Telefon Tel Aviv - Dreams Are Not Enough (2019)

Posted By: delpotro

Date: Sept. 27, 2019

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.

From the shuddering software oscillations of the opening piece, “I dream of it often,” the classic Telefon palette of hyper-modern sound design and smoky nocturnal emotion feels vividly revitalized. The songs stand apart but belong together, threading a veiled narrative of loss, anger, and age—the crumbling of constancies, shifting sands slipping through the hourglass.

The album’s fragmented track titles relate a recurring dream that’s haunted Eustis since childhood, based on a murky incident during a family vacation to a remote Alabama coastline when he was eight. In the dream he swims alone through the waves past the sandbar to where the ocean shelf abruptly drops away into a gradient of infinite darkness; awed, he peers into the depths and sees himself down at the bottom, mouth open and eyes blank, standing motionless like a corpse.

An undercurrent of eerie melancholy flows through the album, manifested in shivering widescreen meditations, depressive twilit modern pop, and devotional industrial abstractions. Melodies emerge and evaporate; rhythms lock in step then fracture and fade; centers cannot hold.

“A younger version of myself” deftly encapsulates the unique poignancy and shadowplay of this TTA iteration, shuffling on a hypnotic rhythm with the swing of backwards looping tape as Eustis croons a lost, liminal lament about lost time. “Standing at the bottom of the ocean” sinks even more minimal, subliminal electricity crossfading into skeletal soul built from ghostly bass, smeared chords, and naked voice, before ebbing away in a cyber-screwed downtempo outro.

Eustis speaks of wanting Dreams Are Not Enough to evoke a sense of emptiness, of cutting unnecessary elements from each mix, to convey this as a solitary work—framing an absence. A document as much of what’s not there as what remains.

Tracklist:
1. I dream of it often: (04:58)
2. a younger version of myself, (05:15)
3. standing at the bottom of the ocean; (05:36)
4. arms aloft, (07:43)
5. mouth agape, (04:57)
6. eyes glaring, (06:57)
7. not seeing, (06:16)
8. not breathing, (04:50)
9. still as stone in a watery fane. (03:30)

EAC

Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016

EAC extraction logfile from 26. September 2019, 15:57

Telefon Tel Aviv / Dreams Are Not Enough

Used drive : ATAPI DVD A DH16AASH Adapter: 1 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Appended to previous track

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -8 -e -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %haslyrics%–tag-from-file=LYRICS="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" %source% -o %dest%

TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 4:58.31 | 0 | 22380
2 | 4:58.31 | 5:15.62 | 22381 | 46067
3 | 10:14.18 | 5:36.35 | 46068 | 71302
4 | 15:50.53 | 7:43.16 | 71303 | 106043
5 | 23:33.69 | 4:57.62 | 106044 | 128380
6 | 28:31.56 | 6:57.61 | 128381 | 159716
7 | 35:29.42 | 6:16.11 | 159717 | 187927
8 | 41:45.53 | 4:50.23 | 187928 | 209700
9 | 46:36.01 | 3:30.64 | 209701 | 225514

Track 1

Filename X:\T\Telefon Tel Aviv\2019 Dreams Are Not Enough\01 - I dream of it often꞉.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:02.00

Peak level 98.9 %
Extraction speed 3.6 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC E3658C58
Copy CRC E3658C58
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 2

Filename X:\T\Telefon Tel Aviv\2019 Dreams Are Not Enough\02 - a younger version of myself,.wav

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 4.1 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC EA821A05
Copy CRC EA821A05
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 3

Filename X:\T\Telefon Tel Aviv\2019 Dreams Are Not Enough\03 - standing at the bottom of the ocean;.wav

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 4.6 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC BF98595D
Copy CRC BF98595D
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 4

Filename X:\T\Telefon Tel Aviv\2019 Dreams Are Not Enough\04 - arms aloft,.wav

Peak level 97.7 %
Extraction speed 5.3 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC B43ECDE7
Copy CRC B43ECDE7
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 5

Filename X:\T\Telefon Tel Aviv\2019 Dreams Are Not Enough\05 - mouth agape,.wav

Peak level 96.8 %
Extraction speed 4.5 X
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC 6583F918
Copy CRC 6583F918
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 6

Filename X:\T\Telefon Tel Aviv\2019 Dreams Are Not Enough\06 - eyes glaring,.wav

Peak level 85.5 %
Extraction speed 5.9 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC D10D0FD0
Copy CRC D10D0FD0
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 7

Filename X:\T\Telefon Tel Aviv\2019 Dreams Are Not Enough\07 - not seeing,.wav

Peak level 97.8 %
Extraction speed 5.3 X
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC D392D064
Copy CRC D392D064
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 8

Filename X:\T\Telefon Tel Aviv\2019 Dreams Are Not Enough\08 - not breathing,.wav

Peak level 96.2 %
Extraction speed 6.4 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC B0915F01
Copy CRC B0915F01
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

Track 9

Filename X:\T\Telefon Tel Aviv\2019 Dreams Are Not Enough\09 - still as stone in a watery fane..wav

Peak level 94.3 %
Extraction speed 4.9 X
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC 0A1260CE
Copy CRC 0A1260CE
Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK

None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database

No errors occurred

End of status report

–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6

[CTDB TOCID: lvD__l5qYN_GbiD3MRU_NBZqtX8-] found
Submit result: lvD__l5qYN_GbiD3MRU_NBZqtX8- has been confirmed
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
2 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
3 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
4 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
5 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
6 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
7 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
8 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
9 | (1/1) Accurately ripped

==== Log checksum 677FCFA4544A17C9198C9B3FA9840333E08FB4701F86999CF306508C67133AB7 ====

Thanks to the Original ripper !