29/12/2008

wreckovery - jan 09



p.s. 'the telafonica sound system' means we'll be making laptop noises between the other bands - fragments of unfinished work, live room recording manipulations, dj fragments etc.

24/12/2008

satisfied customer

from an internet friend (who's put out a couple of netreleases on 4-4-2 music) marek gabriel hruska...

"I completely fell in love with ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD blabla from that whale ep. Im listening to it like a bitch for past few days and im dying. Its just so f—awesome! I heard many versions of this carrol, no version was so chilli and tasty.

I only just needed to express my admiration and obsession with this song. Because it just fits for my christmas.. Exactly this strong-sad-earvision.

A great day to you!"

that's the kind of feedback we like to hear!!!

11/12/2008

A Happy Day with a cornet, clarinet, clapping and a keyboard. and a suitcase/


i had some fun creative time this afternoon.
this is the result... i think, the direction i am heading with it is a good fit with some other 'lessons in time' songs i have, though i am happy for suggestions as to how it could fit with telafonica.
adrian-show me the music you have for bec's song.
that may fit. i was thinking that the cornet melody in this track could become the vocal melody in a more sombre section section. with little to no rhythm, only the fragile support of ambience. that is my idea.

laptop djs

blake - i'm officially the in between bands dj at the next wreckovery (the sunday thing we played at the excelsior) on sunday jan 11. i was thinking it might be a good outlet to play around with trying out some live laptop jamming - mixing half made stuff with the kind of live ambient recording you were talking about a few weeks back. we would just rock up with two laptops and a mixer and play away. would you be interested?

10/12/2008

A Whale In A Manger



A Whale In A Manger is available for free download. click here

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released december 6, 2008

Telafonica and its various members' solo projects played an end of year gig together on December 6, 2008. To commemorate, a limited edition Christmas EP was recorded, featuring the different offshoots - Lessons In Time, Eliza Magill, The Onestarband and The Bells, as well as Telafonica - doing versions of Christmas songs. Inspired by Sufjan Stevens and The Desks, the idea was to make a short run for friends and fans to receive for free at the show.

With all the physical copies now gone, the EP has been made available for free download through 4-4-2 Music. Featuring 320kbps mp3 files and 300 dpi pdf artwork. Or you can stream it on the player below.

Read a review here.

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1. The Bells - A Whale In A Manger
2. Telafonica - Angels We Have Heard On High
3. Eliza Magill - Joy To The World
4. Lessons In Time - O Holy Night
5. The Onestarband - O Little Town Of Bethlehem
6. Telafonica - Good News (Sing For Joy)

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07/12/2008

mars hill photos - 6.12.08

photos courtesy of costa kamarados






This night of nights.

On a night (Saturday, 6th december) where the seemingly invincible shadows cast by lessons in time (blake, tim, alex and cory) and eliza magill posed great threat to any accompanying acts, telafonica stood firm and delivered with honest and strong intent.

With a couple of new songs, we (adrian, bec, eliza and blake) had lots of fun. the beats were big and the synths were obese; it was only ever going to be a wonderful set. 

The set began a touch before ten i believe; after eliza and blake had delivered their solo ventures to a steadily growing group of family, friends, tag alongs and assorted randoms. For 40-45 minutes or so, we played and played and sung.  Amongst a fairly energetic set list were the newbies, 'Angels we have heard on high' ('blending the edges'-the CAROL!) and 'Don't speak for me'. Personally, I loved playing both of these... it was a fairly wonderful night for Phil Gilbert's cornet.

The set list was as follows:

But I lose myself
Don't speak for me
Smells like rain
Angels we have heard on high
This is the new thing
Your hands
Nothing ventured
89

06/12/2008

making and selling

a whole bunch of new discs and things to report. it's actually starting to do what i hoped it might do - there's a range of new music by different bits of telafonica and i think it's all quite good. i'm really happy with the christmas cd. the overlapping of voices and instruments between the different 'artists' actually makes a fairly cohesive listen, inspite of the distinct characteristics of each entity - though it's also interesting to be able to note the blurring of the lines between each which wasn't necessarily there at the beginning of the year.

i'll post images and stuff in the next few days, but we'll start trying to sell lessons in time and the telafonica 7" and more of eliza's ep and old telafonica albums and...

on that note, at the last couple of gigs i've had copies of the punches and the lies and morpheme with me. i made some new simple cases using recycled board. a few people at each have come up and asked if we had any cds to sell and i've told them i had these different things. they then look at me a little bemused, wondering what to do with that information and how to choose what to get. they then ask how much each thing is and when i tell the $5 each they say, oh, give me a copy of each then.

bec and i were talking to andy rantzen at the excelsior the other week. even at the height of itch-e & scratch-e's fame in the early 90s, he was only earning about $1500 a year in royalties. i would assume that actual sales income wouldn't have amounted to much once all the various parties took their cuts. so even at that level, which was relatively large at the time, a time where the industry was actually set up to make money from sales, which it no longer is, there's not a whole lot of chance of earning money. som, more and more, i'm thinking that the best idea is to make things as low cost for people to buy as possible, so that more people are just likely to get a copy that not. the $5 thing has worked so far, without actually even telling people that we have it.

to that end, we'll also give the digital download option that bec suggested a run tonight and see how that goes.

02/12/2008

don't speak for me

this is the track bec and i put together for the 20th project a couple of weeks ago. i'm particularly pleased with the main rhythm loop which is me stamping and clapping while standing in front of the inbuilt mic of my laptop. and the new toy piano makes its first appearance in a recording. this is the version that will be on the compilation, but it has since changed a little - the chord structure after the final chorus is completely different to give it a sense of movement rather than just repeating what was already before, with added melodica. and blake will add some cornet as well. it's fairly inspired by early 80s new wave minimalist things like the flying lizards, bow wow wow and the plastics.