Telefon Tel Aviv : Map of what is effortless (Hefty)

Life comes complete with surprises, good and bad. So does music. Occasionally you get a good surprise that makes your musical life truly worth living. This is one of those surprises.

Telefon Tel Aviv bring back their atmospheric electronica for this second opus, complete with floating melodies, clicks and cuts. But the duo move drastically away from their occasional light post-rock or math-rock inclinations towards pop sensibilities and ballads. Previous dry electric guitar licks are replaced by effect-laden guitar soundscapes and soft rhodes on a bed of full orchestra strings, complemented magnificently by a slow soulful approach to bass and clicks programming. But the major innovation is the thorough use of absolutely stunning vocals by a range of performers.

Map of what is effortless opens with the crashing wave of When it happens it moves all by itself, where string melodies and open drum rides cut up with electronic stutter fall into a slow swimming keys suite with airy voices, not unlike that of the Pat Metheny Group's The roots of coincidence. I lied introduces the sublimely fragile and soulful vocals of singer-songwriter Damon Aaron, cut up with staccato beats a great bass drop and a wonderfully melancholic string chorus. My week beats you year picks up the pace with a driving electro feel, handclap clicks and very Berlin Ellen Allien-esque words by Lindsay Anderson. Bubble and spike and What is was will never again are slow supreme gems, with a slight rnb touch -the kind of songs that you can feel through the front lobes of your brain. What is was... explodes into a combo of feeding guitar strums and drawn falset vocals very reminiscent of the first Sigur Ros album. At the edge of the world you will still float is the only song to bring back acoustic guitars, serving up a beautiful ballad with a wonderfully emotional chorus and escapades where a better balance of orchestration and glitzy noisescapes has rarely been heard.

All songs on this album are gorgeous in the purest sense of the word, but the apex is What it is without the hand that wields it. Opening on a clicked synth soundscape that gradually intensifies, the song caves into a simply perfect marriage of creaking, spitting, stuttering, tongue-clicking, bleeping beats and a perfectly complementary synth and bass grounding. This is truly the music dreams are made of.

What is most impressive about Map of what is effortless is how seamlessly Telefon Tel Aviv stretch their songs across the electronic and the acoustic, the digital and the analogue. You'd swear that even the most electric clicks and sounds could be made by a tree, if you just tweaked it hard enough. The crispness of the drums, the bass tightrope walk between being smooth and staying edgy, the perfectly paced clicks and rhythmic convulsions... everything sounds immaculately organic and you can feel how each note and each sound fall gorgeously together to create a complete picture, a full spectrum of feelings.

Telefon Tel Aviv have never sounded better -like Portishead doing Americana, but with a wonderful clicks and cuts and an inextinguishable spirit and soul. Like the cold wind blowing across American desert plains in early dusk, like fresh thunderstorm rain pounding away at you but unable to knock you down. An utterly sublime album, Map of what is effortless takes both pop, soul music and click-and-static electronica to new heights and widths. Rarely has there been so much emotion and soul in a record. A stellar contender for best electronica album ever -if you can even call it electronica.

Review by Nicolai Hartvig

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