• Humid heat, dusty laterite. Sand in the hands, sand on the smiles. Worn khaki pants over their skinny legs, barefooted schoolboys ferociously loosen up in improvised soccer game.

• The piece that made "Echoes", my debut album with Island Records, a massive seller in Africa and in the French Antilles. A classic and an anthem in both territories ever since, an incredible reward for a record very few thought it was worth releasing .

• Because it was all instrumental, no one knew where it was coming from. Some assume it was congolese, or ghanean, or nigerian, or south-african. In Guadeloupe, Guyana and Martinique, it was believed to be at the start of 'zouk', sort of a surprise release by Kassav ...

• The title deliberatedly added to the confusion: the music itself had very little to do with real 'high life', in ghanean or nigerian terms. Yet, it combined electronics with congolese 'soukous' guitar, antilles-style rim-shot afterbeats, nigerian 'juju' water-drums and bass drums, and melodies inspired by ivorian François Lougah. Still, the schoolboys' joyfull screams were no clue. It could be anywhere under the tropical sun.

• All produced with a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 and a Linn-Drum exclusively, "Hi-Life" made me a living synthesizer of 'tropical' music, and put me into a very special niche, as an artist, a composer and a producer, in a genre that nobody called 'world music' yet, a genre I am still having trouble with, to this day .

• Little did I know about the succes it was enjoying both in Africa and the Antilles, so busy I was shuttling between Level 42 and Compass Point All Stars projects at the time. Little did I know that out the millions sold in Africa, not a single copy was legal ... but what I surely knew was: I would not let myself get entrapped in any of the genres critics wanted the album to be pioneering . But freedom comes with a price.

• Countless samples and versions have been released everywhere in Africa, with all kinds of lyrics I had absolutely nothing to do with.

• Level 42 engineer and associate producer Julian Mendelsohn and I did a 12" remix, with some added vocalizing.

• Videomaker Susan Young had a brilliant animation movie called "Carnival". She gracefully lended it as visual for "Hi-Life" singles, both video and artwork, which the present digital release is borrowing from.

• Downloadable via this user-friendly JukeSticker above (PayPal) , in both iPod-compatible Lossless and AAC formats.

• Price: € 1.20 (or equivalent) for this original version.