X-Ray Pop – L’Eurasienne / La Machine À Rêver (MB5 Records) 1984. A great slice of French Synth wave from the band X-Ray Pop. There is very little information on this band on the web but from what I can tell; Stereolab should be paying Zouka Dzaza and Didier Pilot some royalties or something. The brilliance of French minimal synth is on full display here. Its simultaneously melancholy, funny, and ominous. X-Ray Pop went on to release a few more singles, cassettes and LPs in the 1980s. Their first LP again sounds like a template for what Stereolab would be doing a few years later.
Hardcore Podcasts
September of 2010 I put together eight Hardcore Podcasts. You can check them out here if you are interested. For more insight into how I came up with the years 78-90 for the First Wave you can read about The Hardcore Superiorty Myth.
The single isn’t bad, but the video was pretty painful to watch. Very French, attempting to be avant garde without necessarily understanding how to be avant garde (of course if you’re spending time trying to be it, your already not being it – these things come almost innocently). Particularly in relation to the video, and I’ve been living here 18 years and can attest to it.
X-Ray Pop does not show up on either of the best French synch/experimental comps that have come out over the last few years: the seminal, truly interesting So Young But So Cold and BIPPP: French Synth Wave 1979-85. I highly recommend both. Just check out The (Hypothetical Prophets)’s “Wallenberg.”
Breathtaking video…. It was, I’m afraid, exactly this kind of stuff that I mocked mercilessly as a teenage punk. ‘Cause, you know, walking around the suburbs in combat boots with orange hair is a much more authentic and meaningful way to express yourself.
I think this video is great. I love failed attempts at being avant garde! And yes, I would have mocked it mercilessly at 14. No doubt about that.