[listen] Club Telex Noise Ensemble

"They were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, naturally they became heroes."
- Princess Leia

It all started with the Yo-Talo staff Christmas party in December 2000. Club Telex Noise Ensemble, the (anti)musical "electro-primitivist" side project of our Club Telex events, took its first flight. There was your humble narrator playing a three-octave Yamaha Portasound, DJ mini on electronics, Antti Koivumäki on vacuum cleaner, Olli Sotamaa playing cornet, Kaitsu Mäkelä fiddling with cymbals, and Antti Vuorio projecting films all over us. We played this track. In the drunken whirl of silly comedy rock acts, our art terrorism must have felt totally outlandish.

The next time we hit as the encore of the Chicks on Speed gig we had arranged for Club Telex. Melissa of CoS annouced us, we did our thing, then the ladies -- Alex, Kiki, Melissa -- joined us in the maelstrom, jumping and shouting: "Never go home! Never go home! Never go home!" What the hell was that? Before you had a chance to realize what had happened, it was over. And it sounded like this.

Finally, the last gig of Club Telex Noise Ensemble, and our swansong in late April 2001. Kotka is a small port town on the South coast of Finland. We arrived there to play at an event called Omituisten otusten yö ("The Night of Strange Creatures"), and the rest is history(?). We played the following tracks: CTNE, 96T, OKST, ISO, and KVY. Tuukka Vartiainen, who organized the event, called us "the twisted bastard sons of Op:l Bastards".

I was anxious to do more gigs, but the other members did not warm up to the idea, probably preferring to bury it with as little sound and fury as possible. However, CTNE's live recordings were a start to pHinnWeb's CDR micro label, pHinnMlk Recordings, which released them in June 2001.

Club Telex Noise Ensemble died but was resurrected in the form of remixes: Legowelt, Luke Eargoggle, 8-Bit Rockers, Andrew Duke, Gater, Kemialliset Ystävät, Unidentified Sound Objects, and the first appearance of our new project, Kompleksi. The first four of these appeared on a 12" vinyl in UK, which was praised by Dave Clarke, Andy Weatherall and Mark Moore. I kid you not. Though that's another story. The second remix album is on its way.


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