sandringham hotel

sound on sound looping

i spent a few hours the other day trying to get ableton live to do sound on sound looping, like the boss giga-delay. i couldn't find a way to get it to work. so i sent of an e-mail to the clan analogue mailing list to see if anyone there knew a way of doing it. a few different workarounds were suggested by people, but all, as workarounds do, have their limitations. then, this morning, someone posted a link to this - http://www.ableton.com/pages/live_8/announcement/looper. needless to say, i'm rather excited at the prospect. though it will, of course, require an upgrade - are you in, steve? it's due in the second quarter of 2009, according to the ableton website.



as a result of finding that info, i also started googling for something along the lines. so far, this looks the most promising, but i haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

i saw this and thought of what to write

david, here's everything i can think of that might want to get used in terms of credits. i listed everything, but cut out whatever you like. the only thing i think we are bound to including would be the credit to kodwo eshun for permission to quote from his book.



tape noise
adrian elmer - production, voice, glockenspiel
david hughes - production, guitar
marcella hughes - voice

listen, it's in the details


blending the edges
adrian elmer - production, voice
stephen fox - effects
david hughes - production
marcella hughes - voice

see the tree standing on top of the dusty hill
drive around here for hours, it's all the same
you can pray all you like for rain but you're missing the point
if the roots are deep enough the sheep will sit in the shade

i'll never do it again
i promise, i'll never do it again

gloria, the life's already there, the life's already there


this is the new thing
adrian elmer - production, voice
marcella hughes - voice
david hughes - production
blake wassell - guitar

falling out or falling in
i'm not really ready but i'm jumping in
and the way ahead is very long
and the night is dark and your will is strong
which are worse the punches or the lies
or the years together now denied?
"and every prediction is coming true
and every prediction points to you"

i can feel the bones beneath my skin
every one is digging in
don't desert me once again
where are you my only friend
"and every prediction is coming true
and every prediction points to you"



send away
adrian elmer - production, voice, guitar
marcella hughes - production, voice
david hughes - production

i'm here now for you, i've come to take you
i'm here now for you, i've come to wake you up, up
i'm here now for you, i've come to wake you
i'm here now for you, i've come to take you away with me, away with me

a part of you is crying, a part of you is dying
as you slowly harden your heart
you're coccooning lies, seems you're cradling(?) evil
you deny him

you're denying love from the outside
you're only listening to lies from the inside
send away the lie, send away the lie, send away the lie from here
send away the lie, send away the lie, send away the lie from here


requited love
adrian elmer - production, voice, bass
marcella hughes - voice
david hughes - production

do you still see the scars on my face? do they bother you at all?
do you still hear the tantrums in my voice? will you reach down when i fall?
do you still see the wrinkles on my heart? do they bother you at all?
do you still recognise the selfishness in me? will you reach down when i fall?

'cause when you look at me
and see what's really there
when you look at me
and place yourself there
your love is requited

do you still feel the sweat on my back? does it bother you at all?
do you still feel my wanderlust? will you reach down when i fall?


item number
andreas dorwarth - voice
adrian elmer - production
rebecca elmer - voice
david hughes - production
ulf lindemann - voice

text taken from 'more brilliant than the sun - adventures in sonic fiction' by kodwo eshun (1998, quartet books) - used with the kind permission of the author



listening in for static
adrian elmer - production, voice
marcella hughes - voice
david hughes - production

i've never been hardcore
i've never been true to my roots
so look into the future baby
and listen to the future baby
we float around these days
and never really enter in
we twist the meanings of useless words
that would otherwise mean nothing
i've bastardised every piece of music i've heard
and just strung together every little shard of culture
don't break my fall
i always wanted to know that feeling



telafonica
i saw this and though of you
4-4-2 music
442-015

www.telafonica.com
www.4-4-2music.com

andreas dorwarth - www.electrolyt.net
ulf lindemann - www.dunkelbunt.org

oh, and the upc barcode for it is 634479709838 - i think i've already sent you a copy of the .bmp file if you need it - let me know if you've lost it.

old and new

one of my favourite photos i've taken in recent times, nicely encapsulating the mix of new-tech and old-tech that i really love. and the piano is rather photogenic.

