Telefon Tel Aviv Soundtracks "Something Akin to Lust"
The New Orleans' electronic act returns for the first time in eight years with a new song for the upcoming audio/visual compilation, "Territories."
Last December, New Orleans’ Telefon Tel Aviv reissued its debut album, Fahrenheit Fair Enough. At the time, TTA’s Joshua Eustis said he had started recording new music as Telefon Tel Aviv, the first since the untimely passing of bandmate Charlie Cooper in 2009. Yesterday, Telefon Tel Aviv released its first new track, “Something Akin to Lust,” which will appear on Territories, a compilation that label 79Ancestors refers to as “a soundtrack to imaginary worlds.” The album is due out May 26, and on the same day a companion virtual reality app will drop for iOS and Android platforms. The vinyl version will be bundled with a custom Google Cardboard viewer, though other VR viewers will work as well.
The drama that threads together Eustis’ work is clear in “Something Akin to Lust,” which starts with a simple four-note melody echoing in a spacious environment. The low rumble that creeps around the sonic borders eventually swells into a sonic storm that whips and threatens to wash away the melody, but it never quite manages. As the track progresses, the blasts of sound start to organize and find their own attractive form before they recede. It’s an engrossing journey that feels shorter than its six minutes.
“I’ve always been more about order and building and [Charlie] was about chaos and entropy and breaking things and destruction and lighting things on fire,” Eustis said last December. “ Now I think about music more architecturally and spatially instead of from left to right.”
Thursday morning, Eustis tweeted, "Hey ya'll fyi my profit from "something akin to lust" is going to http://www.glbthotline.org/ so keep that in mind when considering purchase."
