At the time of its release in 2001, the liquid, jazz-inflected electronic of Telefon Tel Aviv's Fahrenheit Fair Enough provided welcome respite from IDM's relentlessly brittle and increasingly boring routine. Steeped in the same burbling warmth that defined Scott Herren's pre-Barcelona output as Savath & Savalas, Fahrenheit politely suggested a new direction that electronic music might take, one that relied as heavily on the Rhodes as it did the Cubase VST. Although it wasn't a radical approach, it was enough to differentiate Telefon's languid post-rock from the digital drill bit sounds buzzing out from every other 18 year-old's laptop. Temporarily, anyway.
Three years is an eternity in electronic music's timeline; certainly more than enough to expose the inherent limitations in making chillout music for a subset that defined themselves by never going out much to begin with. In 2004, more of Telefon's once-novel blend of digital squiggles and organic arrangements would seem passe, a little late to its own party. So, rather than scale back the soul in their electronic music, Tel Aviv's Joshua Eustis and Charles Cooper downsize the electronic in their soul, in the process adding two singers and re-emerging as a sort of twerkier Zero 7.
Where Fahrenheit Fair Enough was entirely instrumental, seven of the nine tracks on Map of What Is Effortless feature vocals. Singing duties are split by Damon Aaron, whose reedy tenor is serviceable but never exceptional, and L'Altra's Lindsay Anderson, whose disaffected vocals-- with only one exception, and only then with the help of some mansized DSP work-- are similarly unremarkable. But even with better performances from its singers, Map of What Is Effortless would still be a deeply flawed record. The reason for this is simple: The addition of vocalists and the move to a song-oriented structure demands better songs, and yet Telefon Tel Aviv continue to lean on immaculately sculpted sonics and massive orchestral swoops for their drama. Without decent source material, the singers are left to languish, and usually, they take the songs with them.
Frustratingly, the instrumentals account for two of the album's best three tracks. Opener "When It Happens It Moves All by Itself" is a rolling slice of string-noir that invites comparisons to Cinematic Orchestra, while the album's title track contains an achingly bittersweet string motif that builds to a muted climax before slipping nimbly out the backdoor. To be honest, I'm not even sure if the third standout, "My Week Beats Your Year", stands out because it's particularly good or simply because it's something other than prettified, meandering neo-soul. Featuring Anderson's icy, mulched vocals, a clapback rhythm and a staccato keyboard line, it plays like Tel Aviv's approximation of a Richard X clubfloor track.
But everything else, from the wandering "I Lied" (propped up by a well-placed rush of strings) to the stillborn "What It Was Will Never End" (propped up by a well-placed surge of guitars), just kind of hopelessly meanders, waiting, as if the arrangements might suddenly do something different to redeem it. Sometimes that happens, but too often, Map of What Is Effortless just plods, one track lazily into another, lukewarm and glazed over, all dressed up, nowhere to go.