I started writing a rationale for this artwork but it sounded like bullshit. I like it less abstract because it's more direct. And I like it less explained because it makes more sense...

I will continue with the type design and post something more for discussion.

Cover/

I will continue the work on that when i get back from Canberra i think.

My Mixtape Summary.

1-feather-Whitewash

 

            This song exhibits a really explicit and strong development of one melody. I am automatically attracted to a composition of any artistic type that is merely the stretching of one idea… stretched so far and so intentionally that it will soon snap if stretched any farther. Practically, for Telafonica, I think that this idea of intentional melody movement and development is something that would greatly benefit our ‘free-er’ moments in songs… I am not sure about adrian, ellie and bec, but I find myself leaning on making nice noise too much.   While this type of musical floundering has its place, we have many opportunities to deliberately focus on how to aid and/or develop the melody/ies. AND! I like the crescendo.

 

2-a surprise-Balun

 

            This song is beautifully textured as a whole, and also in terms of the individual textures of respective ‘instruments’. There are several very simple core parts in this piece and they work so as to build the foundation for a lovely melody.

 

These first two songs also have no ‘singing melody’. I think, part of what can make a band really special is how versatile they are with their respective instruments, abilities etc. A proposition: We should play more melodies with instruments and sing more accompanying choral and counter-melodic parts.

 

3-swimming pool- Ghoul

 

            This song is very simple and concise. A little music, a simple yet lovely melody is added. And then the necessary crescendo! It has it all.

 

4-emotional champ- New Buffalo

 

            New Buffalo (AKA Sally Seltmann) is just so lovely. She has to influence Telafonica in some way. Her beautiful piano and voice arrangements are worthy of consideration and medals.

 

5-we’re always waiting- Yacht

            This is a really fun song. And I think that is the main reason I included it. Cheeky electronics and big choral chants; it has a great mix of the artificial and natural and thus shows similarities to Telafonica’s musical capabilities AND potential character.

 

6-you win- Slareffenklang

 

            I like the basic rhythms that are dictated by instruments and voices in unison. I like how the group of voices are a little messy but still work in unison with each other (a little like one of Underlapper’s new songs) and also how the guitar works with the drums rhythmically. The fragility of the closing section/s of the piece appeals to me and is something that could add a certain depth to Telafonica’s music, especially the live sets.

 

7-festival- Sigur Ros

 

            The war-like trumpets and enduring chord cycles are matched beautifully with a song of the same fragile nature as previously mentioned. I like it one heck of a lot. Again, a certain depth and image of humanity is apparent in this presentation of song. While Telafonica is by very little means bound by electronic bases and cycles, there are more directions in which it can go to contrast the sometimes-binding stability provided by the electronics.

 

Any questions?

Forgive me if my ideas are hard to grasp; I have not been given a writing assignment for months!

download the mixtape here (44mb)

ghoul

ghoul are going to play with us at the roxbury hotel in glebe in march!

sando

is everybody up for a show at the sandringham hotel on king st in newtown on friday, february 6?

the mixtape

thought i might make a track listing of the cd i made for everyone here, since i didn't give anyone an actual track listing with the disc and also to point out specifically what i think might be helpful to telafonica from each track. and if anyone else wants to make their own copy, soulseek is my preferred p2p platform. (blake, feel free to add your own collection in another post - eliza and bec, feel free to make your own collections to share with us all!)

1. bow wow wow - c30, c60, c90, go!

this is just so raw, but without any nihilistic punkness. and it bases a pop song squarely around the rhythm. the little jarring rhythms in the chorus just kill me every time. it's all such simplicity but orchestrated brilliantly. lyrics are nice too - especially from the point of view of anti-corporate d.i.y.ness (though malcolm maclaren was no doubt behind that, simply as a gimic)

2. the flying lizards - money

the rawness and lack of much in the music is what i like most here. i've already started attempting to get that with 'don't speak for me'. the noises that constitute the instrumental break are also great. don't look up any of their other songs, though, they're all exactly the same - horrid deadpan vocals on 50s and 60s cover songs. they were a one trick pony, but this track made the best of that one trick.

