The short version
- SYNTORAMA was an electronic music fanzine typed up by fans in Rentería, in the Spanish province of Gipuzkoa. We read the four issues it put out in 1984, numbers 1 to 4.
- The first issue opened with a complaint: there was far too little information to go on. Records and news both arrived late.
- Each of our five reached these readers by a different route. Jarre's albums were easy to find in Spain; the new Tangerine Dream record had not arrived yet.
- For hard-to-find records there was a cassette taping service at the fanzine's own address, and its list included Jarre and Kitaro.
Early 1984, number 16 on Calle Santa Clara in Rentería, Gipuzkoa. A new electronic music fanzine came out of that address. Its opening editorial said that fans who wanted to learn more had very little information to work with, so the editors would report on new records and musicians "dentro de nuestros escasos medios", within their slender means. They called it SYNTORAMA.
What we read
The Internet Archive holds SYNTORAMA issue by issue. Four came out in 1984: number 1 for February and March, number 2 for April and May, number 3 for June and July, and number 4 covering August to December. The pages are typewritten, with photocopied record sleeves pasted in beside the text. Issue 4 added a new letters page, "Korreo Kósmiko".
The Archive carries a public domain mark on these scans. We could not find anything showing that a publication from 1984 has actually left copyright, so we show no page images and quote only a few short lines of the Spanish.
Records that arrived late
The review of Tangerine Dream's Hyperborea in the first issue starts with a complaint: the album had been out abroad for two months, "y aquí en España todavía no ha visto la luz". In Spain it had not yet seen the light of day. MusicBrainz dates the first release to September 1983, so by the time the issue came out it had been available elsewhere for rather longer than two months.
The reviewer went through it track by track. "No Man's Land" opens it with rhythm, and "Sphinx Lightning" takes up the whole of side two. The line-up was Edgar Froese, Johannes Schmoelling and Chris Franke, and the review gives the recording as Berlin, August 1983. Where did the reviewer hear a record that was not yet in Spanish shops? The fanzine doesn't say.
The same issue's information page pointed readers to the catalogue of a British shop, Lotus Records. It had complete collections of Klaus Schulze, but because the records were hard-to-get imports, the prices were a bit steep. The issue also reviewed Schulze's double album Audentity.
A forgotten record and the wrong director
Issue 2 went through Edgar Froese's solo albums from the start, and gave a paragraph of its own to Macula Transfer from 1976. The reviewer called it "injustamente olvidado", unfairly forgotten: some Spanish magazines had left it out altogether when they listed Froese's records. His guess at the reason was the label. The others came out on Virgin; this one was on the German label Brain.
The little fanzine made mistakes too. The same article says the 1982 film Kamikaze 1989, which Froese scored, was directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. According to English Wikipedia the director was Wolf Gremm, and Fassbinder played the lead.
The one you could buy
Issue 4 covered Jean-Michel Jarre. The writer thought being on a major like Polydor had been decisive in taking Jarre's electronic music to a wide audience, while making clear he was not the man to go to for anything innovative. He saved his harshest words for the fifth part of Les Chants Magnétiques, subtitled "The Last Rumba" in English: "el colmo de la horterez", the height of naff, like the bands that play at weddings and christenings.
The article ends with this line: "Todos los discos han sido editados en nuestro país y se pueden conseguir con facilidad." All his records had come out in Spain and were easy to get. Of our five, Jarre is the only one these four issues describe that way.
Music by cassette
Issue 4 also carries a boxed notice. Unreleased records were scarce and expensive, it says, so you could get them recorded instead, from Kosmische Tapes, at the same Calle Santa Clara address as the fanzine. The names due on the new list in early October included Klaus Schulze, his alter ego Richard Wahnfried, Jean-Michel Jarre and Kitaro. Jarre, the one you could buy in the shops, was on the tape list as well.
Vangelis turns up in the first issue's interview. Michel Huygen, the electronic musician behind Neuronium, named him as his favourite in electronic music. Then came Klaus Schulze, whom he still liked despite the problems Schulze had caused him about three years earlier. The interview does not say what the problems were. He added that he still liked Tangerine Dream too.
Reading it forty-odd years on
There is not much in these pages about our five that is news today. What stays with you is the distance. New Tangerine Dream records arrived late, Schulze meant pricey imports from a British shop, and Kitaro was a name on a cassette list. The editors boasted that their list would turn more than one critic at the "big" national magazines pale.
Put on side two of Hyperborea. "Sphinx Lightning" fills it. The reviewer heard a piece full of shading, with undulating keyboards and soft guitar chords you can barely make out. In early 1984, a writer in Rentería sent those words out about a sound that had not yet reached the shops in Spain.
Where to start with Tangerine Dream is in our Tangerine Dream guide, and Jarre's fifth part is in our Les Chants Magnétiques review.
Where to get it
SYNTORAMA can be read issue by issue on the Internet Archive. Hyperborea, the album the first issue reviewed, came out on Virgin in 1983 and has been reissued several times since.