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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
The black vinyl edition of "A Thought Is Not A Feeling" comes in a glossy cardboard sleeve including a high quality lyrics booklet and sticker.
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via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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edition of 150
€25EURor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
The random coloured vinyl edition of "A Thought Is Not A Feeling" comes in a glossy cardboard sleeve including a high quality lyrics booklet and sticker.
This 're-vinyl' edition is limited to 150 pieces and made from factory waste. We cannot give any guarantee concerning the colour. Sound quality is comparable to a standard colour-vinyl.
Includes unlimited streaming of A Thought Is Not A Feeling
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 2 days
edition of 150
€26EURor more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
The CD edition of "A Thought Is Not A Feeling" comes in a full paper digisleeve including a sticker.
Includes unlimited streaming of A Thought Is Not A Feeling
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Haven’t seen you for a while
Out of sight, not out of style
talking free still not wild
me: caressing
me: careening
you: a witty smile
You had so many reasons not to break this decade
Not willing to go on
So many reasons not to break this decade
Not willing to fade
Next morning, another day
Yours poured with more words
conviction, language, friends and past
You’re meant, you mean them all to last
You had so many reasons not to break this decade
Not willing to go on
so many reasons not to break this decade
Not willing to fade
I can’t get involved
why don’t you see me evolve
You want me to get involved
I cannot see you revolve
Two out of infinite levels
Make my brain freeze
Attention, pls keep coming
Where I need you foremost
Feels don’t hush
Thoughts don’t get me reeling
A thought is not a feeling
Again myself lies down to disassemble
Time to blow out the candle
Times tell – politically spoken
To feel so connected
Although thoughtfully and open
I don’t connect at all
Feels can’t hush
Thoughts don’t get me reeling
A thought is not a feeling
Again myself lies down to disassemble
Time to blow out the candle
Short while last long
My time second to none
No fine lines cross here
Where is the hole
For the mouse to sneak in
It is you all
On the lines so string-thin
One move within a blink
Paint on your eyelids
Who draws through the fence
Thought file outlast this time
Defying the hum
No timelines cross yours
Where is the hole
For the mouse to sneak in
It is you all
On the lines so string-thin
One move within a blink
Paint on your eyelids
Who draws through the fence
Where is the hole
For the mouse to sneak in
It is you all
On the lines so string-thin
One move within a blink
Paint on your eyelids
Who rouges the dab
Where is the hole
For the mouse to sneak in
It is you all
On the lines so string-thin
One move within a blink
Black on your eyelids
Who draws through the fence
Turn out the light
I want to take a look outside
To see the blue and mellow
distance-thinned out dots of these
civilizational pores pass by
What is it that makes you feel so flat
so flatly embraced by the end
No light switch in sight
Hard time to sleep inside
To dream of truth, the shallow
distant pinned-down plans and grief
built on a century’s end oh my
What is it that makes you feel so flat
so flatly embraced by the end
Tiflis Transit is one of those bands that keep you waiting. Waiting for the next single, waiting for the first album, waiting for their first tour - always waiting for the next step to be made; a bit like life. When they started out in 2018 with their debut EP featuring the lead-single "May", the path was hardly mapped out. Starting out as a side project of the busy minds Fabian Till and Birk Buttchereyt, it quickly became clear that something very special was being created here, made up of set pieces from soul, psychedelia, jazz influences and an indie past. No wonder that "May" has collected over 3 million streams on streaming platforms since, the track "Mosaic" has been prominently featured in a Netflix series and an illustrious circle of colleagues are also asking themselves: aha? Since the first songs in 2018, listeners have been waiting for the first full-length album, instead receiving two measly EPs within 5 years and being surprised by the pandemic while waiting for the first tour. After this first tour was played with success, Tiflis Transit's debut album will now be released on April 12th 2024.
"A Thought Is Not A Feeling" is the title and reveals: Waiting is some sort of concept here. "I've been a longtime-fan of slowness, to the delight of my label," says Fabian Till and explains: "We could certainly be faster, but when I thought about whether that would be a good thing the other day, I came to the conclusion that NO. If songs are to become really good under the time, financial and social conditions under which we write, compose, arrange, record, etc. them, then it takes that time."
And how worthwhile it was! Song after song reveals a capricious musical quality.
"A Thought Is Not A Feeling" kicks off with "A.M", a massive hat under which Tiflis Transit unite a somewhat stodgy funk guitar, tinkling organ interjections, snappy drums, gospel choirs and thoroughly dusty glittering synth salvos. The result is the next banger in the band's history - rousing and amazing.
