We earlier premiered the ‘Mister Imperator (Dub Mix)’ from two of Ireland’s most iconic music personalities – producer/ mixer/ composer Garret “Jacknife” Lee (U2, R.E.M., Modest Mouse, The Cars, The Killers, Snow Patrol, Crystal Castles, Editors, Taylor Swift) and singer-songwriterCathal Coughlan (acclaimed solo artist and frontman of Microdisney and The Fatima Mansions ), who are together known asTelefís (the Irish Gaelic word for Television, pronounced Tele-feesh). Now they are back with the single “Falun Gong Dancer’, previewing their debut album ‘a hAon’ (Number One).
The accompanying video was created by American illustrator, photographer, and film director Matt Mahurin(Peter Gabriel, U2, Tom Waits, REM, Tracy Chapman, Sting, Bonnie Raitt, Ice-T, Metallica, David Byrne, Joni Mitchell), who notes, “Just as a unique and powerful piece of music can transport the listener to new and thrilling emotional territory, to be given the opportunity to create the visuals for such a special song left me no choice but to discover images and inspiration that were unexpected yet timeless. The daring expanses of silence, yearning vocals, and compelling lyrics gave me the gift of exploring the essential of the earthly and the curiosity of the cosmic. It’s an honor and joy to be trusted by Jacknife and Cathal to help them share their amazing music.”
Several words come to mind when listening to and watching the video for this song – spacious, serene, sublime and smooth and sympathetic. Oddly enough, all of them begin with the letter ‘S”. Cathal’s clear and painfully convincing vocals are the icing on the cake for a sparsely (oops, another ‘S’) arranged musical canvas, composed by Jacknife Lee. Obviously his sense of positioning is right on the money, having earned him a reputation as a world-class producer.
In contrast with the first two Telefís releases, ‘Falun Gong Dancer’ is a very stark arrangement (another ‘S’), featuring a cyclical, meditative melody over dissolving piano chords and synth pulses, heard in episodic passages which take the listener on a tour of the world – from London, to the US-Mexico border, to the cities of Australasia – in the company of a hapless narrator. Occasional interludes of electronic harmony hint at either a tentative intimacy, or at an isolation which is final and absolute – it remains ambiguous.
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“Each episode describes a further incident in his romantic pursuit of the dancer of the song’s title, as he (over-?)identifies with her perceived struggles, and hopes to find common cause with her – for his own depleted condition to become their common cause, perhaps. Implicit is the narrator’s ticking internal clock, which must surely count down to zero before long. Time is out of joint, and the narrator has been repelled by or expelled from his natural habitat, although we do not learn where his home is or was,” says Cathal Coughlan.
Jacknife Lee uses his extensive sonic palette to create an irresistible mix of cinematic instrumentals and electro-funk backdrops full of melodic, squelchy synths and thunderous bass-lines, often with a cheeky nod to electro-pop history. He has also created remixes for such artists as Radiohead, U2, Blur, Run-DMC, Pink, Future Sound of London, Christina Aguilera, TLC, Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, Eminem, The Raveonettes, Kraftwerk, New Order and Kasabian.
He explains: “Silence can cause tension. Even when recording the song, the pausing became both comforting and frustrating. When I listen to the song now I can’t help but try to alter time, trying to force the next line to come sooner, willing it earlier, but it doesn’t and won’t arrive when I expect it. It always comes a little bit late. I’m active in the space. When the line does come it’s soothing and beautiful but the lyric is complex and doesn’t resolve anything. And then the silence again. Is the song long? Is it short? It confuses my already recently disturbed perception of time.”
The forthcoming ‘a hAon’ album includes 13 highly unique tracks – part celebration and part satire – in which Telefís explores nostalgia, as experienced in the present day, by natives of what was formerly a culturally sealed-off small country on Europe’s very fringe. It also points a critical finger at today’s global hierarchies, an inspiration for the strange characters and caricatures that spring from Coughlan’s fertile imagination. Stark forms of imagery, bizarre to the modern eye and ear but treated as routine in the pre-globalization world, are pushed at the listener and viewer.
On December 3, ‘Falun Gong Dancer’ will be available digitally across online stores and streaming platforms at https://orcd.co/telefisfalungongdancer. The ‘a hAon’ LP will be released on February 11 via London-based Dimple Discs. It will be issued on CD and vinyl (both with a two-sided lyric sheet insert). Physical pre-orders are now available at https://ffm.to/telefisahaon and the digital release athttps://orcd.co/telefisahaon.
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