29/03/2008

whatcha listening to?

i think we should all get registered at lastfm and stick our weekly listening habits down the side of this blog. i know i'd be interested in seeing what everyone else is listening to. i put one for myself on our myspace page ages ago, but it would be good to get more diversity! anyone, anyone....

24/03/2008

ink films

i've been thinking through ideas for our live performance, and have thought of what i'd like to try. having painters/artists on stage as we perform requires that we have a reasonable amount of light on stage in order for them to be able to work. just having light on stage, though, tends to remove any sort of atmosphere as it spills out and makes everything just, well, bright. last year we almost got to the stage of using dave's ink photos on screensaver mode, but my computer needed an adapter to run into a projector so we couldn't do it in the end. i quite like those images though, and that has had me thinking for some time. while lying in bed this morning (yay for long weekends) i had visions of what might be nice to try. there are some burodestruct images in a book i have of black ink in water. i've attached some images below which are the sort of thing (though not the ones in my book). i envisaged a continuous film which looks like it's one take, but is made of probably dozens of shots. each one is of a pure white, then ink drops in and slowly moves around. once it starts breaking up too much, the camera kind of moves off to a new blank space, which then has another ink drop come in. each time it would be filmed with the camera at a different angle so some would have the ink appear from top of screen, others the bottom, or the sides, and others from the middle (i.e. camera filming from bird's eye view). it needs to be pure white at all times with the ink being the only thing that isn't pure white.

my thinking is that, from a projector, the white screen will be contained within a box, so the focus will be kept to the stage. it also means that it will be predominantly white, so the artists can work easily. and there is still a sense of atmosphere created by the actual ink drops.

is this something everyone thinks might be good to try? and, if so, steve, can we get it shot and edited in time for may 5? (april 12 would be nice, but not essential).

22/03/2008

if only we could rewind



hmmm...bookers, bar managers - a very grey area indeed.

we got to paddy maguires and were told by the dj (a very nice guy and the only one not slimy enough to want to avoid the issues) that the pub was closing early because of good friday and that the pub management had forgotten to pass that information on to the booker. he had been there about half an hour before we arrived which is when he had found out this from the management. no-one was there to inform us - no booker, no management etc - just the dj.

so we rang the booker to find out what the deal was - he was expecting an earful for reasons i'll outline below. anyway, i asked him why we couldn't shorten our sets and be finished by closing at 10 - he said to talk to the bar manager and find out if that was possible. so i went to the bar manager and talked with him - he basically just stonewalled me saying they didn't have staff of to run the bar etc (it was to be in a separate room). no apologies for any inconvenience etc, readily admitted they hadn't told the booker, but said it was his fault for not asking them (why the booker would need to think of asking such a question is beyond me).

so that all was bad news and we hung around to break it to the other bands rather than have them stumble into it completely blind like we had. what was particularly odd, though, was that another band - the medicated - were there as well before we had got there, and had been told the same thing. and this is where things really start becoming strange and boggling my mind. they said that the booker, named paul, had booked them not long ago to play but had only given them a worksheet - which they had to hassle and hassle him for - the day before. this is a very similar story to what i went through, though i got a worksheet from him on wednesday, after weeks of trying to get anything. however, the worksheet we got made no mention of the medicated as it had been organised with ourselves, underlapper and sui zhen on the bill. now - as i start to piece it together, a few more things are emerging. all of my correspondence up until wednesday had been via e-mail and with two 'people', william and donald, who are also listed as working with a 3rd guy, johnny. then on wednesday night after another e-mail, i got a phone call from the booker for paddy maguires - named paul. it only half dawned on me then, but he had a familiar voice. early last year, i nearly booked a gig at the mandarin club through this same guy, and we eventually decided against it because the door deal seemed rather bad and we'd heard from a few people, including jeremy, that it was a bit of a con and not a great place or booker to deal with. i've also heard the same from ant and a few other clan analogue people. i only realised this morning that he had rung me on wednesday night, though i had never given my phone number to "donald", "william" or "johnny". this paul guy obviously still has it from our dealings over a year ago. unfortunately, none of this was apparent until now, having only been contacted on wednesday. the guys from the medicated then mentioned paul and something called power music who they'd had bad dealings with in the past - and that is what slotted it together - that's the same name as the organisation (which i thinkis just this one guy, paul) who i was dealing with last year.

there's some strange dealings going on here - the club management were candid in saying they hadn't told paul about the early close and, to be honest, didn't really care. but this paul guy was quite keen to get straight out of there and avoid having to talk to the bands in person, leaving us all in the lurch. and, there were extra bands there who we weren't booked with, so something is up with his booking skills as well. needless to say we shan't be dealing with paddy maguires again, or paul. the issue with paul is that he got through the filters i'd previously set up via false names, new tactics and other subterfuge.

