X-Ray Pop. Radio Pilot [Greatest Poppers 84-88]. 2CD.

Psychedelic and gaudy, messy and robotic, X-Ray Pop’s music has never been from it’s era: it missed the great whirls of the 60/70s, from Zappa to Kraftwerk. But it was also too early in it’s own era to be able to cope with dandies of the acid and fluo generations. It even could try, in the 80’s, to pick a quarrel with Rita Mitsouko, but hits, Didier and his hallucinated mates always prefered to torn, to torture more than to turn them into gold. Indies by mission, pain in the ass by taste, on the edge by means, libertarians by insolence, girls and boys from X-Ray Pop didn’t make their lifes easy: The price for an uncompromising attitude! During few hours, if I remind well, I’ve even been the improvised manager of the band. One day, I told that to the Beastie Boys, and they were really impressed, them, maniacs about distorded sounds, who had put their hands (through mysterious ways) on a rara 7” by X-Ray Pop in New York (it was before the internet, respect!). The advantage of a band like X-Ray Pop, that has never been ‘in’, from it’s age, is not to fade: you don’t get wrinkles, on the edges. JD Beauvallet (editor of ‘Les Inrockuptibles’ – the leading and most respected French music magazine).