Telefon Tel Aviv's new LP: two weeks and counting

From the bits I've heard thus far, this just might be the album I've been waiting for my entire life. [It kind of feels that long, as we were first teased with material one year ago.]



Fans of Telefon Tel Aviv's trademark micro-edit, Rhodes-fueled, spaceport lounge glitch may not like Immolate Yourself. In fact, they might hate it. That's fine. Those folks can languish in their IDM bubble while the rest of us bathe in the warm light of some of the most sophisticated analogue synth-pop ever put to tape. Josh and Charlie masterfully defined the micro-edit style years ago - displayed on two previous LPs and numerous remixes, including the Benelli rework of Nine Inch Nails' The Frail. There are familiar treatments present, but the whole of the work is a new direction.

From Josh's mouth:

We realized that without thinking about it, so much of our sound had changed, or been forsaken; left on the side of the road to wither in the sun. Gone are all of the high-definition micro-edit minutiae in favor of a new approach to texture for us - long form. The arrival of a tape machine in our studio gave way to experiments that are decades old in practice but entirely new to us - creating loops of drums, string synths, etc., running them around microphone stands in the studio, and striping them back against themselves - timing off, tuning suspect, noise abundant, texture rich. So our attention to detail strayed from the micro and wandered into the macro - for example, things such as the tape loops of church music that i found with Turk Dietrich of Belong, on an old reel that was given to him that neither of us had ever had the presence of mind to listen to in all these years, until this ripe time came upon us.

The record is still entirely telefon tel aviv, but through a cross-processed filter; saturated, grainy, distorted, dusty, distressed. The whole idea of modern sounds in an outdated setting became the sonic focal point of the whole record, and almost instinctually so. Our meters were buried throughout the most reactionary and speedy mixdown of either of our careers. to use a hackneyed axiom as our own, we weren't thinking - we were feeling. But it was in the dark without a torch, and running full speed for the nearest wall or the deepest unseen precipice.

Listen for yourself:
Helen of Troy via Pitchfork
You Are The Worst Thing In The World via Pitchfork

Immolate Yourself will be released later this month on Ellen Allien's B'PITCH CONTROL label.
[Ellen - second only to Ms. Toybreaker - is like the Sigourney Weaver of Techno.]