Proving his talent as a musician/songwriter, Jay Alansky was responsible for a number of major 80s hits ranging from Lio's Banana Split and Plastic Bertrand's Sentimentale moi to numerous Jil Caplan chart toppers. A little under two decades later Alansky has finally returned to the music frontline with Les Yeux crevés, released on Laurent Garnier and Eric Morand's electro label F.Com (which brought out his earlier Reminiscent Drive albums). However, Alansky appears eager to distance himself from the current breed of young French electro hounds with their eyes firmly riveted on the dancefloor. "My first culture will always be rock'n'roll," he declares.

But Alansky admits he was "ecstatic" when the electro revolution came along. "By the late 80s I’d become totally sick and tired of spending my day in big recording studios. I felt like branching out in a new direction and finding something else – and I found that something else in electro, staying at home working in my home studio! Actually, the work I did with Lio had already given me an intimation of what my new direction could be. We were already ‘electro’ even back then, although we didn’t go round saying so at the time!" Alansky is certainly not wrong on this point, but electro was only a technique for him at that point, not a raison d'être. "It all started when I stopped working with Jil Caplan in '94," reminisces Alansky, "I sort of withdrew into myself at that point and shut myself up at home to work. I only had this eight-track cassette recorder at the time, and that’s what I used to do the first Reminiscent Drive album the following year. I sent a demo tape of it off to several labels including F.Com and it was F.Com that got back to me. I hit it off with Eric Morand and Laurent Garnier straightaway. And I must say they weren’t at all bothered about what I’d done in the past. They could see my approach was honest and sincere – and they didn’t need to stop and ask themselves questions!”

Alansky may have come out under his own name at last, but he appears to enjoy maintaining some element of mystery about himself. The musician, who describes himself as "somewhere between 40 and 60" when pushed about his age, is a man who gets a kick out of life's little paradoxes. And he has deliberately contrasted the dark, moody tracks on Les Yeux crevés with a colourful, upbeat cover. “I did the artwork myself using these drawings I’d doodled while I was in the studio. They look a bit like kids’ drawings, but what I like about them is that they have a very adult side too. I decided I wanted to use them raw – not add another layer to them or make the strokes bolder in any way! I like the contrast between the graphics and the musical content of the album. I like the hot/cold, dark/upbeat dichotomy, although I imagine on the whole the public would prefer a clearer message than that!"

Alansky insists there is no secret formula behind his musical mix. And at the end of the day when asked to pin down his style as eight track recorder and acoustic instruments or computer, sampler and electro beats, he can only reply "both!" "When it comes down to it I'm a musician (playing keyboards, guitar and drums). So I’m quite capable of making music without a computer, but I’m just as capable of working with one too. I’m a big believer in mixing the two, in fact. Les Yeux crevés is more or less a summing up of all my experiences to date. All too often these days records end up sounding exactly the same and that gets on my nerves – although, having said that, I think it’s fantastic that non-musicians can now express themselves musically thanks to the computer. There’s been a real revolution which has opened a lot of new doors for people, even if a few new ‘dinosaurs’ have appeared along the way who have produced some very boring stuff because they lack real inventiveness. I don’t believe in secret recipes and success formulas. I prefer freedom. That’s why when it comes to remixes I’ll invite young hotshots to do them."

One of the other interesting features of Alansky's original take on electronica is his penchant for mixing electro beats and lyrics. "I don't think the two are incompatible," he says, regretting that so few of today's electro stars mix the two. "I like the idea of there being words involved, the sort of lyrics you get with Lou Reed or Leonard Cohen!" Last year Alansky put this philosophy into action working with rising young electro star Elfy. “Her album Lisa sans son Etoile (EMI) didn’t make much of an impact on the public," he says, "and I think it’s a great shame it didn’t get the attention it deserved. It was the story of this character called Lisa and her drifting through birth, childhood and adolescence to adult life. It featured a very interesting mix of pop, electro and baroque music.”

Meanwhile, Alansky made a welcome return to the live circuit recently playing with a girl drummer, a girl keyboard-player and a male guitarist. After making their debut in Saragossa, Spain, then appearing at the "Printemps de Bourges" festival in France the group brought the house down at Le China Club in Paris. "To begin with I have to admit I was against the idea of performing live," says Alansky, "It was F.Com that pushed me into it... We reinvent the tracks from the album live on stage, adding new tones and colours to them. I think it’s very young and fresh sounding. But it’s hard to say exactly what goes on on stage. Our concerts are basically indescribable like concerts by those weird kind of German groups you had in the 70s!” Make up your own minds by catching Alansky and co. in concert when they perform in Miramas, in the south of France, on 28 June.