Disco de Telefon Tel Aviv: “Fahrenheit Fair Enough”

With their first record, 2002's Farhenheit Fair Enough, Joshua Eustas and Charles Cooper created a loyal fan base through touring and implementing the most useful instrument to any artist; word of mouth. Telefon Tel Aviv's elegant complexities of brash electronics combined with the duo's guitar and piano ambience came at a perfect time when down tempo was becoming predictable and the popular IDM sounds from the West Coast were slowly fading. Farhenheit's orchestrations allowed the listener to assign their own emotions, making it the foreplay to their second full-length album.

With their second album, Map of What is Effortless, Eustas and Cooper mark their return with a palate that is significantly stronger and more assertive via forceful guitar chords and the addition of voice. If Fahrenheit Fair Enough was their foreplay, than Map of What is Effortless is clearly TTA's attempt to finish what they started. The vocals of Damon Aaron and Lindsay Anderson leave no question that TTA is ready to present a more visible and wider range of emotional highs and lows alongside their instrumental speak. The gentile creativity of Farhenheit still looms, however the duo explores more raw, frontal sounds as with, "What it is Without the Hand that Wields It", a track that is closer to the likes of Aphex Twin than the TTA previously known. The layers of heart wrenching simplistic guitar strokes, computerized crunches and dramatic vocals of 'What it was will never again' perfectly summarizes this album's overall strengths in an audio and characteristic context.

The obvious audience favorite will be Effortless' first single, 'My Week Beats Your Year.' It's clap ridden rhythm back dropped into Anderson's popishly seductive vocals are enough to move hips and turn the heads of the music elite all in one spin. However, the dance fever of the single should not cloud what Eustas and Cooper are doing on the rest of this album. Sequentially laid out, the songs all lead to an emotional destination that is left for the listener to point towards. There is an obvious map of human emotion being drawn here; one that is much more dramatic, blatant accessible than that of Fahrenheit's. As with any achieved successor, Effortless takes the duo in a new and challenging path of keeping the auditory satisfaction interesting. If Effortless is the temperate foreplay's follow through, than Telefon Tel Aviv's love affair with us has just begun.

For the sake of not having an overbearing review, I'll keep it short. Telfon Tel Aviv is on a very short list of ambient techno/IDM/what have you artists that I stack up with the greats like Aphex Twin, Autechre and Boards of Canada. Fahrenheit Fair Enough is their first LP and it blatantly establishes why, right off the bat. I don't want to spoil anything, but if you like experimentation with electronic music, specifically with a focus on percussion experimentation, you will enjoy this album greatly. Its particular style of detailing and layering I have not heard elsewhere, either before or after. Even Telefon Tel Aviv couldn't do it again so they had to move on to a different style.

There's something magical about this CD. The electric piano, guitar, and bass are really mellow and pretty--they have a warm, lullaby effect. It's probably not good music to listen to while operating heavy machinery. The ingenuity of the music comes from the spastic, twitchy drum and percussion sequences. It's like a dot matrix printer got drunk and tried to play along with a lounge group. Seriously, you have to try this. Go to TTA's website, and listen to "Farenheit Fair Enough" and feel yourself get all mellow and tingly.

I'm not sure how to say this, but this is music you LISTEN to. This is audiophile music--you know, people who can justify buying speakers for $2000 apiece, and don't use them to watch movies. In fact, this album kind of only works on good stereos. If you try to play it in a boombox, or with pc speakers, or in most cars, you'll just hear the dot matrix printer/jar full of marbles sounds, and you'll miss the whole song underneath. These are complex arrangements, and they deserve to be reproduced on equipment that really lets each sound breathe and be appreciated. Okay, so that sounds lofty. But try it on a great sound system, and you'll know what I mean when I say this music is genius.

Telefon Tel Aviv is an incredible group with an extremely unique personality which is hardly found in the US. Their intricate music constructions are like ear candy. IMHO Fahrenheit Far Enough is a necessity in any intelligent music lover's collection.

ALSO, If you like them, you'll like Auditory Underground (www.Auditory Underground.com), they even have a review from Joshua Eustis from Telefon Tel Aviv on their website. They're definately worth checking out. I'm not sure if Amazon lets you post a link but ill try:

http://www.auditoryunderground.com.

Hope you enjoy both of these groups!

I love the electronic blips and bleeps masked by the guitar and bass over lays. I also like the electronic/live drum feel. Great night cd.