Video: Telefon Tel Aviv – A Younger Version of Myself

“A sophisticated AI neural network tracks and selectively erases Telefon Tel Aviv from the transient spaces of the nighttime Los Angeles Landscape…”

The return of storied Southern Gothic electronic entity Telefon Tel Aviv is as unexpected as it is impressive. Their three influential albums of the 2000’s— Fahrenheit Fair Enough, Map Of What Is Effortless, and Immolate Yourself—charted an increasingly turbulent and textured vision of post-IDM synthetic songcraft, until the sudden passing of founding member Charlie Cooper in 2009 ceased the project, presumably forever. During the decade since, co-founder Josh Eustis has performed with, produced, mixed, and mastered countless artists, from high-profile institutions (Nine Inch Nails, Puscifer, Apparat) to underground fixtures (Belong, Vatican Shadow, Drab Majesty, Tropic Of Cancer), in addition to his own solo and collaborative work in Sons Of Magdalene and Second Woman. But years of reflection and processing gradually seeded in him a desire to revive TTA and venture a fourth full-length, in the spirit of what they started: Dreams Are Not Enough.

Now Telefon Tel Aviv share the video for “a younger version of myself,” directed by Lance Drake. Watch above.

Com Truise – Existence Schematic [Epilepsy Warning]

For nearly a decade the story of Com Truise has relied on science fiction and abstract fact. Seth Haley’s singular style of melodic beat music subsists as hazy machinist nostalgia, a mainframe downloaded cosmology. Yet with each release, alongside sonic refinement, comes an increasingly visible vapor trail to Haley’s own ontology. His long-awaited 2017 LP Iteration brought to completion a conceptual space saga while also reflecting seismic life changes for the producer and designer. With mini-LP Persuasion System, Haley leaves the past narrative behind, settling into a new period marked by change — on this planet, in the present — putting forth his most grounded and visceral work to date.

The project began as an experiment. Haley switched digital audio workstations, rebuilt his palette of sounds, and tasked himself with simply trying it out. The exercise freed him of expectations and permitted a process that echoed the tones of more immediate external environments. A gravity had seeped in; resulting material shifts between bleakness and sublime suspense, awe at the expanse of existing, in looking back and letting go. “It’s a sort of sad smile and a wave goodbye but at the same time hello, a ‘welcome to your life’ moment,” Haley says. Take the storm pattern sequence from “Gaussian” to “Ultrafiche of You”: a queasy, contemplative vignette rests on a single soft-synth cloud before the latter’s percussion ripples across the sky. With trademark stutters and swells, the composition conjures the sensation of searching in the afterglow. “It’s a love song, and I don’t write many of those.”

That duality — melancholy + optimism, then + now — permeates this widescreen collection. “Existence Schematic” takes flight at night, “looking down at the landscape,” explains Haley, “seeing the lights in a schematic sort of way, wondering who or what is looking back up at me wondering the same things I am, the impact of a single existence, the end, the beginning, where it’s gone and going.” These are observations from this existential Persuasion System, and Haley hopes the music yields more, for others, that listeners may search for their own tension and release.

Video: Beacon – Be My Organ

Taken from ‘Gravity Pairs’ LP by Beacon out November 2, 2018 Order ‘Gravity Pairs’ at: http://bit.ly/2MQqBQJ Or at the retailer of your choice: https://ghostly.com/products/gravity-pairs

Directed By: Jacob Gossett & Danny Scales

Video: Shigeto – Barry White feat. ZelooperZ

Detroit-based artist Shigeto, aka, Zach Saginaw is sharing his new single & video “Barry White”. The track is taken from his upcoming album, ‘The New Monday’, due Oct 6th via Ghostly International. Shigeto is also set to play a London show on Oct 9th at Omera.

The importance of the Detroit community has come through strongly in the initial looks from the album. The video for “Detroit Part II” featured intimate shots of the Motor City, and “Don’t Trip” featured Detroit emcee Silas Green. Today Saginaw collaborates with another Detroit native, Zelooperz (as he did on the recent A Piece of the Geto album as ZGTO), in a surreal video for the album track “Barry White” that’s directed by Voiid Studio.

