O quarteto de Portland, Teleporter 4 é daquelas bandas que na primeira audição já temos a real noção que estamos diante de algo poderoso, intenso e que dispensa classificações ou rotulações.
Talvez um mix intenso entre Richard Hell & The Voidoids e Bardo Pond, ou algo do gênero, o ponto é que chega a ser impossível classificá-los dentro deste ou daquele rótulo. Pegue seu segundo EP, Strange Light que abre com a poderosa e esporrenta Hey Weirdo, que mais parece ser um lado "b" de Blank Generation, só que tudo muda brutalmente já na segunda música, a intensa, psicodélica e freak Strange Light, e as última duas do EP, "Shaky Smile" e "Like You" trazem a memória coisas como Gun Club e Jefferson Airplane, ou seja, o negócio do Teleporter 4 é confundir.
Resumindo tudo, se você busca por desorientação e intensidade, o Teleporter 4 pode ser sua nova banda favorita.
***** Interview with Teleporter 4 *****
Suzanne and Ero have been playing together, in a lot of different formats, for quite a while. A couple years ago, Suzanne decided that we should start a shoegaze band inspired by the 90s band Medicine. Ero said that he’d need some effects pedals, since in the previous few years we’d been playing mostly very minimal, dreamy folk music, so Suzanne gave him a fuzz pedal for his birthday… and things got a lot noisier right away. We met up with guitarist Chris Dumm, a friend of a friend with a great surf-rock/post-punk sound, and started writing songs. When drummer Judd Higgins came along (via Craigslist!) we knew we were in business. We recorded our first EP, Slow Heart (https://teleporter4.bandcamp.com/album/slow-heart) just a month after Judd joined us, and began playing shows out in public in May 2015.
Q: Who are your influences?
We originally formed Teleporter 4 to be a specifically shoegaze band that would sound like Medicine, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and that 90s era of noisy, dreamy, beautiful rock. And we try to still center our song ideas around that style. But our 60s garage influences come through, and our obsession with David Bowie is always there, and all of the music we’ve worked on over the years -- art-punk and 60s psychedelia and electronic music and krautrock and sleepy drones, the whole bit-- all of it shows up in our songs. At first we didn’t know what to do with all of the different influences, but then we realized that the combination worked really well, and decided to just follow what felt right. People have told us recently that we sound like The Cure and Echo & the Bunnymen, for what that’s worth. But we have a bigger vision that will incorporate more styles and more sounds, and we think that things will keep getting more nuanced as we develop our sound.
Q. Make a list of 5 albums of all time…
Medicine- Her Highness,
Spiritualized - Lazer Guided Melodies,
Portishead- Three,
Slowdive - Souvlaki
and PJ Harvey- Dry.
Q. How do you feel playing live?
Our performance style is pretty intense--onstage we’re usually drenched in sweat. We get completely caught up in the emotions driving the songs, and we’re swept away into the world that each song creates, and we do our best to bring the audience along with us. We put energy into the music and the music gives the energy back.
Q. How do you describe Teleporter 4 sounds?
We’ve been calling our music psychedelic post-punk. All of the music that’s closest to our heart is psychedelic, in that it creates its own reality and draws listeners in. We hope our music does that too. We want our music to affect your sense of what the world can be, and maybe even change your life a little bit. It’s post-punk because we’re drawn to faster tempos, prominent basslines and danceable beats, and a lot of our songwriting influences come from the shadowier, gloomier side of psychedelia.
Q: Tell us about the process of recording the songs?
We spend a lot of time working out arrangements ahead of time, so recording is pretty straightforward. For Strange Light we did basic tracks at The Map Room here in Portland (http://www.themaproomstudio.com/) with a great engineer, Josh Powell. Then we recorded extra vocals and percussion with our friend Lee Howard at Mystery Machine Studios (http://www.mysterymachinestudio.com/), and he did the mixing. The final step was getting it mastered by Rafter Roberts (https://rafter.bandcamp.com/). Working with these three terrific individuals meant that we didn’t have to worry about the technical side of things-- we could trust that their magic ears and good judgment would make us sound exactly right.
Q. Which new bands do you recommend?
Portland has a lot of amazing neo-psych/shoegaze bands right now. We’ve been delighted by Tender Age (https://tenderage.bandcamp.com/), Darkswoon (https://darkswoon.bandcamp.com/), Skull Diver (https://skulldivermusic.bandcamp.com/), Cat Hoch (https://cathoch.bandcamp.com/), Candace (https://candaceisaband.bandcamp.com/) and Cambrian Explosion (https://cepdx.bandcamp.com/). It’s hard, because there are so many great bands in town that we can’t even see all the shows we’d like to.
Outside of Portland, lately we’ve been listening a lot to the new Sound of Ceres album (https://soundofceres.bandcamp.com/). We’re also currently obsessed with the new albums by Heron Oblivion (https://heronoblivion.bandcamp.com/) and Spirit System (https://spiritsystem.bandcamp.com/).
Q: Which band would you love to made a cover version of?
Top pick: Medicine. Also Spiritualized, Spacemen 3, the Jesus & Mary Chain.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
We’ll be finishing up our third EP soon and starting to tour the Northwest. We’re also writing a bunch of new songs that are more danceable but also noisier and dreamier. We also just discovered that Judd has a real talent for karaoke, so we think that there’ll be a lot of band karaoke evenings in the near future.
Q: Any parting words?
Thanks so much for including us, and thanks for helping spread the word about all the other great music out there!
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Thanks
https://teleporter4.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/teleporter4
