks on ‘Xenon Nights’ to their liking, what cannot be denied is that she has a musical talent that has potential to shine outside of any niche.
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, his sixth solo album in just over a decade, 
is perhaps the first truly great track of 2021 and accompanying it in monochrome, the simple but highly effective fast motion video sees the pair hard at work in their home studio as the world whizzes by…
which bizarrely omits their biggest UK hit!
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