We love cover songs, so its natural that we love the holiday season. This year we’re overjoyed to give you the gift of our holiday EP, “A Very Telephoned Christmas”, which presents 3 xmas favs in a covered-up telephoned stylee. We’re excited about doing something different with the classics, but also looking forward to finally having some music our Mom’s will like. Happy Holidays to all, and if you’re in New York, make sure to come to our Holiday Special Switchboard next tuesday!
Good Callis here! This mixtape is the third installment in our game-changing, telephone-pun-naming, and altogether great-listening series of explorations through cover music. Be prepared for everything you’ve come to love about Telephoned tapes, but some new tricks thrown in as well! Again, props to the amazing Ariana Lindenfelser for the amazing cover artwork! (read more about that here).
We’ve been hard at work on lots of our own, non-cover, original Telephoned songs (a la “Hold Me”), but couldn’t deny the fans with their requests for another mix. Hey, maybe even some of our original song ideas will make an appearance…
On Good Call, we chose a decidedly late summer/early fall feel, to ensure it suitable for heavy rotation over the next months. But stop reading and listen already. Full tracklisting below the jump.
TELEPHONED - Good Call
1. Ring Ring 2. Dynamite 3. Last Time 4. Somebody To Love Me / It’s Not Over 5. Crave You 6. Super Bass / Zoidac 7. No One Around 8. Swim Good / Coming Down 9. Castles In The Snow 10. Our Deal / Before I Let You Go 11. Never Tell Me No 12. What’s Love Got To Do With It 13. Heartbroken 14. Say Ahh… 15. Hope / Energy 16. All Of The Lights / The Vow 17. The Vow / Ring Ring
We’re putting out another Mix! Good Call will be released on 9/13, the date of the next Switchboard night. Check out the cover art above by the amazing Ariana Lindenfelser!
If you’ve followed Telephoned for the past few years, you may have noticed a little trend with the subject matter of our cover art… It’s right in the band name, we love the telephone! Each time we gear up for a new release, we have a tradition of inviting a favorite visual artist into our little game of interpretation.
From Fool’s Gold visual mastermind Dust La Rock (Telephoned EP), to NYC photo eye Texas (Off The Hook), to Burlesque design’s Mike “2600 King” Davis (Hold Me 7”), and back home to James Ryang (Keep Their Heads Ringin’), all these artists have done their own “telephone cover” lending their take on the iconic device of communication. For our upcoming mix “Good Call” (dropping 9.13!!!), we tapped Ariana Lindenfelser aka Red Fox In Bootz
We met Ariana in Columbus, OH, through our friends CJ (of Cassius Slay) and Freaky Franz. She was preparing for a big art show in town when we first saw some of her work. It was immediately clear that she had a distinct style and flair— a combination of squiggly pen lines and watercolors which looks whimsical, yet grounded. She graciously accepted our invitation to play the telephone cover game, and we love the results!
If you want to know more about Ariana, follow her on twitter and check out her tumblr.
Telephoned was born one night in Brooklyn when DJ/producer Sammy Bananas and singer/party starter Maggie Horn decided to record their own version of T-Pain's "Can't Believe It." Their track was neither remix nor cover - instead, the duo fashioned a postmodern take on both, warping the original beat into a hypnotic club track and bringing out the dreamy qualities only hinted at in Pain's auto-tuned melodies. Sammy and Maggie's fresh "Can't Believe It" quickly became a DJ favorite - even making it into mix rotation on LA hip-hop station Power 106! - so they decided to keep recording as a team, cleverly named after the kids game of Telephone: no faithful copies, just a party line of unexpected twists.
Over the past two years, the duo have expanded the concept as they continue to churn out instantly addictive and massively charming covers, create genre-bashing mixtapes and perform their non-stop whirlwind live show on stages across the world. To promote the release of their self titled EP on Fool's Gold in Winter '10, Telephoned compiled a mix modeled in the tradition of rap street tapes. On "Off The Hook" Bananas selects recognizable instrumentals from dance and hip-hop while Horn sings other songs on top of them, a combination the group christen the "cover-up".
Telephoned's energetic, mixtape-dance-party of a live show got the attention of prestigious website Pitchfork, who called their performance in Austin,TX "the most fun thing at SXSW." Electro-revivalists Chromeo caught wind of the act, inviting the duo to join them on their "Business Casual" tour this August, making stops in over 20 cities while performing to packed venues across the US and Canada. Bananas and Horn released their second mixtape "Keep Their Heads Ringin" just before hitting the road, and reveled in handing CDs out for free to fans after performing each night.
The pair are poised to further expand the scope of Telephoned with their forthcoming 7" and digital release on Scion A/V in late November. "Hold Me" is the first entirely original song born out of the collaboration, but their mission statement hasn't changed considering the fact they chose to cover themselves for the b-side of the record, "Telephoning" the original uptempo funky track into a smoothed out alt-country tune. Telephoned survives off of transforming and mutating songs through their own lens, and thats the only rule to play the game.