Four Frenchmen, childhood friends, united in their love of synth music: dare we say it’s a tale of mystery and imagination, of friendship and self-discovery? Chateau Marmont’s story is half Stand By Me, half Solaris, half Logan’s Run and, yes, it doesn’t add up. They’ve known each other since forever, as children stranded in a hostile landscape dominated by hypertrophied bullies and pathetic louts. They found themselves and each other through synthetic music, so bright and remote in its promises of infinity and eternal bliss, so hard, cold and disturbing when its outlook turns dystopian.

Chateau Marmont remixed Poney Poney, Koko Von Napoo, Midnight Juggernauts and most recently La Roux, Heartsrevolution and Ladyhawke. Solar Apex is their first record. They come from a time when people still believed in the future. A time when the proto French Touch, helmed by Space and Jean-Michel Jarre, dominated the airwaves. The Alan Parsons Project and classic French soundtracks (think Francis Lai) still radiate through their music. And their name is resonant not of faded glories, awkward suicides, scuffed gold stars and velvet-roped junkies, but of widescreen romance, vintage melancholia and studied postures. The instrumental “Maison Klaus” is clearly a theme song in search of a movie, or a prom song in search of a ballroom scene, gracefully unfolding next to the dusky synthwork and android vocals of “Diane”. “Anything & Everywhere” is a drop of languid and upbeat optimism, a ray of sunshine beaming from an imaginary California, a perfect pop confection. And everything converges towards the EP’s event horizon: “Solar Apex”, an anthem in search of a nation. Imagine, in a late-seventies, early-eighties sci-fi movie, a social utopia eons away, a perfect people free of oppression, a glittering tribe.