TELAFONICA

the fbi podcast of our thing with stephen ferris the other week is now up online for download. http://www.cpod.org.au/download.php?id=2594

i got an e-mail from stu buchanan of new weird australia and discontent fame today, which had the following to say... >thanks for sending me the new telafonica album. i listened to it end-to-end in the car on the way to work this morning, fucking perfect start to the day. it's a great accomplishment, well done all! >here's a proposal, by way of promotion for the album. would love for you (or the band as a whole?) to curate a mixtape for discontent. can be anything you like, free reign to make your own little audio concoction. no deadline. >pink priest dropped a mixtape last week, it's beautiful, amazing work. We Sleep In This Cave | A Mixtape by Pink Priest >here's some of my recent tapes Discontent | All That Glitters Is Gold Discontent | Burnt By The Sun Discontent | Hypnogogic Pop Discontent | Music For Merce >anyway, hope you might give it some consideration, would be great to have you on board. >so it goes >stu i'd love to put somethin...

ant has asked us if we would like to play a live set at wreckovery on sunday, january 17. it would be in the late afternoon/early evening. do we have enough available bodies to be a band or will i be on my own? :) thought it would be good to ask now so as to avoid the period where eliza is incomunicado.

The 20th Project is when artists write and record an entirely new piece of music in a single day (the 20th of the month) without any preparation beforehand or editing afterwards. For more information on the 20th Project, visit Cabinet Pin . _____________________________________________ released october, 2009 We had a gig coming up in Newcastle, which I knew was just going to be Blake and myself playing at, and we had thought that we would do some looser, more abstract things than normal. This track was then purpose written for that aesthetic and came out just how I'd hoped it would. I'd been listening to the new F*** Buttons album quite a bit and was impressed with the way it mixed fairly traditional house music with noise, so that was the basic template. Some Underground Lovers also seeped in. A good bass riff always pushings things along quite a bit, and this one seems to work quite well. It's vaguely an update of a riff from an old Telafonica track, 'Brown And Blue...

The 20th Project is when artists write and record an entirely new piece of music in a single day (the 20th of the month) without any preparation beforehand or editing afterwards. For more information on the 20th Project, visit Cabinet Pin . _____________________________________________ released september, 2009 Probably not the greatest ever track in the Telafonica canon, but hopefully there's something there to work with on a future date. The 20th in September fell on a Sunday, which theoretically means we'd have a lot of time, but we also happened to have a gig that day, playing Radio Social at the World Bar. So I spent the early afternoon making the basic rhythms and chord structures etc, borrowing heavily from a few different skwee sources. Then, after the gig, Eliza came back and improvised some synth lead stuff over the top, which was then edited into shape a little. No lyrics, just music. 1. Check Your Tricorder - Bag 2. I'll Make A Fuss Over You - Baron Von Winchest...

a couple of shots for david (there's a copy in the mail somewhere between here and london as i write) the riso prints came out beautifully - i definitely think we should go with them again for future releases, and possibly play around a bit more with the layering of colours which you can just see a bit of here.

the idea--- we take 10-15 minutes worth of ideas that are compiled in a short recording/song and use them as the foundation for a new song. i thought that a cd playlist would look good like that, and be really interesting to listen to, if you had not just songs, but 'song couples' ie. i press record and come out with a riff, and then sing straight on top of it and come up with a melody alongside some scratchy percussion recordings this becomes the draft then a few days later (or whatever) adrian adds a bass line in and eliza comes up with a couple of new sections and then bec writes some more words that build on any idea that she's drawn from the little lyrics i wrote... i am thinking that it would be really great listening to scratchy, short demos and then hearing a polished song that evolved from that original demo it would be especially interesting with telafonica as we have 4 very different members- the degree of change and development between 'the demo' and ...

with many many thanks to the wonderful miles martignoni. his blog can be found here and there are more photos on his flickr page .

AJE is out of town and off the net. Let's make some executive decisions! :)

This was the big one. This was the new Telafonica, on plastic, and live in our home territory. There was a lot of excitement, hope and many butterflies. All pink, I think. The most delightful thing of the evening was that there were more friends than butterflies. It felt exactly like a celebration. It felt just right for the finale of the year for us. I was feeling a bit tired before Charles Daaboul played so I wandered down to the cafe and ordered a cappuccino and four gourmet chocolates (which I of course shared with Adrian). That's where I met Mo who decided to give me his own special version of a latte which was like nothing I have ever tasted before. It was a "naked shot" of coffee - 2.5 times the strength of what I was expecting. I tasted the froth and it was like a punch in the head. Then I had the sensation of my heart trying to knock its way out of my chest with the next sip. Funnily enough, from then on the coffee tasted great, although I thought I might be awak...

