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Avg: 4.0 (282 ratings)
- Date Released: February 3, 2009
- Genre: Electronic
- Style: Electronic Experimental
- Label: BPitch Control / Finetunes
Far and away the best album of their career. And with the death of member Charles Cooper, maybe their last
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We Say...
The Chicago-based, New Orleans-originated Telefon Tel Aviv are respected, but not loved. Their first two records made clear that they have exceptional taste — and isn't that 50% of why you make a record? — but knowing what moved them didn't exactly make for a moving experience on the listening end. And that's ultimately why Fahrenheit Fair Enough (2001) and Map of What Is Effortless (2004) didn't stick around: there wasn't much of a foundation beyond what they sounded like. There wasn't a deep emotional hook — it was too easy to walk away from the albums without feeling anything one way or another. For a piece of art, there are few worse fates.
With the excellent Immolate Yourself, Telefon Tel Aviv are now a very, very different group. Musically, there is a dramatic shift from the soundtrack-friendly IDM of TTA's past to a dreamy, sweeping synth-pop feel currently most closely associated with M83. The reason Immolate Yourself succeeds where its predecessors failed has a lot to do with that stylistic change. The aesthetics of synthpop carry an implicit emotional burden; the lush sounds, resigned vocals, languid pace and enveloping depths of great synthpop invariably sound like exact, aural definitions of emotions like wistfulness and loneliness. It's what teenage introspection sounds like.
Charles Cooper, who died tragically shortly before the album's release, and Joshua Eustis, the two men who make up Telefon, never break character on Immolate: from the opening, dramatic sighs of "The Birds" to the closing, linked trio of "Your Every Idol," "You Are the Worst Thing in the World" and "Immolate Yourself," the album is all rounded corners and pillowed layers, every word hushed, every lyric impossible to understand. But the sound is powerful and it is moving, and when the last keyboard fades back into its drizzly home, where it goes, you will readily follow. -
They Say...
Charlie Cooper and Josh Eustis' second and third Telefon Tel Aviv albums are as different from one another as their first and second albums. Fahrenheit Fair Enough's fractured, melodic instrumentals morphed into crisp song form on Map of What Is Effortless, with vocalists and string arrangements helping to shape alternately jagged and sweeping productions into tense glitch/R&B torch songs. Following Map, Immolate Yourself -- released on Ellen Allien's Bpitch Control label -- increases the pensive energy and tension, with both conveyed through snapping beats, taut sequencer patterns, sheet upon sheet of textural elements, and vocals that come across as desperate and/or pained, even when barely audible beneath all the consuming sounds. These are chilling sounds from a dark place that, nonetheless, shelter the listener. Between the European and stateside physical releases of the album, Cooper passed away. Knowledge of that could only intensify the album's most passive spins.
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| 01. |  |
The Birds |
6:38 |
|
| 02. | |
Your Mouth |
4:08 |
|
| 03. | |
M |
3:42 |
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| 04. | |
Helen Of Troy |
3:11 |
|
| 05. | |
Mostly Translucent |
4:15 |
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| 06. | |
Stay Away From Being Maybe |
4:23 |
|
| 07. | |
I Made A Tree On The Wold |
4:39 |
|
| 08. | |
Your Every Idol |
4:54 |
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| 09. | |
You Are The Worst Thing In The World |
4:43 |
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| 10. | |
Immolate Yourself |
5:38 |
|
10 Total Tracks, 46:11 Total Length
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Credits
- Roger Seibel - Mastering // James Hughes - Lettering // Ryan Rapsys - Drums // Rolan Vega - Sounds
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