Telefon Tel Aviv - Fahrenheit Fair Enough

synctank, Jan 04, 2003

At last the full-length Telefon album has arrived and it is everything I had hoped for and more. In between scoring the film New Port South for John and James Hughes, Charles Cooper and Joshua Eustis managed to crank out this fantastic blend of complex electronica and acoustic mellowness that proved to be sheer music to my ears. The album starts with the title track Fahrenheit Fair Enough, a mid-tempo excursion of lovely harmonies, warm tones, and a seemingly endless stream of rapidly spitting blips and bleeps. Excellent panning techniques and expert pattern fusions add to the professional sound and production present throughout this release, maintaining tight control and refreshing consistency. TTV brings the tempo a little lower, with more addictive blips and bleeps, timely moments of glitch, and gentle, balmy tones. Lotus Above Water starts out low with a leisurely melody and perfectly builds an embracing envelope of electronic creaks, reverberating guitars strums, and light beats. Very beautiful. John Thomas on the Inside is Nothing but Foam gets down to some of TTAs acoustic talents, with pattering drums, snare retorts, bass guitar, and ample changes in the subtle electronic make-up of the track. Its obvious that Josh and Charles spent a great deal of time and effort to make this album virtually perfect, for there isnt even the slightest blemish throughout the entire release. Savath + Savalas and Lusine icl come to mind at this point, however Im reluctant to make those comparisons for this album certainly has a personality all its own. Life is All About Taking Things In and Putting Things Out is a slow piano number, very effectively adding a fleeting mood of melancholy to the album. Your Face Reminds Me of When I was Old develops slowly, with a variety of sounds and effects sprinkling the backdrop of a translucent current of mellow tones and a struggling beat. The song builds gradually, allowing pending patterns to take shape as simple melodies inject a mysterious persona into the mix. Whats the Use of Feet if You Havent Got Legs? utilizes smearing bleeps and panning glitch, with sharp, broken beats and a video game soundtrack circling the measured harmonies as they unfold. Delicious creaks ignite new sounds, projecting them back from the surface patterns as echoing clacks and clicks retort their approval. A combination of claps, snares, cymbals, cowbells, and stuttering beats float throughout Introductory Nomenclature while a spacey indistinct loop lingers behind warm bass movements and glitchy reversal effects. Fahrenheit Fair Away levels off the album with a minimal beat/cymbal combination led by a simple piano loop ultimately fading out to the conclusion of this wonderful masterpiece. The high accessibility factors present throughout this release and the fond return to a more electronic sound makes this an excellent addition to the Hefty catalog. Despite the disappointingly short length of this release (41 minutes to be precise), it would be difficult for me to recall a more perfect album this year. Cooper and Eustis have produced a smooth and dreamy collection of aural artwork, meant to be considered intently and absorbed abundantly. With a brilliant combination of complex but mature electronic elements, tinged with a subtle jazzy/lounge flavor, Cooper and Eustis manage to arrange all these ingredients perfectly into a highly enjoyable and richly rewarding creation. There are so many appealing elements on Fahrenheit Fair Enough, its difficult to describe them adequately in words, however I would find it hard to imagine anyone being disappointed by this magnificent album.

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