VA - Cosmic Machine: A Voyage Across French Cosmic & Electronic Avantgarde (1970-1980) (2013)

At the start of the 70s, France had no petrol, but it had ideas and artists that managed to tip them into the 21st Century 30 years in advance. Cosmic Machine compiles 20 rare tracks put together with passion and erudition by Uncle O (who previously did the Shaolin Soul compilations) and throws together a collection of stars, a few free-spirits, and also shooting stars. This group of people don’t form a scene per say, they’re more like a collection of individuals who, through sheer ingenuity and with all their singularity, managed to break down the barriers between pop and experimental to give birth to a mutant variety of electronic music that owes as much to mobile discos as sound illustration, to the GRM, to the Bogdanoff brothers, to Métal Hurlant and the European Space Program. Cosmic Machine is a panoramic dive into this epic era when the synthesizer was man’s best friend and when the future had a future: our present time. Daft Punk, Air, Justice, Zombie Zombie… Or Add N To (X), Stereolab, Broadcast in the rest of the world… weren’t born in incubators. The electric fairy stood above their cradle and they’re all the children of these French pioneers who were, among the first to celebrate the union of flesh and circuits. Androïds, robots, humans and other celestial creatures: now board the Cosmic Machine.