3. beem - rer

i came across beem when i discovered skwee and went looking around the net for it. beem put his whole album up for free download and i highly recommend the whole thing. i picked out this track because of it's jerky, yet eternally propulsive rhythm. i also like its minimalism. as everybody already realises, i have difficulty keeping production simple. i always admire simple production that can maintain interest and always aspire to it. i just never quite get there.

4. bjork - earth intruders (spank rock remix)

bjork at her poppiest and then twisted up by spank rock. i really love the very natural blend of acoustic and electronic sounds. the acoustic drums are great, and the tambourine, which sounds very raw, tops it all off perfectly. but the rest of the instrumentation is very electronic (and i would guess that the actual rhythms are programmed electronically). and, again, the rhythm is propulsive, just slightly jerky and therefore captivating.

5. clinic - the second line

two and a half minutes of brilliance. mouth percussion samples, simple drum machine, semi-giberish vocals. the way voices are used throughout are great, and the way it builds and builds towards the final release... nice guitar riffs - everything i could want in a short pop song.

6. miss mend - living city plan

i like this for the same reasons i like stereolab (who miss mend no doubt have rested most of their inspiration on) - just a propulsive drone in the music, nice catchy melody and instrumentation we can aspire to. again, simplicity deployed well.

7. parts & labor - satellites

i became a bit obsessed with this band for a while a couple of months back. this is the first track off their newest album. it deploys electronics as noise making then lays guitar as the harmonic carrier over that - kind of the inverse of what we've come to do a lot this year. i also like the tempo, which has the kind of energy we don't really generate with any of our music, but i like it and think we could aim for some of it a bit more. it's alos melodically and harmonically more complex than we generally get, without becoming baroque - it's still quite direct. the guitar sound is also great - very energetic without reliance on distortion.

8. lcd soundsystem - all my friends

i could have put any song from either of their albums (except maybe 'new york i love you' which is fine in its context but nothing i'd ever wish to emulate). i went with this one because it featured piano, so i thought it might hook eliza a bit easier. memorable melodies etc. as with all their great stuff, it starts out with great energy and yet somehow manages to build upwards from there. it shifts almost imperceptably throughout - dynamically i love it. and it also uses the mix of acoustic/electric/electronic sound brilliantly which you're probably noticing is a feature of everything in this collection.


download the mix here (49mb)

Nothing Ventured / An Invitation 7"

to purchase the 'NOTHING VENTURED / AN INVITATION' 7" single, the simplest way is to head to the release's Bandcamp page here and purchase from there (where you will also get immediate access to the tracks as digital downloads).
You can also visit the 4-4-2 music website.


____________________________
released december 1, 2008

Our first ever 7" single, featuring a very old song - Nothing Ventured - which has existed in some form since Bubblejuggler days, but which has never found the right structure to be successful. Midway through 2008, it was rethought and remade as a lo-fi half-time groove pop song, and at long last worked, becoming a live staple. The other side features a track that was originally a Lessons In Time track, but which Telafonica took and added to the live set, along with extra vocals and bells.

Byron Coley reviewed the single as follows in Wire magazine (July 2009):
"Lathe cut single by a Sydney based quartet (or trio) whose numbers have a tendency to float off to the UK. The A side is a nicely wound, abstract combination of strings and laptop, a bit in the style of some old Keith Fullerton Whitman performances. But there are soft arcs of moany vocals in spots that give it a very different feel from anything Hrvatski ever did. The flip has a twinkle-pop take on bedroom Kevin Ayers moves. Which is a surprise. And a good one."

The release is a lathe cut vinyl by Peter King in New Zealand, and the cover was hand screenprinted, folded and glued by Telafonica.

A. Nothing Ventured
B. An Invitation

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.

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!!!

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?

A Whale In A Manger

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

______________________________
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.

______________________________

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)

______________________________

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

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.

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.