to purchase 'LOVE ON THE SECOND STAIR' visit the 4-4-2 music website or click the link in Bandcamp player below. cost is $AUS5 plus postage. Love On The Second Stair by telafonica _______________________ released november 14, 2009 In May of 2008, the four currently Australian based members of Telafonica made their debut together. Their live set was based on older Telafonica tracks, the newer members replicating and fleshing out roles that had been established by members now based overseas. In the ensuing 18 months, the Australian based contingent has busily been adding their own work to that repertoire as they have gigged regularly in and around Sydney. The first fruits of this new music was the 7” single, 'Nothing Ventured' , released in late 2008. Following a clear out of older unreleased material on the early 2009 mini-album, 'I Saw This And Thought Of You' , as well as brand new material and covers appearing on compilations such as 'New Weird Aust...

http://www.lostateminor.com/2009/11/02/dads-in-short-shorts/ i think our friend here has missed the point

This morning Telafonica jumped in the Spacia and took off for FBI Radio Station for a chat with the legendary Stephen Ferris. The FBI "agents" were lovely people who welcomed us with big smiles and much appreciated cold water. (Hot day!) The studio was quite swish and Stephen Ferris and Miles Martignoni so impressive in their efficiency and professionalism that I personally felt a bit shy when we were setting up. That said, Stephen went on to lead us in a merry conversation in which Adrian was extremely articulate and we all learned from Ellie the origins of the phrase "love on the second stair". That is, the poem by A.A. Milne called "Halfway Down" from the book "When We Were Very Young". It was worth the whole experience just for that one delightful discovery. We also played our acoustic version of "The Quest for Love Aboard the Belafonte". I was hoping that my Facebook friends everywhere were playing along with my typewriter on their...

i got an e-mail from georgie today to tell us that fbi have added love on the second stair to their playlist as the 'album packet' for the upcoming week. i'm not completely sure what that entails, but from what i learned when new weird australia was in that position a few months back, it basically means that a certain number of songs get playlisted each day for the week between 6am and 6pm. hopefully, the exposure might also mean that other presenters hear it and pick up on it as well. i also got 2ser's weekly newsletter today and the album is listed in their 'servin' up' list - their kind of top ten new albums for the week. sydney community radio is grand.

i spent yesterday inside the rizzeria printing room - a cosy little space with the riso printer on one side, a desk with a pc on the other side, riso equipment stored in various nooks and crannies, lots of risos on the walls, and not much else. my volunteer helper was leigh. he was great and reminded me incredibly of david. that's him in the photo with the exact same standing waiting posture as david, exact same type of beard in the exact same colour, a similar face etc etc. he liked the newsprint paper so much he bought what was leftover and i'll send him the details of how to get it from school (where i ordered it from). the prints looks incredibly great. i ended up having to relay my original fully lined template over your images david, otherwise the crop and score marks were being completely lost. the posters look great with the two colours interacting beautifully. we ended up leaving the green side of the lyrics page to be printed tomorrow (monday) as the ink was not dry e...

I think I've decided, for the Eliza Magill track on Telafonica's soon-to-be-released-and-when-are-we-going-to-find-time-to-finish-it Christmas CD, to do a song with lots of vocal layers, with my voice as the accompaniment and the solo as well - in the tradition of Camille and others I'm sure. I'm doing Ding Dong Merrily on High, and I have a good idea of all the vocal parts, but with this sort of thing I really need to record as I go and see what works. I myself have no recording thingamy apparatus whatsoever, not even a crappy one, so at the moment I'm just imagining everything in my head, which means it could actually sound terrible when it's put together. I'm going to need to do a bit of fiddling around. So... (Adrian) can I come over please? Sometime this week? And have you (Blake) done yours yet?

the belafonte single has popped up on another blog - this time one from the u.s. (i'm pretty sure) called everything is chemical which covers lots of great music (i regularly read their reviews). they call it "Beautiful Post-Experimental Chamber/Dream Pop from Sydney, Australia". click here.

This release available via the Forthesakeofthesong website - click here __________________________________________ Introducing Townes Van Zandt Via The Great Unknown released October, 2009 Forthesakeofthesong is an English label who have signed Lessons In Time for an album release in early 2010. Early this year, they also asked him if he wanted to contribute to this compilation, which he said yes to. So Telafonica jumped on the bandwagon and asked if we could be involved as well. While a little surprised at our interest (we're not exactly folk music) the label was happy for us to be a part. The idea of the compilation was for a bunch of relatively unknown artists (hence the title) to cover Townes Van Zandt songs. It turned out there were a few not so unknowns who contributed - Jad Fair, Great Lake Swimmers, J Tilman (of Fleet Foxes) etc - as well. Telafonica did a version of 'St John The Gambler', a kind of 'don't go out dressed like that' moral tale dressed up ...