on two positive notes. fristly, we met sui zhen (who's real name is becky) and she was incredibly friendly and likable and gave me a cd (which is excellent). secondly, last night's incarnation of telafonica (bec, teve, blake and myself) ended up going to newtown, hanging out in the old fish shop cafe, which was excellent, before going to dendy to see 'be kind rewind'. despite david and margarets less than glowing review on at the movies, it was an excellent film. less visual slight of hand than a regular gondry outing, but more direct in plot. i thought it was great on many levels. as a comment on the current state of copyright law, it was subtle but biting. it was also a glowing appraisal of the d.i.y aesthetic in creativity, and a growing desire of audiences to embrace d.i.y. in opposition to bland commercialism, both of which i was particularly fond of. and it was funny as well.

18/03/2008

Morpheme


purchase MORPHEME by clicking on the link in the Bandcamp player below.


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released april 16, 2005

MORPHEME is telafonica's debut full length album, released in april, 2005. it contains 11 tracks and comes with hand silkscreened and stamped artwork, created by furnitureclub

it features the vocals of marcella, added to adrian's voice, and explores some of the melancholy tones of deephouse, triphop and abstractpop.

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1. a distorted beginning (mp3)
2. your hands (mp3)
3. dust
4. go to b.ed (mp3)
5. request
6. sounding it out (mp3)
7. painter
8. for the manifesto of some world view
9. one and one
10. st valentine (mp3)
11. music for rest

17/03/2008

set list for friday

i thought i'd write down the setlist for friday so that it's recorded for when i need to make apra claims. you'll notice that i've changed the last track from '89' to 'your hands'. i thought, since we're doing a gig on good friday, it was a good song to finish with. it also felt a bit more in character with the rest of the set than '89' did. blake - i'll give you an mp3 but don't worry too much about it - there's some singing you can do if you want but it's not essential so there's no need to panic about learning anything.


one and one
gem
for the manifesto of some world view
blending the edges
send away
this is the new thing
smells like rain
your hands

12/03/2008

Pressed Into Oxygen



to purchase 'PRESSED INTO OXYGEN' visit the 4-4-2 music website
or click here -

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released november, 2004

in late 2001 david fed his p.c. audio outputs into telafonica's ancient mixing desk, and got long time friend, stephen fox, to do the same with his p.c.. for about half an hour, adrian manned the desk with a cheap fostex effects processor as david and stephen fed random noises created and manipulated in a variety of different audio programs through the system. adrian then had to leave, but david and stephen continued, creating over two hours of improvised soundscapes, recorded through the desk onto hi-fi vhs video tape.

the initial two hour's worth of recording became the soundtrack to a graphic book david had created as part of his visual arts degree.

following this, adrian took the recordings, transferred them to his own hard drive, and began to edit them down to the 52 1/2 minutes which make up this album.

stephen has since gone on to become a more permanent collaborator with the group, focusing on their live visuals, and this album, which sat on the shelves for a number of years, was finally put into circulation in late 2004.
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1.alive at the scanner
2.too much noise/lemon
3.deeper then darker
4.pikkot
5.remembering the voices
6.the bottom line
7.rising after breakfast
8.chinese whisper torture
9.lemering
10.sinewaves eat the future
11.happier than static
12.asleep at the scanner
13.my own bed

11/03/2008

content, blogtent and telatent.

i had an idea whilst standing in the shower this morning. i figured the actual telafonica website probably doesn't get too much traffic through it these days and, compared with how the blog thing is set out, seems a little clunky now in this day and age of web 2.0, where you have to go through a few menus to get to things. so i was wondering how to maybe get more of the content from there onto the blog, and had the idea that if, for example, i created a post for a release, that post could then be forever accessed via a link to that specific post, so even when it rolls of the main page of the blog, if we linked from the sidebar, via the little pictures of all our releases that are already there, then all the content for each release is always just one layer below the main blog page and quite easily accessable. i figure this is a good idea and would then free up telafonica.com for the possible art based site. or, if that's not going to happen, we could even just redirect telafonica.com to the blog page and save having to filter through kindpermission.com. so, by using the sidebar, any content at all can be just one layer away. that's no doubt not a huge revelation to most people, but i never put it together in my head before, and i think it's quite a good idea.

the only issue is the left hand side image - when you click directly into a single posting, it goes to the blogger page without coming through our front end, so the image is not there. is there any way around this?

i started with the entry below for dos to see how it might work. it's pretty much a straight cut and paste from telafonica.com. i don't think the link from the sidebar thumbnail is working on it yet, i'll get onto that.

