Telefon Tel Aviv Immolate Yourself
Artists who compose filmic music, much like actual directors, work between two modes: close-up and […]
Artists who compose filmic music, much like actual directors, work between two modes: close-up and slowly panning scenery. On 2004’s micro-edit-heavy Map of What Is Effortless, Chicago-via-New Orleans duo of Josh Eustis and Charlie Cooper seemed more quick-cut and tightly framed. But after almost five years absorbing the palpable erosions of minimalism and detuning hardware synths, Telefon Tel Aviv has swapped guitars and digitally bit-crushed calculation for sabotaged analogs and tonal chronology. These 10 tracks of glamorous desolation, all bleary vocals and grainy drifts, have been strung out rather than chopped up. “Helen of Troy” is unrepentant vintage pop, basically A-Ha on a diet of oxidized melodies. The rest of Immolate Yourself‘s sonic real estate has the distending surface tension of a funhouse mirror, creating an album as glazed as it is evocative.