tellavision: the third eye

The Third Eye is the third album by Hamburg's Tellavision aka Fee R. Kürten, who has been deeply rooted in DIY culture right from her start in 2007. Kürten calls her original aesthetic "hardware post-pop," work which she uses to deconstruct borders between (anti-)pop and avant-garde, and between high and low art. The Third Eye follows 2011's Music on Canvas and 2013's Funnel Walk, which was recorded with Tobias Levin (Tocotronic; Mutter; Ja, Panik). Developed and produced during a stay at the Whitehaus, one of Boston's self-governing cultural centers, the tracks play with Tellavision's reception across different genres; too punk for an arty audience, too arty for the punks, Kürten, who studied arts at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (attending classes taught by Jutta Koether and Felix Kubin, among others), follows an interdisciplinary approach that combines visual arts, film, and music, taking in a wide range of pop-cultural references, rejecting them, and finally mashing them up for new positions in contemporary arts that defy conventions. Defied too is the concept of the traditional A-side and B-side; instead, The Third Eye is split into two named sides. Ease Tikky Tab continues and refines Tellavision's atonal, dub-infected trademark sound, while Cryptic Snash Man crystallizes as an oscillating field of krauty repetition and industrial ambiences. Oppressive, dissonant soundscapes, created by a reduced set-up of analog synthesizers, percussive elements, and fragmentary field recordings, go along perfectly with Kürten's elegic, soulful voice. It's a unique sound that situates the young artist, 27 at the time of this release, among like-minded lo-fi-advocates Ariel Pink and John Maus, the rhythmic grooves of ESG, and a generation of female artists including Fatima al Qadiri, Inga Copeland (whom Kürten has supported in concert), Gazelle Twin, and Klara Lewis.