Avant-garde is a term that’s often misapplied, and has come to be synonymous with the unlistenable, with experimentalism for its own sake. Tellavision – the vehicle of creative interdisciplinarian Fee R Kuerten, a self-styled purveyor of ‘hardware post-pop’ – offer up a wilfully perverse hybrid which is experimental, but with a definite sense of purpose, namely to tear up the rule-book and create something new from the tatters of the remains of the old. Tellavision’s third album goes all out in this quest.
A dubby post-punk bass groove sways in on the opening track… vocal loops and repetitions, overlays and echoes abound. Squelchy processed beats and clattering rhythms batter against dark, ominous bass-oriented swampy synth drones to conjure strange and oppressive atmospheres. It’s all going on, and it’s all very unconventional. It’s avant-garde, and it’s challenging, but by no means unlistenable.
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Highly recommended, unless you’re a traditionalist, or otherwise prefer music that’s straight-ahead and conforms to standard verse / chorus structures.
Tellavision Online
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