- On the 40th anniversary of its release, Michael Lawson revisits Camino Del Sol, a captivating 'electro-samba' oddity that became a favourite of Daniele Baldelli and Alfredo.
- "There was a real feeling amongst us that we were pioneers," says Antena lead singer Isabelle Powaga, reflecting on the band's debut album, Camino Del Sol. The French artist is in high spirits as she answers the call from her holiday home in rural Portugal, greeting me warmly before asking if I can wait while she fixes herself "a little glass of something." Now in her 60s, Powaga has enjoyed a fruitful career in music: first as a founding member of Antena, then a solo artist following the group's disbandment and, finally, "a second life" as a DJ in Goa. "I'm that old. I've had more than one life," she jokes.
One of the most peculiarly captivating records of the post-punk era, Camino Del Sol stands out as Powaga's most enduring musical contribution. A daring marriage of two disparate worlds, the five-track mini album unites the exotic bossa nova rhythms of João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim with Kraftwerk's cold, primitive synth pop. Given the fitting (if not simplistic) label of "electro-samba" by the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant, who worked as a journalist for Smash Hits at the time, the French-Belgian outfit predated the motorik-meets-tropicália stylings of Stereolab and Saint Etienne by more than a decade.
Antena's story begins the previous summer when Powaga, fresh from a stint working as an au pair for Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman, returned to Paris and convinced close friends Sylvain Fasy and Pascale Moiroud to start a band. They performed at Métro stations across the French capital, pulling together enough money to buy synthesisers and other equipment, before recording demo tapes that would be sent to three labels. One went to The Residents' Ralph Records, one to New York no wave stronghold Ze Records and the other to Les Disques du Crépuscule, a cosmopolitan Brussels imprint whose address they found on the sleeve of a Tuxedomoon record.
Les Disques du Crépuscule was the first to respond, proposing that Antena record with Ultravoxx lead singer John Foxx in London—an exciting prospect for a fledgling trio who had never so much as entered a recording studio. "To work with John was fabulous," Powaga recalls fondly. "He was really into his electronic machines and taught me everything he knew about the vocoder. A truly amazing experience." The result of this studio time was the Foxx-produced "The Boy From Ipanema," Antena's debut 7-inch. This sparse, glacial cover of the Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto hit retains a quaint charm, but it was the samba drums of the record's B-sides—"To Climb The Cliff" and "Unable"—that gave a taste of what was to follow.
The group's next move was to Brussels, where they joined a community of Crépuscule-affiliated artists, including former Josef K frontman Paul Haig, avant-pop outlier Anna Domino and Tuxedomoon, who had made the Belgian capital their temporary home. "It was a brilliant time in Brussels," says Powaga. "We were surrounded by a bunch of like-minded people who wanted to do music in a totally independent way. Signing to a label like Crépuscule was so important."
This shared sense of independence, coupled with an exposure to "lots of electronic experimentation" within the Brussels scene, helped propel Antena towards such a forward-thinking sound on Camino Del Sol. The title track is the epitome of the record's appeal, a dreamy synth excursion where Powaga effortlessly flits between English and French vocals as she depicts an idyllic Florida resort. A touch of melancholy lingers amidst the grandeur. "Silly Things" is a similarly urbane affair, evoking the chic cocktail party atmosphere of the cover art, while "Bye Bye Papaye" features the kind of gentle croons that would turn Sade Adu into a global icon just a few years later.
The Brazilian influences are most prominent on the remaining two tracks. Combining playful Latin chants and Greek mythology-inspired lyrics with haunting electronics, "Achilles" channels a curious cold-wave-goes-bossa-nova energy, while "Sisséxa" pairs vibrant Samba percussion with Powaga's intoxicating French-language vocals. With the whole thing clocking in at a mere 18 minutes, Camino Del Sol revels in its sparse, beautiful simplicity.
The record met with limited fanfare on its release—a handful of positive reviews and modest sales, 20,000 copies—but this was a secondary concern. "We never had aspirations to be pop stars or anything like that," says Powaga. "We were probably too weird for that anyway. It was post-punk."
It would be Antena's only album, at least as a trio. The group toured with Cabaret Voltaire and 23 Skidoo at the end of 1982, but Moiroud left the following year to pursue a career in fashion, and by '85 Antena was a solo act. Powaga, now operating as Isabelle Antena, moved towards a jazz-infused brand of city pop, a sound that would help her sell over a million records and acquire a fervent Japanese following. Three years on from its release, Camino Del Sol already felt like a distant memory.
Unbeknownst to the band, the record had in fact taken on a new life in the discotheques of Northern Italy, where Cosmic disco pioneers Daniele Baldelli and Beppe Loda, renowned for their groundbreaking approach to DJing and embrace of the weird and wonderful, welcomed this sonic oddity with open arms.
Baldelli fondly recalls spinning Camino Del Sol during his residency at Cosmic, a legendary club in the town of Lazise by Lake Garda. He would play two of the tracks from the album—"Achilles" and "Bye Bye Papaye"—at 45 RPM, making for accelerated, more dance floor-friendly versions. "To me, it made sense to do that because Isabelle's voice sounds like a melody," he says. "But perhaps it's not so great for her to hear herself sounding like Minnie Mouse."
On the contrary, Powaga insists that she has always admired this unorthodox approach. "I love it," she says. "But do you know what? I would've loved it even more if Daniele had reached out to me. I would've told him that we should work together."
Camino Del Sol developed a similar cult following in late-'80s Ibiza, where its lush downtempo style struck a chord with the nascent Balearic scene. The "father of the Balearic beat" Alfredo later included the title track on The Original Sound Of Ibiza, a retrospective mix CD made up of some of the scene's defining tracks. Powaga never envisioned all this attention from the dance floors of Southern Europe, "but of course house music didn't really exist when we first released it," she says.
Even decades later, Camino Del Sol's was still earning new dance floor bona fides. Parisian DJ and producer Joakim released a big-room rework on Permanent Vacation in 2007. Reflecting on the unique beauty of the original, Joakim agrees that it's the juxtaposition of warm samba energy with icy coldwave that makes the record so beguiling. "This clash is what I love about it," he explains, recalling the first time he heard it while browsing in a record store in Detroit. "It's very hybrid, very strange-sounding, and doesn't really fit into any musical category—almost like a criteria for things that I like."
Three years earlier, US label Numero Group issued an extended version of the album, featuring B-sides and forgotten favourites like "Seaside Weekend," "To Climb The Cliff" and "Noelle a Hawaii," winning Antena a new generation of fans in the process. Finally, Camino Del Sol was appreciated as the visionary record that it is, a post-modern reevaluation that ensured Powaga could live comfortably from her royalties. "To be experiencing all this fresh interest in my back catalogue from the younger generations was brilliant," she says. "I guess it makes my decision to stay independent all this time worth it. I feel blessed."
Camino Del Sol is a record of glorious contradictions: at once warm and cold, blissful and melancholic. A relic from a bygone era, and utterly timeless. "I'm a timeless person," Powaga smiles. "I work with my heart and I follow my intuition."
"Sometimes I receive messages from people telling me they played it at their wedding or their father's funeral," she continues, "Camino Del Sol has given me so much in 40 years. So much more than I expected."
Tracklist01. Achilles
02. Silly Things
03. Camino Del Sol
04. Bye Bye Papaye
05. Sisséxa