Dos



'dos' is currently out of print.
however, 4-4-2 music has released the e.p. as a free download via bandcamp (click to go there). you can download it as mp3, flac, ogg vorbis, aac etc. or stream the entire release here.

<a href="http://telafonica.bandcamp.com/album/dos">Everything Is Green (Except The Way I Feel) by telafonica</a>
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released september, 2001

'dos' is the debut release from telafonica. it contains 13 tracks spread over 2 discs.

disc 1 contains mostly uptempo tracks with electro, breaks and bigbeat leanings.

1. everything is green except the way i feel://://:// the opening track has an electro feel with vocodered vocals. originally inspired by les rhythmes digitales' living by numbers mix of cornershop's sleep on the left side and later developed following a night dancing to a great electro set by gemma at club kooky when it was at the old club 77. the aim was to have a solid, driving bottom end with little bouncing synths floating across the stereo, seemingly separated from the rest of the sound. lyrically, the track derives its theme from imagining what it would be like if a grandmother had altzeimer's disease.

2. penut hiphop://://a track completely created using music 2000 on a playstation featuring a rubber band 303 bass line by david..

3. star (old city)://:/ features break samples from primal scream and the smashing pumpkins and a telafonica original bass sample. the track city was originally written using some of david's lyrics (about, um, the city) .it was felt that the sound and lyrical content wasn't really matching. the current vocal refrain at the end was inspired by the mercy bell's always.

4. 89//:://1989 was the year of the stone roses and the happy mondays. god's cop inspired the opening drum beat, fool's gold appears as a subtle sample at the end of the track. the 303 bass line was inspired by some track danced to at beat-fix when it was at the old sublime on pitt street

5. warm void// named by marcella, this song evolved quite quickly after the drum beat was copied from a wicked beat sound system track.

6. charly:.:.:big, dumb and (hopefully) infectious. blatant chemical brothers tricks with the greatest organ sample from the inspiral carpet's dragging me down.

disc 2 is more laid back with a mix of dub, ambience, mellow d&b and 60s pop

1. nocturnal/:: a guitar sample from rafael farina, a drum sample from led zeppelin and some vocals. that's about it.

2. lucas repeat:://: a day in the life of a morning person/night person couple. bjork's homogenic was receiving a lot of listening at the time this was written.

3. triptych:::..:3x1min40secs

4. brown and blue//duet for playstation and bass guitar.

5. through a glass darkly (v-hold remix)...::remixed by groovescooter . a dark, dubby drum and bass excursion with some speaker rattling sub bass.

6. sunlight://:imagine the byrds produced by air.

7. radio low://the oldest recording on the discs, this one is the last of the all playstation created tracks on the set and was originally recorded onto 4track cassette back in 1999. once described as 'the theme song from a late night space radio program'.

10/03/2008

mundane

bec is out all day this saturday - would it be possible to shift our final rehearsal to a bit later on saturday - say 5ish?

i've made up a bunch of promo cds to send to fbi, they feature a track each from underlapper, sui zhen and telafonica. i put this is the new thing on for our track. i'm thinking of making it a regular thing for gigs - sending off one track each promos. also gives me another reason to get the new things finished and mastered.

05/03/2008

saturday at my place

steve and ellie - is saturday afternoon ok for a rehearsal for you?

04/03/2008

pow wow



anyone want to come to this with me on thursday night?

03/03/2008

surely that's the finishing line i can see

rehearsal went quite well on saturday, i thought. when it really gets exciting is when 4 voices are going at once - this is the new thing and smells like rain in particular. it was a bit messy and untogether, but for a first rehearsal with 5 people doing things, was much better than i had anticipated it would be.

i finally got around to re-recording my vocals on requited love and smells like rain. i'll e-mail some mp3s to canada. i think they're good. requited love is definitely right (aside from the odd flat/sharp note which i will edit easily). i think smells like rain is probably right, though there's a chance i might have been a little too animated in this particular recording. the last time we discussed it we were liking the distance and nonchalance caused by the style of delivery - i'm just slightly worried that that has been lost a little bit, though i think the actual performance of this recording sounds reasonably good. it's also in tune, as are the backing vocals (it actually took a fair bit of fiddling to achieve that! i ended up recording a whole synth drone section so there was something to pitch off for the singing. now that the vocals are recorded in tune i've deleted the drone and it sounds good with all the voices together holding the pitch).

you know you've made it when....

do a search for telafonica in itunes.