Immolate Yourself

VINYL FORMAT. This is the third full-length album by Chicago's Telefon Tel Aviv (Joshua Eustis and Charles Cooper), and their first for BPitch Control. Both are great musicians with a sense for the right sound, who have already proven their talent successfully on two previous albums. Immolate Yourself is the result and continuation of a development in their music that was initially started with their previous works on Hefty Records Fahrenheit Fair Enough (2001) and Map of Effortless (2004). The band approach their newer, longer, more intimate synth-pop direction this way: "The record is still entirely Telefon Tel Aviv, but throughout there is a cross-processed filter that makes everything saturated, grainy, distorted, dusty and distressed." Immolate Yourself unites ten tracks with the aim to give the term "electro-pop" a new definition for the year 2009. Although each track has its own story to tell, together they paint a bigger picture that encapsulates the Telefon Tel Aviv sound. Arguably the album's standout track "Helen of Troy" -- a driving, moody and muddled piece, full of '80s aesthetics, vintage synths and low, romantic vocals -- was in fact the last track to be finished and in a way marked the climax and formed the basis of the whole work. With this release, Telefon Tel Aviv make a statement that combines popular dance music with their own darker reflections on the electronic sound universe.