From Voiid Studio: “We wanted to create something both real and surreal, a little dark but also vivid, that reflected the qualities and power of the track, underpinned by Zach and Z’s (Zelooperz) strange world in Detroit. The guys liked our ideas and brought a ton of resources to bear, so we were off to an exhausting, exhilarating, filthy weekend in Detroit and a very, very satisfying collaboration.”

Watch “Barry White” here:

While always having a personal approach to his projects, Saginaw’s influences for his third album, The New Monday, are more about the community of Detroit than anything else. Named after a weekly DJ event called Monday is the New Monday that Saginaw does at the unassuming Motor City Wine with a group of friends, The New Monday is the result of Saginaw diving into the city’s deep record culture, where the legacy of artists of the past help Saginaw embrace his own contributions. The album is set for an October 6th release via Ghostly International.

Video: Com Truise – Propagation

Ahead of his UK tour this November, Com Truise – aka Seth Haley – shares the music video for the song “Propagation”, taken from his new album ‘Iteration’ which is out now via Ghostly International.

The video is a Black Mirror meets The Stepford Wives piece of cinema that helps to visualize the song in a uniquely modern way. It touches on our increasingly dependent relationship with technology and the consequential disconnect with humanity.

Speaking on the track, Haley says; “Propagation, as defined, is the proliferation of a new concept or idea. in the context of “Iteration”, it’s the main character’s creation of new conceptual selves, new identities to escape oppression, and disbursing those ideas through the space narrative. It’s a wistful space ballad…. ”

Directors Karrie Crouse and Will Joines commented: “Com Truise’s music is so strikingly cinematic; it felt like the images of this woman trapped in her glass cage, and her growing unease, were conjured directly from the song. We decided to avoid the music video tropes of fast cutting, and coverage from a thousand angles, opting instead for a series of filmic tableaus that would cycle, allowing the audience to breathe with each image, dread seeping into the most domestic of scenes. We used creeping zooms to hold tension, building the energy and building the energy until…both the song and our heroine break.”

“Propogation” is taken from the album ‘Iteration’, released on Ghostly International earlier this year. It’s on Spotify, Bandcamp, iTunes and the Com Truise online store.

Shigeto – Don’t Trip (ft. Silas Green)

With his new album due Oct 6th via Ghostly International, Shigeto has shared new single “Don’t Trip”.

It’s been four years since Zach Saginaw, aka Shigeto, returned home to Michigan from a stint in Brooklyn, NY, and since then, the multi-faceted musician has become a part of the fabric of Detroit’s music scene. While always having a personal approach to his projects, Saginaw’s influences for his third album, The New Monday, are more about the community of Detroit than anything else. And the community comes through clearly on the new track “Don’t Trip,” which features the vocals of Detroit emcee Silas Green guiding the listener through Shigeto’s assertive, spiraling production.

Named after a weekly DJ event called Monday is the New Monday that Saginaw does at the unassuming Motor City Wine with a group of friends, The New Monday is the result of Saginaw diving into the city’s deep record culture, where the legacy of artists of the past help Saginaw embrace his own contributions. The album is set for an October 6th release via Ghostly International.

Shigeto – The New Monday LP

It’s been four years since Zach Saginaw, aka Shigeto, returned home to Michigan from a stint in Brooklyn, NY, and since then, the multi-faceted musician has become a part of the fabric of Detroit’s music scene. While always having a personal approach to his projects, Saginaw’s influences for his third album, The New Monday, are more about the community of Detroit than anything else. Named after a weekly DJ event called Monday is the New Monday that Saginaw does at the unassuming Motor City Wine with a group of friends, The New Monday is the result of Saginaw diving into the city’s deep record culture, where the legacy of artists of the past help Saginaw embrace his own contributions. The album is set for an October 6th release via Ghostly International. The Detroit-centric video for the searing album opener “Detroit Part II” is streaming via YouTube.

The visuals for “Detroit Part II” chronicle Shigeto’s own return to Detroit and the community he’s become a staple in. The accompanying visuals follow Shigeto and his close friends as they explore the city, before culminating at MotorCity Wine, during Monday is the New Monday — the weekly event where Shigeto has taken residency. Filmed in black and white and with infrared filters, the textured images are reminiscent of techno videos of the early 90’s, famously having an influence on Detroit’s techno scene. To the city and the people Shigeto has surrounded himself with since coming back to Detroit, “Detroit Part II” is an ode to the creative influences that have cultivated such a strong and collaborative community for Shigeto.

