JM PAGAN

I els seus amics

Regular price $36.00

From the cosmic creative musical mind of Swiss/Catalan studio whizz, Zeleste Nightclub engineer, video nasty film composer, occasional Jaume Sisa (Música Dispersa) collaborator and future electronic music therapy pioneer J. M. Pagán comes the synth-ridden, vocoder-loaded 1984 sci-funk soundtrack to Barcelona’s daytime TV response to the universal E.T. phenomena. Get ready to meet your new alienígena amic and the unidentified flying object of thousands of Catalonian kids’ affections through the 1980s as Finders Keepers present Pagán’s lost lunar modular synth score to Kiu I Els Seus Amics (Kiu And Friends aka Kiu Is Your Friend).

From the same intergalactic phenomenon that brought such delights as Turkey’s exploito cash-in Badi or South Africa’s lo-rent homage Nukie to our unregulated small screens and the same craze which filled international airwaves with the likes of Extra T’S electro smash single E.T. Boogie or the million selling Columbian Cumbia De E.T. El Extraterrestre smash hit... not to mention a wide range of unofficial theme-tune cover versions from Holland, Austria, France and Germany (lest we forget an inspired late period Lee Scratch Perry Album).

In 1982 the diaspora from Steven Spielberg’s small fictional mid-American neighbourhood that played host to everyone’s favourite torch fingered, three toed, Skittle-scoffing space goblin touched virtually every family home in every major city resulting in one of the biggest cinematic merchandise phenomenas of the 21st Century, resulting in an unexpected high-demand / short-supply play-off in which bootleggers, copyists and counterfeiters rose to the challenge like never before.

When Spielberg regrettably told interviewers that he had no intention of making a sequel to E.T. The Extra Terrestria it instantly became open-season for the imitators... but way before somebody squeezed-out Mac and Me, ALF and The Purple People Eater, a team of kid’s TV executives in Catalunya were ready to fill the widening gap in the market without haste. Created in 1983 by Luna Films and Televisió de Catalunya (TV3) and screened exclusively in Catalunya, Kiu I Els Seus Amics was one of the first E.T. ‘tributes’ to make it out of the gate and with a crew of five individual directors and writers to ensure that the five episode, one-off series hit the wave of phone-home-fever, Kiu has since remained a short but sweet micro- memory in the hearts of an entire generation of Catalonian cosmonauts.

This special Finders Keepers edition comes complete with all of Pagán’s cosmic synthesiser soundscapes fully intact (barring striking comparisons with the likes of Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter, Vangelis and the soundtrack music of Suzanne Ciani), as well as some rare, unreleased, incidental TV edits. The bulk of this LP is made up of tracks taken from the rare full-length album, which was released after the TV programme had already been aired and coincided with sales of jigsaws and rubberised play figures in an attempt to catch-up with the unexpected mega-success of the show, needless to say, with a short promotional window, the LP (and cassette edition) did not benefit a re-press and with most copies sold to children, few vinyl pressings have escaped repeat needle scratches and decorated sleeves.