Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: Known for their cover versions - having re-read Sly Stone, Plastic Bertrand, Les Chats Sauvages, and many more over the years - Telex managed to tread a fine line between comedy and innovation. Focusing heavily on a lo-fi synthesised sound, the Belgian alt-poppers would use plenty of humour in their work, but never allowed this to outshine or overshadow the musicality of it all. Released in 1980, Neurovision is a case in point. According to the band, this was their tongue-in-cheek entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, for which they were chosen as representatives for their home country in the same year. Deliberately banal lyrics, mostly referring to the competition itself, married to the glittering wonder of a proto-electronic soundtrack, mark it as a work of bold daring and a little genius. Sadly, it failed to secure them last place in the tournament, as they hoped, forcing them to settle for 17 out of 19.

Review: 'This Is Telex' marked the beginning of the label's massive reissue campaign earlier last year, a 14-track retrospective highlighting a number of the Belgian trio's best singles. Now comes 'Telex', a mammoth red 6xLP box set documenting yet more of the synthpop experimenters' best works - Wonderful World, Looney Tunes, Neurovision, etc. It also comes with a 16-page booklet, in case you weren't clued in enough. One can only hope you'll be titillated enough by the band's synthy charms, and deft combining of covers and originals.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Damaged to corner of outer box, otherwise in excellent condition***


'This Is Telex' marked the beginning of the label's massive reissue campaign earlier last year, a 14-track retrospective highlighting a number of the Belgian trio's best singles. Now comes 'Telex', a mammoth red 6xLP box set documenting yet more of the synthpop experimenters' best works - Wonderful World, Looney Tunes, Neurovision, etc. It also comes with a 16-page booklet, in case you weren't clued in enough. One can only hope you'll be titillated enough by the band's synthy charms, and deft combining of covers and originals.

Review: In some ways it's remarkable that Telex managed to achieve the level of global success they did. This isn't slight on the band or indeed their sound, but to simultaneously make groundbreaking noises and garner widespread mass appeal has never been that easy, save for a number of high profile names we often now consider doyens of the music world. Looney Tunes, the group's fifth album, arrived in 1988 and by this point they had already been inducted into the synth pop hall of fame. Output and activity slowing considerably as the decade progressed, just like their sixth and final outing How Do You Dance?, released in 2006, here was proof that their vitality and ability to make ground breaking things had not waned, while their understanding of hooks and immediate impact had only grown more polished and absolute.

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Review: Formed in 1978, Marc Moullin, Dan Lacksman, and Michael Moers broke the mould with Telex - one of the most influential Belgian synth-pop groups of all time. Calling on disco, punk, and the sound of formative era experimental electronic music that was beginning to take hold in Western Europe, they would simultaneously produce some of the most important tracks of the genre until their first disbandment in 2006, and bless us with hilarious pithiness in the shape of tunes like 'Euro-Vision', a bleep-driven 'critique' of the song contest. How Do You Dance? was the group's final studio album, rounding out a six-strong, decade-spanning LP back catalogue, and despite arriving almost three decades after their debut, Looking for Saint Tropez, turned heads for its originality, this beauty still proved they were more than capable of delivering innovative goods. One for fans of Metronomy, Todd Terje and more.

Review: When it was first released in 2007, "Part 2: The Endless Not / TG Now" was Throbbing Gristle's first studio album since 1982. The pioneering industrial band had been drawn together again in 2004 to mark the passing of friend John Balance with a rare performance, and spent the next two years sporadically recording new material. The set was produced slightly differently to the all-analogue early works, with greater use of sampling and digital instrumentation. Yet despite the new toys and techniques, the music remained as antagonistic, forthright, intense and otherworldly as it had been two decades before. In other words, it's a proper Throbbing Gristle album, made by the original members to their original ethos, with a slightly different production approach. For that reason it remains a must-have for all fans of industrial music past and present.

Review: Throbbing Gristle's second studio album is an essential work that conjures some of the most harsh and nauseating music you can imagine (not a surprise given "Hamburger Lady" is a piece about a patient burned from the waist up and forever contained in a hospital). It was pioneering in texture and technique, and mixes both live and studio recordings into one of the band's most stylistically varied works. Creeping and haunting, confrontational and challenging from front to back, the spoken word samples from children and mutated voices will probably haunt your dreams forever, so listen with caution.