Followed by "Two Out", which the band say is their "journeyman's piece". Although it sounds as if every finely placed cymbal stroke, every carefully added timbre, every chiselled note has been put in its place with the help of velvet gloves and with the utmost deliberation, the piece lacks neither emotion nor accessibility. Everything seems grotesquely clear and predetermined.
In third place is "The Fencer", something like the lyrical realization of "The Crazy Labyrinth" as a fever dream; in a musical guise that is in equal parts irresistibly groovy, catchy and yet psychedelic, at times almost proggy and surprising.
With "Misunderstadings / Consolations", a bit of spiky bossa mingles with the other album songs and tells us stories about strange situations on the street, misunderstandings and the efforts to clear them up.
Contrary to what the title suggests, the following "Flat" has nothing to do with flatness, except perhaps with the wide view over the inner prairie that opens up while listening. The song seeks to explore this stale feeling of a strange, not necessarily physical embrace and, as so often with Tiflis Transit, hits every note.
There is also another, more pessimistic note to the album and so "Things That Don't Work In RL" is a little too dedicated to buckling to the state of the world and may not believe that the true essence of change and its meaning can be passed on from one generation to the next.
In seventh place is the classic "Interlude" without any meaning or purpose other than that which lies in the word. However, if you listen carefully, you might find out otherwise. By the way: Tiflis's Transit could also release their own collection of such interludes, especially if they are followed by a somewhat obscurely narrative slacker hit like "The Braker". In keeping with the groove, the song poses the following questions: have you ever met a chauvinist on every corner at work? No? Then have a discussion with yourself and him and your friends.
At the end of "A Thought Is Not A Feeling", Tiflis Transit present a song like an ASMR video: "Overstretch". At least that's how the song feels when you listen to it for the first time with full concentration. What Tiflis Transit like to call a "tent", pours into every sensory crevice that is not immune to sonic honey; a psychedelically composed variation of landscape painting turned music.
So time is undoubtedly a key word for this debut from Tiflis Transit, which for the first time in the history of the project was created entirely as a co-production between Fabian Till and Birk Buttchereyt. And once again - apart from putting an end to the waiting - it wants to do a lot at the same time; with a little luck, it was possible to musically stop this pushing in different directions in the field of tension between individual and global loss of control, which should not obscure the tugging process of finding a name. The trivial "A Thought Is Not A Feeling" is an attempt to express this field of tension: without fire there is no revolution, without brooding there is no sadness? or rather something almost unphilosophical; a reassurance.
The musical team is completed by numerous musicians and their long list of instruments: Piano, guitar, bass, drums, percussion, various synthesizers, trumpet, trombone, flugelhorn, alto and tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet and flute. The now Grammy-nominated mixer Samur Khouja (Cate Le Bon, Midnight Sister, among others) from Los Angeles then took care of the fine-tuning of the sound, so that all musical possibilities could be carefully exploited in this respect too.
The album was mastered in Seattle, WA by Rachel Field at Resonant Mastering. The conceptual and long-term artwork was realized by photographer Thi Thuy Nhi Tran (photos, photograms, design) and designer Setenay Bursali (layout, design, typesetting), both based in Berlin, in close and sensitive small-scale collaboration.
So now the circle closes, starting in February 2021 with the first song sketches, which were then born as songs on stage on the band's first tour in spring 2023 at the latest. Back in the studio, Fabian Till & Birk Buttchereyt then made musical dreams come true and opened the doors to a huge stylistic playground.
As a listener, you sit on this playground for the strictly counted 33 minutes of the album and can hardly wait for every single note - waiting can be beautiful.
credits
released April 12, 2024
all songs composed by Fabian Till & Birk Buttchereyt
lyrics by Fabian Till
The Braker was composed by Jan Richard Szalankiewicz, Fabian Till & Birk Buttchereyt
produced by Birk Buttchereyt & Fabian Till; tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 9 produced by Birk Buttchereyt, Fabian Till & Jakob Lebsanft
band recordings engineered by Lukas Kurz
mixed by Samur Khouja at Seahorse Sound, L.A.
mastered by Rachel Field at Resonant Mastering, Seattle
recorded at studio K2, Funkhaus Berlin and at AB Studios Berlin.
Fabian Till - keys, piano, vocals, synthesizer
Birk Buttchereyt – electric & acoustic guitar, bass, theremin, backing vocals, synthesizer, keys
Rachel Colligan - bass on tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 9
Jakob Lebsanft - drums & percussion, additional synthesizer
Janne Surma - backing vocals on tracks 1, 2, 3 & 5
Kelly O'Donohue – trumpet/trombone/flugelhorn on tracks 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5
Malte Schiller – alto & tenor saxophone/clarinet/bass clarinet on tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 9
Noam Carmon - clarinet on tracks 6 & 8
Lisa Baeyens - flute on tracks 6 & 8
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