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telefon tel aviv, "immediate action #8"
Hefty's Immediate Action series has almost been revived with this EP from Telefon Tel Aviv. The first wave of the series came as a flood of limited 12" singles, some were entirely of one artist and others were collaborative works matching up a couple Hefty frends and mainstays. While this disc keeps up the mish-mashing of folks—with remixes from Slicker, Prefuse 73 and the first appearance of female vocalist, Lindsay Anderson (of L'Altra)—its non-limitedness and CD format make it seem like a completely different beast. To me, this EP doesn't feel like it's part of a multi-part multi-artist compilation, but an appropriate stopgap between last year's fantastic debut from Telefon Tel Aviv and the follow-up, whenever that's due to arrive.Hefty
The opening track, "Sound in a Dark Room," is a brand new recording and the first time a guest vocalist has actually sung for the band. It keeps with TTA's tradition of clean instrumentation, chopped up electronic beats and strong bass guitar work while the vocals add an entirely new dimension to the music. While some might like this added bit of personality to the somewhat robotic sounds of the duo, I can't say I'm completely sold on the idea of a vocalist in the mix, especially as the song becomes a wishy washy love song once words become audible. The other non-remix track on here, "8 Track Project Cut," was recorded back in 1999, and, while the choppy beat techniques and crystal sound of their debut can be hinted at here, it sounds sterile enough to be an electronic music student's midterm. The Slicker remix of "TTV" doesn't do much different than the original version on the album while the short alteration of "Fahrenheit Fair Enough" by Prefuse 73 is almost an instrumental hip-hop by numbers at this point. You know it's the dog-end of a year when things are becoming almost too predictable.
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