29/02/2012

karoshi - walking in fields


Free download single available via 4-4-2 Music



Final single from Karoshi's rather excellent (if we do say so ourselves) album, 'Sleepwalker', is the track, 'Walking In Fields'. The single comes with a radio edit and two remixes. One is by everybody's favourite remixer, Loopsnake, who pushes the drum loops and synth sounds through his glitched up electronics wringer. When the track was originally created, Karoshi asked Telafonica's Eliza Magill to write a song for the fledgling music. In the end, a few voice snippets were chopped up as rhythmic texture in the final mix. Here, Telafonica's remix reinstates Eliza's song over a minimalist backdrop.
.
Go to vimeo.com/36399957 to watch the film for Walking In Fields.

27/02/2012

haunts covering viceroy.

matt and greg from underlapper and peter hollo have a new trio called haunts. last friday night i went to dirty shirlows to see their 2nd ever performance. they did a cover of viceroy. i filmed their whole set and so have their version here for posterity - from what i'm aware, the first time anyone has ever covered a telafonica song.

23/02/2012

sinead o'connor

so i've been working through lots of these ideas for musical places to go that we discussed a few weeks ago. i greatly like the idea of really (like, really because, well we already do a lot anyway, so we'd need to 'really' do it to make it any different!) pushing the mix of electronics and organic. another thing i've been trying to follow is using very random sound generation techniques (the ipad i was given at school has opened up lots of really great possibilities in that regard). and the other thing i've been following is a real minimalism, which goes very contrary to what i normally do, which is pile sound upon sound upon sound. so some of those things you can hear in the remix of karoshi's 'walking in fields' (which i really need to post here - maybe tomorrow) that's just come out.

anyway, today i cam across this track from sinead o'connor. she's been in and out of my consciousness for over 20 years now, and i know marcella has used her as a big inspiration at times in the past. so, i've heard this track in passing before, but today heard it through my stereo with booming bass for the first time, and it feels like a really tangible path to follow. minimal, groove-based and with the voice really holding the whole thing. the fiddle is nice, though i probably wouldn't go for that sound myself, but as an idea of acoustic over electronics, it's good.

for full impact (actually, the only way to impact, really, there's not much to it without bottom end) you need to hear it with some solid bass...

18/02/2012

a couple of reviews

a couple of reviews have popped up in the last week or so, one by our old friend, paris, and another from someone i've never heard of, which is nice because it gives a different perspective not swayed by knowing the artists...
_____________________________________________
Sydney Morning Herald - Metro - 10.2.12

SLEEPING WITH THE FISHERMEN (4-4-2 Music)
***1/2

For a decade, Sydney quintet Telafonica have steadily been embellishing their electronic foundations with expanding acoustic and vocal palettes, to curiously good effect. Further eluding pigeonholing, this latest heterogenous LP opens with the extended Viceroy, a slowly unfurling piece born of a single, subtly wavering tone, not unlike electrical hum. The vocal that eventually materialises ushers in a gentle, tribal-like rhythm rattling like conches against hollow bones. The rhythm is invigorated for ultra-short follow-up The Unravelling Man, where female vocals playfully jostle for a vantage point to deliver the next tune's schoolyard refrain about pursuing happiness. As if rebelling, it's sad melodies and reverb-soaked guitar guitar hooks that follow, plus a 14-minute closer of saxophones muscling out of a darkly hypnotic techno-punk straightjacket.

Paris Pompor

_________________________________________________
Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Telafonica – Sleeping With The Fishermen (4-4-2 Music)

By Henry Andersen February 8, 2012

The album, as a musical form, was born out of commercial necessity and technological limitation. In the late 1950s and early ‘60s record companies needed a way to shift a number of songs in a single package. Vinyl disks allowed the storage of 50 or so minutes (about 10-12 tracks) making the vinyl long-player an ideal mode of packaging music to the consumer. Later, in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s the album began to take on artistic relevance as a form in its own right. Rather than simply a collection of songs, bands began to view the album as a unified whole with a coherent character and narrative through-line.

Some 50 years later, the album is a more complicated concept in contemporary music. There is no longer the same technological limitation. The internet allows any amount of music to be uploaded and distributed immediately. Sites like iTunes allow consumers to remove a track from its context within an album, to treat each song as an end unto itself rather than as a component of a whole. Realistically, this is how the majority of people have always listened to music – the difference is in how it is packaged.

This itself presents new artistic possibilities in terms of musical form. Sleeping With the Fishermen, by Sydney collective Telafonica, is both the name of an ambitious meta-project and the album which forms its gravitational centre. The project includes (in addition to the seven tracks of the main album) seven remix EPs (each focussing on one of the tracks), a music video for each track and a Bandcamp album of fan remixes. There are post-modern, and even cubist, overtones in the way the album is broken up into its component parts and re-examined from multiple angles. Each remix and video offers a new perspective on the songs and after listening to them the original album takes new shape as well.

Even the original Telafonica tunes are awash with differing perspectives. The band is made up from members of a number of Sydney-underground musical and artistic projects (Lessons in Time, Karoshi, Boom Blip Blip) and these contrasting musical views make for an album which pushes and pulls itself into strange and unexpected places. The opening track, ‘Viceroy’, unfurls from an errant sine wave into a looped groove reminiscent of This Mortal Coil before jumping violently into the Sleigh Bells-esque noise-pop of ‘The Unravelling Man’. The album does have a few weak points, but its erratic shifts in style and pace are arresting.

In Sleeping With the Fishermen, Telefonica have delivered a traditional album, bracketed off from its context within the broader project by its two bookending tracks. Taken alone, the album is interesting but its meta-connections with the broader project are what make it noteworthy. For the consumer, there is a choice in how far one wants to delve into the project; to view the entire web of interlocking music, to hear the album as a standalone experience or to simply pick out single tracks as they see fit.

Henry Andersen

08/02/2012

super critical mass @ blacktown arts centre

i got an e-mail from kiri at blacktown arts centre today about a project that is going to be happening there on friday, may 4.

basically, an international sound art trio called super critical mass will be doing a piece at the gallery as a launch for a thing called the aurora festival. they are specifically looking for brass players and vocalists, so we can all fit into that in some manner. i've told kiri i'm definitely interested, let me know if any of you are and i can pass that on. it will involve a couple of rehearsals beforehand. at the moment she's just after expressions of interest. so let me know.

here's a clip of a piece they did in brisbane last year...

01/02/2012

available dates

i have some gigs being lined up but need to know everyone's availability. basically, can everyone let me know if there are any fridays or saturdays from april 13 until the end of may that you know you definitely can't be available for? the sooner i can find out the better. thanks heaps.