Music > Interviews

Teleman

22/03/16

Besties with Marc Riley, and recently playing the BBC Radio 6 Festival in Bristol, Teleman are getting their name known far and wide at present. If smooth synths, cool vibes and an electronic beat are your bag you’d do worse than come check ‘em out live at Open this month, where they’ll be playing tracks from their new album Brilliant Sanity plus a few other fave numbers. I had a chat with Tom Sanders, vocalist and guitar player for Teleman, about Germany, songwriting and being in a band with his bro.

Three of you used to be in Pete and the Pirates. How come that band split right when you were doing really well and headlining the Scala?

We realised we wanted different things and it became clear that going our separate ways was for the best!

How come you’re called Teleman?

Jonny and I were in a second hand store and we found a record by a composer called Telemann. We appropriated it as our band name as it just had a nice simplicity to it, felt nice to say and had no strong meanings already.

Teleman’s sound is much more pared back than Pete and the Pirates and has perhaps more of a mature sound.  Do you approach songwriting in the same way as you always have?

Yeah pretty much, I've just got better at self-editing and knowing when to stop working on a song, and when one is worth pursuing. I'm increasingly learning to be more focused on what's important in the song, and what's just dead wood, so it can be stripped back to just the bits that are doing what they need to do.

Your new album Brilliant Sanity is out next month – how does it differ from Breakfast?

I think we'd been longing to record together in a very live way ever since we formed as a band and I'd say that's the most marked difference between the two albums. Breakfast was mainly built up as a series of overdubs with very little live performance which can be a really lovely way to work; you can experiment on a greater level with many different takes, more control and endless options. But I think you also lose some of the 'music' when you work like this too much. When four people who really know each other well get into a little room and really play the crap out of a song, its another level of satisfaction. This is what we did as much as possible on Brilliant Sanity. This gave us a much more spontaneous feeling record.  

I heard that it didn’t take too long to write and record this album; was that a deliberate move?

Yes and no. We had a limited time booked in with our producer Dan Carey who was due to start another project immediately afterwards, which is often the way. So we really made the time we had together count, and worked very intensively. This was great for us as it added a real energy to the process. But as a band we tend to work quite slow and steady on our own, really making sure things are right, experimenting a lot with sounds and techniques, so it was great to have someone like Dan on board to help us focus all that into a limited time frame.

What’s the song from the new album that you are most excited about sharing with people live?

Probably our new single Dusseldorf. It's just such a fun song to play, and we've had really great reactions from it so far.

Does the new album carry a particular theme?

The songs are a mixture of themes, and even within songs there are various themes. Broadly speaking I tend to write about places and the people in them, travelling, and relationships.

You’ve had an awful lot of support from Marc Riley. What has his encouragement meant to you?

That's hard to quantify but its great to feel that support behind you form someone like Marc. On a personal level, I love listening to his show so I feel hugely honoured to have our music played on it too!

There’s a definite Krautrock feel to some of your sounds, and in fact your latest wicked single is called Dusseldorf. Do you feel an affinity with German music?

Yes! And with Germany as a country. We share a very similar climate and a love of good beer and sausages. People often talk about our music feeling Krauty... I guess a couple of the songs do, but in general none of us are hugely into Krautrock. It’s probably just a love of simple repetitive drums and sublime synth sounds.

Your videos are very memorable. At what point do the visual ideas come to light for you?

Jonny often has ideas for a video which he is able to execute. Other times videos are made for us by other people. It can be that the music really informs the visual outcome, but other times an idea can exist on its own, which happens to work really well with a particular song.

What’s the best thing about being in Teleman in 2016?

The fact that we are touring again. We really start to miss playing live, and we have such a great tour and summer of festivals coming up. Until you get out there and play the songs live to people, you haven't completed the holy trinity of writing, recording and performing.

You ended up headlining a night at the Radio 6 festival recently when Jon Hopkins was poorly and you played some new tracks – how did they go down with the audience?

That was a fantastic show. I can't remember which new songs we played but I think they were ones that we didn't actually end up recording! We tried out quite a few new songs live before deciding that they weren’t the right songs for the record. Its funny how playing a song live makes you really realise what does and doesn't work in it, much more so than just playing it in the practice room.

Is working with your brother in the band a curse or a blessing?

Ah, it’s fine. It’s a good time for us to hang out actually. It’s nothing like the Gallagher brothers.

I imagine you’ll be playing lots of festivals this summer, but which is your favourite festival and why?

We are playing a festival in the Netherlands called The Great Wide Open. It's on a small island where there are no cars. The programming of the music is amazing, and it’s always nice to arrive to a festival in a small boat.

And finally, what will be on your tour bus stereo?

That depends on who’s driving, but oftentimes after sound checking, listening to the DJ, then listening to the support bands, then playing your own music, it’s actually quite nice to have nothing on the stereo for a while. In the daytimes something chilled, maybe some Kurt Vile or Floating Points. Or of course, some Kraftwerk!

Teleman play Open on 11th April. Tickets available from opennorwich.org.uk.