Telefon Tel Aviv
Dreams Are Not Enough

This is Gone - This is Kevlar.

“I often dream of it: a younger version of myself, standing at the bottom of the ocean;
with arms up, mouth open, piercing eyes, I can't see, I can't breathe,
still as a rock in a water temple.”

Charles Cooper disappeared on an ordinary day. His lifeless body was found the next day in a Chicago park. Charles left at 31 on January 22, 2009, immediately after the release of the last recorded album. The how isn't important; it seems it was due to some medication washed down with alcohol. Very likely an accident, maybe a broken heart.
What matters is that he no longer belongs to this world. His phone is unreachable.
From here on, nothing can ever be the same, moving forward feels inappropriate.
Joshua Eustis completes the promotional tour for the album with an intimate group collaborator, the only one who could adequately replace Charles, Alfredo Nogueira.
Then the program is frozen, the future remains uncertain. In the following years, he prefers to dedicate himself to other work and collaborations: bass and electronics with Puscifer and NIN, productions for other artists, and a solo project, Sons of Magdalene, waterproof and moody synth pop.

Telefon Tel Aviv is an important though little-recognized duo.
Creators of introspective electronic textures and weaves, gentle albums, twilight atmospheres, and downtempo melancholy. They debuted with Fahrenheit Fair Enough in 2001 (★★★★★), an essential container where reflective glitches manage to surpass in poetry the acoustic instruments they are tied to. Strings just barely touched, themes that come and go, lights and shadows appearing and disappearing, subtle magnetism, reverbs, curvilinear basses, soft beats, evening sensitivity, and a lot of metropolitan spleen. Literary titles with sharp irony that direct the listening like a melodrama libretto, imperceptible fills, and background murmurs in a digital landscape. Sound paintings full of opacity, uncertainties, graininess. Verticality.
The French would call it hashish music, but this is Soul Food from New Orleans.
Their production is spread across releases of extended albums and scattered material. In 2004, they return with Map Of What Is Effortless (★★★★). They move from morning drafts and the minimalism of the first album with a work of Chamber Pop adorned with rather baroque arrangements, rich in aerial exercises and orchestral fascinations. Telefon Tel Aviv’s biggest mistake is, perhaps, having started to include vocal parts starting from this second LP. The lyrical part seems superfluous in their case, the moods they constantly aim for have always been reached already with the evanescence of their music alone. Immolate Yourself (★★★☆) in 2009 transcends once again the genre and attempts a hybridization between electronic, dream pop, and shoegaze, strong of the tachycardic climax and neural superimpositions of The Birds, one of the most successful twisted song forms of the duo.
Reality through their broken eyes. Then the tragedy, then the years of silence.
Telefon Tel Aviv has always produced music for introverted people. They have always composed, first of all, for themselves. The empathy that has consolidated with many listeners has been casual, but affectionate. Among the equipment, keyboards, and tapes, a heart beat more human than human, with fragile beauty that goes deep.

The Fourth Call from Tel Aviv is a desired return for those who loved them, even though, understandably, it hurts a bit. Dreams Are Not Enough was written, played, and produced by Eustis alone, for whom it must have been a difficult, tormented writing.
A black, doubtful record, surrounded by electric noises in empty and humid industrial halls. Negentropic at alternate phases, off-topic, synthetic, mechanical. Conclusive.
Visits to dark ambient regions, blocked rhythms, uneasiness, some sparse splashes of dirty celeste, beeps from clinical analysis labs, the noise of the shutters of Garage 73. Punk Not Diet. Loss, anger, the passing and aging of time, constants that shatter, subterranean meditations, dreams that aren’t enough. A final elevation that seems to be a gratitude directly aimed at Morton Feldman. The surprise in the nomenclature of the pieces here too. Like a work by Calvino, one who still shows that you can write of heavy, painful, deep things with levity, without having to take a club to people’s teeth. Lightness without superficiality.

Telefon Tel Aviv has always changed register and directions while remaining electronic, they have never been trivial in this and even this time it couldn't go differently. Even though now Eustis is left all alone. With Charles, perhaps the melodic and clear part is gone, with Joshua, perhaps mainly the dark and percussive side remains.
A nocturnal work, from depressive smog fumes on the ring road with discouragement all over.

The birds remind me of what we made.
The birds remind me of what remains.
To Charles, with invisible transport.
To Joshua, with intangible gratitude.
Fahrenheit Far Away.

Dreams Are Not Enough (TTV)

A sense of emptiness released on September 27, 2019, via Ghostly International.