Telex - This Is Telex (2LP) - Pink/Green Vinyl

Belgium’s finest pranksters of the synth age, Telex, finally got the handsome primer they deserve with This Is Telex, released in 2021 on Mute. If you’ve ever loved pop that winks while it dances, this compilation feels like a long overdue handshake. It draws a clean line from the trio’s late 70s spark to their 2000s comeback, and it does it with the sort of tidy sequencing that makes you want to flip the record and start again the second the needle lifts.

Telex formed in Brussels in 1978, and the line-up never wavered: Marc Moulin on keys, Dan Lacksman as studio sorcerer, and Michel Moers as the dry, stylish voice. Moulin brought a jazz brain and a mischievous ear from his work with the Belgian group Placebo. Lacksman had the studio chops, with Synsound in Brussels becoming their playground. Moers gave their songs a face, unflappable and a bit sly. Together they chased a clean, motorik pulse and dressed it in French pop humour, which is a big part of why these tracks still feel fresh.

You get the totems, of course. Moskow Diskow rolls out with that conveyor-belt bassline and clipped handclaps, as if Kraftwerk went on holiday and discovered nightclubs. It remains one of the great early synthpop singles, catchy yet slightly aloof, and the remastering here brightens the hi-hats without losing the rubbery low end. Euro-Vision, the song they took to the 1980 Eurovision Song Contest, still lands as a sly in-joke about the spectacle itself. They performed it in perfect deadpan and finished well down the table, which is exactly the sort of outcome they seemed to enjoy. Hearing it back to back with Moskow Diskow in this set makes the band’s intent obvious. They weren’t mocking pop from the outside. They were inside the machine, pressing its buttons to see what would happen.

The compilation also captures how lovingly they toyed with pop history. Twist à Saint Tropez shimmies in with cheeky precision, all piston-smooth rhythm and vocoder smiles. Telex had a knack for covers that exposed the clockwork beneath a tune without draining its joy, and this pick does that beautifully. The vocals sit like a neon sign above the beat, sparing and stylish, while little synth stabs flicker in the corners. It’s pop modernism, done with warmth rather than cold irony.

Sonically the set is a masterclass in less-is-more. You hear the discipline of studio heads who knew how to keep a mix lean. Sequencers lock in, drum machines tick like accurate watches, and the vocoder becomes a character rather than a gimmick. The Synsound fingerprint is all over it. Not a brand ad, just the audible fact of a band that wrote in the control room and treated production as composition. On vinyl, that space really opens up. This Is Telex vinyl gives each element room to breathe, which suits their clean lines and little comic details.

What makes the compilation sing as a package is the way it folds their full arc into something that still feels cohesive. You can hear the late 70s optimism of Looking for Saint Tropez and Neurovision, the playful provocation of their early 80s work, and the sleek return that culminated in 2006’s How Do You Dance?. It’s a reminder that Telex never chased trends. They arrived with a sound, refined it, then stepped aside until they had a reason to press record again. That restraint is rare, and it makes this kind of career overview unusually satisfying.

If you’re crate digging in a Melbourne record store and spot a copy, grab it. Telex vinyl doesn’t linger long in the wild, and this one is a perfect gateway if you’re new or a tidy catch-all if you’ve only got the early singles. For anyone looking to buy Telex records online, this is the obvious starting point, and it sits neatly alongside other Telex albums on vinyl if you decide to go down the rabbit hole. It also pops up regularly in shops that focus on vinyl records Australia wide, which says something about its cross-generational appeal.

Forty-odd years on from Moskow Diskow, the jokes still land, and the grooves still take over the room. Telex always aimed for elegant simplicity with a raised eyebrow, and This Is Telex bottles that spirit. It’s a celebration of three people who understood that pop can be smart and silly at the same time, that a straight face can make a punchline funnier, and that a great synth bassline never goes out of style.