“It’s focused on a couple things and they all kind of come together to represent different things,” explains Saginaw about the new album. “My time back in Detroit, back living in Michigan and spending time with a lot of kind of original people who have always been here, learning from them, hearing stories from them, being influenced by them, and inspired by them.”

While, in the past, projects like Lineage or No Better Time Than Now were rooted in strong personal messages, family and relationships respectively, The New Monday represents a communal effort where solidarity is the key. Going for a simplified approach of just trying to make good tracks, The New Monday is diverse in its styles leaning more into a dance music direction – new ground for a Shigeto project. A new air of confidence in Saginaw has expanded his horizons since his return to Detroit, but traces of his past work will continue to be present.

“I don’t want people to think I’m leaving anything,” says Saginaw. “I’m still me. It’s a result of me being immersed in the culture, and inevitably making music that is influenced by that culture whether it be house, techno, jazz, rap. It doesn’t matter. It’s all coming from what I love about Michigan.”

While The New Monday still features the jazz textures long associated with Shigeto projects, the varied elements that make up the album cohesively come together to show the distinct inspiration that Saginaw has drew from since his return home to Detroit. Like on “Barry White”, which features Detroit hip-hop artist ZelooperZ  (a member of Danny Brown’s Bruiser Brigade crew who Saginaw also has a side project with called ZGTO), Saginaw captures everything he’s been doing all on one track. As much as it’s hip-hop influenced, it’s a mutant that encompasses elements of dance music, jazz, and ambient sounds.

Throughout The New Monday, Saginaw poignantly references the musical influences that have either always been with him or newly discovered. It is Saginaw’s interpretation of Detroit’s rich culture of innovative artistry, but done so with respect for the history and to contribute, not disrupt.

“I think over the past four years, I can confidently say that I found my place here,” describes Saginaw. “I’m happy here and I feel that I have the respect from the people I need respect from, that I want respect from. It’s all of the result of embracing it and embracing, not Detroit, but embracing community, embracing family, being closer to my parents, being closer to my oldest friends.”

Pre-order here

06 October 2017 / Ghostly International
01. Detroit Part II
02. Barry White (ft. ZelooperZ)
03. Ice Breaker
04. In Case You Forgot
05. There’s A Vibe Tonight (ft. Kaleena Zanders)
06. A2D (ft. ZelooperZ & Silas Green) (AAPV)
07. Wit Da Cup
08. Don’t Trip (ft. Silas Green)
09. When We Low

Video: Tycho – See feat. Beacon

Tycho has announced the release of ‘See (Feat. Beacon), the first ever song featuring vocals from the GRAMMY® Award-nominated dance/electronic project. The track is available at all digital music retailers and streaming services today.

‘See (Feat. Beacon)’ began its journey as a instrumental track on Tycho’s acclaimed 2014 album, AWAKE, but soon took on a new form with a bubbly remix from fellow Ghostly International artists Beacon, melding the original track’s serene energy with buoyant dance grooves and gossamer vocals from the New York-based duo’s own Thomas Mullarney III. 2017 saw Tycho and Mullarney team up onstage for stellar live renditions of “See” during Tycho’s remarkable Coachella sets – the band’s first ever performances to see them joined by a vocalist. “See (Feat. Beacon)” was soon re-recorded as a proper collaboration, uniting Tycho’s mesmerizing melodies and stuttering percussion with Beacon’s trademark vocal approach, resulting in an astonishing and altogether original new sound from both acclaimed outfits.

Download/ Stream ‘See (feat. Beacon)’: https://ghostly.lnk.to/tycho-see

Tycho will celebrate “See (Feat. Beacon)” – as well as 2016’s chart-topping album, EPOCH – with a world tour featuring major festival appearances in Europe at Primavera Sound, Way Out West, Sziget Festival, Lowlands and Pukkelpop. In the United States Tycho will tour the West Coast with Todd Terje & The Olsens and tour the East Coast with Phantogram. For complete details and ticket availability, please see tychomusic.com/#tour.

