Telefon Tel Aviv: Immolate Yourself

When is “ambient techno” convenient?

a.) During the comedown after a long night of MDMA induced raving.
b.) During a 1990’s movie about computer hacking and the cyber-punk life that comes with it.
c.) Bez’s funeral.

Telefon Tel Aviv’s latest effort Immolate Yourself (most offensively demanding album name of the year?) sits uncomfortably in the aforementioned genre and whilst there are some peaks to be witnessed throughout, the majority squanders its talent on unimaginative dance beats over experimental backing. Attempting to sound both chilled out and on the cusp of a rave is a daring challenge for any band to try and unfortunately Telefon show their struggles openly.

The band seems intent on producing impressive, dark electronica and ruining it with a trance synth at every corner. It happens so often over the record that you can almost hazard a guess before each break; “Aaaand, there we go! There it is.”

Royksopp manage to evoke a certain techno feel in their music but keep the chilled house beats as their priority which works far better than the attempts made on here. The Birds is the first track off of the LP and shows promise for the rest of the material but nothing else really reaches the heights that this track manages to hit.

Your Mouth holds dark, glitchy electric drums and a melancholic one note chord almost entirely throughout. If only everything kept this minimal and brooding, we’d have a true piece of original work on our hands but as you may have already guessed, it does not.

Helen of Troy is a cliché pop-by-the-numbers slice of everything you’ve heard before in the Euro-Pop charts. It’s a shame things fall into this slant so often because as previously mentioned, when the album does something well, it does it really well. Stay Away From Being Maybe is a relatively unimpressive affair that is actually saved by its mental chorus. The beat is catchy, raw, fuzzy and excellent when played loud, it’s just surrounding by mediocrity in every other direction.

By midway the album attempts to recycle the same sound and structure in a host of a different ways that all fail to conjure the previous hints of genius already passed. Your Every Idol is a tumbling, annoying venture into film soundtrack material and Made A Tree On The World is an unneeded, repetitious piece of nonsense that shouldn’t of been included.

Immolate Yourself is a disappointing venture into a strange and difficult genre. It has peaks, troths, complete ditches and the odd glimpse at new heights but overall, it’s just another forgettable album by a band that need to rethink where their strengths lie.