In a parallel universe, where Serge Gainsbourg wasn’t composing a suite about the murderous “man with the cabbage head” and dragging reggae into France with a contentious re-working of La Marseillaise that was every bit as establishment-baiting as punk, the late 70s saw the launch of another strain of French genius. Alongside Droids’ sole Star Peace LP, Space took French electronica into the stratosphere with their cosmique disco, the likes of Magic Fly becoming a hit single in 1977. Its parent LP, plus the same year’s Deliverance and 1978’s Just Blue, marked Didier Marouani, Roland Romanelli and Jannick Top out as a three-headed alien Gallic Giorgio Moroder.
Before the decade was out, Space exploded without going supernova as Deeper Zone, a fourth LP recorded without Marouani, failed to deliver on earlier promises. It would be another decade before French DuosTM Air, Daft Punk and even Modjo reopened the interstellar disco. DP may have nicked the space robots image, but each of these descendents owe a debt to the sometimes bland, straightahead disco, other times wildly hyperkinetic proto-Hi-NRG found in Space.