COM TRUISE – Isostasy

Last month Com Truise – aka Seth Haley – announced Iteration, his first new album in 6 years, which will be released on June 16th via Ghostly International.

Today, along with a string of new UK & European live date announcements, he follows previously shared single “Memory,” a pop-inflected, futuristic synth-driven cut, with his second single “Isostasy.” As its name implies, the track has a spaciousness to it, as it seemingly floats through the sonic world Com Truise has built over the years.

Hear “Isostasy” here:

“Repetition is a form of change,” reads one of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies. Seth Haley knows the concept well, and his style of technicolour synth-wave takes the mantra as a challenge–how much emotion can one man convey through his machines? Six years ago, Galactic Melt introduced space traveler Com Truise and his journey through far-flung galaxies, before mini-epics Wave 1 and Silicon Tare expanded the story in further cosmic detail. And now Iteration concludes this particular sprawling saga. True to its name, the album is built on Com Truise hallmarks: neon-streaked melodies, big drums, robotic grooves, bleary nostalgia. But Iteration is also the most elegant and streamlined that Haley’s music has ever sounded.

At the album’s heart is an elaborate narrative, one full of longing, hope, anxiety, and triumph. Iteration illustrates the last moments Com Truise spends on the perilous planet Wave 1, before he and his alien love escape its clutches to live in peace. Album opener “…Of Your Fake Dimension” launches the interstellar drama with its anthemic swells and widescreen sound design, before lovesick songs like “Dryswch” and “Propagation” outline scenes wrought with cybernetic pathos. In “Isostasy”, the synaesthetic quality of Haley’s compositions is presented in ultra-high-definition. Later, the frantic rhythms of “Syrthio” conjure images of panicked flight, as Haley’s gorgeous synth melodies gild the action in quiet heartbreak. Then comes the resounding “When Will You Find The Limit…”, when Iteration’s pain and sadness finds liberation in the vast unknown. The closing title track ends it all in a gush of majestic revelry.

So goes the winding story that Iteration tells, and yet there’s more behind its telling. “I try hard not to write from my personal life, but it’s inevitably going to seep into the music,” Haley explains. “It’s basically like I’m scoring this film in my head, but that film I’m scoring is also somehow my life.” There are glimpses of the difficult time the East Coast native spent adjusting to a new life in Los Angeles, fighting homesickness and burnout while also touring the world. It was a time full of uncertainty, transition, and self-realization. After a year and a half of living in California, Haley finally recaptured his creativity by finding new excitement in his work. “I put more air, more breathing room in the music—that was the big change,” he says. And once that clicked, the album quickly materialized.

Such a clear refinement of the Com Truise sound took time to develop, but Iteration is well worth the patience and perseverance it cost. Some of Haley’s smartest, catchiest work is here, from the weightless pop heights of “Memory” to “Ternary”‘s lush synth-funk. A song like “Vacuume” somehow manages to balance massive bass swells and punishing drums with stuttering angelic gasps, and “Usurper” gracefully pairs subtle poignant melodies with uplifting dance beats.

“For me, it feels like change,” Haley says of his second album, and yes, this is Com Truise like never before. By embracing the music’s inherent nature and peerless qualities, Iteration finds new avenues of expression in its vivid, familiar surroundings.

Beacon – Marion

Thomas from Beacon performs “See” on stage with Tycho. Coachella Weekend 2, April 23, 2017.

Beacon are back. In the spirit of a springtime tour as direct support with Tycho, and in the afterglow of an appearance with at Coachella’s second weekend, the New York duo have shared a new single. “Marion” is the first piece of music this year from Thomas Mullarney III and Jacob Gossett, who released their second LP, Escapements, in 2016 to great success.

At the heart of “Marion” is a hammered dulcimer. The percussive, stringed instrument—an ancient ancestor of the piano—acts as the composition’s harmonic and dynamic guide. Samples ebb and flow, projecting into the mix at moments of brightness and clarity. Other times they recede beneath Mullarney’s crystalline voice and a bed of feathery, pneumatic production. This is the mode in which Beacon have always thrived: wistful amidst pulsing electronics and soft-washed hues.