A Haon is the debut album by Telefis (Television in Gaelic), the group that is the current project of Cathal Coughlan and Jacknife Lee, who on the albums cover look like an Irish Gilbert & George. The album was recorded remotely during lockdown after the duo had been re-introduced to each other by Luke Haines.
This opens with almost like the band's ident, on the half a minute of Seo E Glor Teilifise that morphs into the single Mister Imperator with it's glacial synths and rather timely lyrics about going to Sochi in the Crimea and the chemical weapons that Mr Imperator may have stored there. Which considering the war that's currently happening in Ukraine this song's lyrics about having no skin is sadly rather too on the money and has taken on new meaning since I reviewed it as a single.
We Need has a pulsating rhythm track with Cathal's lyrics about controlled aggression and hard work and cocaine desserts taking us down onto a very cool dancefloor, this is chic and funky as we work out just what Cathal and Jacknife need.
The album version of the single Falun Gong Dancer is a sparse tribute to exiled refugees who have fled oppression and who wish to be able to continue practicing the religion they follow, but who the Chinese authorities object too. All they want is the freedom to follow there own path, a desire that seems perfectly reasonable but sadly in these times far harder to obtain.
The Symphonies Of Danny La Rue has the big production qualities Danny was famous for, this is drenched in pearls and gold jewelry and a full length gown as the tale of why Danny was refusing to go onstage unfolds, this doesn't sound like the sort of Music Danny would perform too, but it is a rather cool tribute to one of the most famous Transvestite stars of the last century, a totally mainstream act.
Archbishop Beardmouth At The ChemOlympics is a pumping dancefloor smash about performance enhancing drugs that may get you banned from skating in the winter Olympics and then again they may not. As the thumping bassline makes sure to bang out the lines and hand out those pills.
The Imperial Angelus is the Sunday morning church bells with a narration about washing your hands in the style of an safety film.
Sex Bunting is apparently about making a short promotional movie about a car, that gets sleazy and has some darkly disturbing lyrics and electro synth pop with the chanted chorus of backing vocalists chanting Sex Bunting on a regular basis.
Ballytransnational may be about a rollercoaster or it could be about my old employers the Transnational shoe company Bally, who back in the 1980's when I worked for them, were owned by the Swiss based global armaments firm Oerlikon Buehrle, who were infamous for selling arms to just about anyone who could afford to buy them, from Churchill to Hitler and beyond. With a bassline that's like the report of an Oerlikon gun firing off it's deadly shells across the seas trying to enforce its views onto the unsuspecting world.
There Goes Waterface sounds a bit like something off of John Cale's Shifty Adventures In Nookie Wood and the lyrics are almost as paranoid as that suggests, in among the strings and weird electronics.
Picadors is set in Cable Street in 1973, which if it's the one in Shadwell was somewhere I certainly spent time in 1973, just in the period when the docks were closing and my dad would insist we visit the site of the anti-fascist riots, it is also close to the scenes of the Wapping riots of the early 80's, this has some delicious trumpet parts and is a gently intoxicating song that leaves more questions unanswered than answered as I'm sure I hear a different story on almost every listen a cool stark song.
Stampede is about a long lost parade ground in a war zone, are they ready to once more fight on the ancient battle fields, sadly that appears to be the case, since first hearing this in peaceful times, it takes on new meaning now The Great Games latest blood spattered chapter has begun, quite what REO Speedwagon has to do with this tune with the spectral dance rhythms and complex lyrics that go haywire in the middle section is anyone's guess. In the songs final section it feels as we are marching towards a doomed future seen through the prism of history that keeps repeating as the historical atrocities are recalled among the strings and choral backing vocals.
The album closes with the pop jaunty game show mambo of Stop The Lights that seems to have lifted a vocal sample from an Irish gameshow.
Find out more at https://www.facebook.com/telefis1961 https://telefis.bandcamp.com/
