Telex announce major new boxset

Belgian synthpop trio Telex have announced details of a vinyl boxset, collating the remastered reissues of their six studio albums, Looking For Saint-Tropez (1979), Neurovision (1980), Sex (1981), Wonderful World (1984), Looney Tunes (1988) and How Do You Dance? (2006).

Remastered and newly mixed from the original tapes by Dan Lacksman and Michel Moers, Telex will be available as a limited edition vinyl and CD boxset, and digitally on Mute on 3 March 2023.

For 1981’s Sex, the trio teamed up with Sparks, a match made in heaven given both band’s determination to make electronic pop music suffused with conceptual wit. They got along tremendously, Ron & Russell Mael staying on in Brussels far longer than they’d originally intended, and Sparks contributed lyrics for the entire album.

Wonderful World followed in 1984, and the title track included here on the EP shows a band continuing to push a state-of-the art sound. 1988’s Looney Tunes, featuring the Dadaist cut-up “rap” of ‘Peanuts’, resulted in Motown among those vying to sign them.

“It would have been great to have been the second white band on Tamla Motown. Iron Butterfly were the first,” says Lacksman.

That wasn’t to be, though, and the band instead worked on projects outside of Telex until 2006’s How Do You Dance?, an album that proves that Telex remained not only true to themselves but had grown with the new developments in musical software.

Telex announced their retirement in 2008, following Moulin’s death, and in 2021 began a new partnership with Mute beginning with the release of This Is Telex, featuring two unreleased tracks.

Listen to the album here.

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