TELEPORT COLLECTIVE - A Monolith’s Dream
Aaron Maria Steiner — keys, sampling, lights
Michael Naphegyi — drums, toys, electronics
Joachim Huber — bass tiny machines
The future follows the present and is coming towards us. It is a horizon of possibilities: aimed at, conceived in the present, it challenges us to set the right tone. It is fleeting: once the future has become real, it vanishes in the blink of an eye.
Teleport Collective’s A Monolith’s Dream is a musical portrait in two pictures. The first explores a posthuman world in which human beings have become obsolete. The music is based on a pre-composed score; it has a nostalgic touch, occasionally verging on kitsch. Hinting at sci-fi movie scores, it weaves together grooves and lo-fi elements to create a (retro-)futuristic fabric. “A Monolith’s Dream”, “Skeleton Dance”, “Earth Tape” and “Fata Macchina” make up the soundtrack to this outlandish world, leading us into the rosy light that heralds the coming of a new day. “Dawn”, the final piece, marks the threshold where the posthuman world becomes the present.
The second picture focuses on the blind alley human civilisation is heading into; amid the throbbing cycle of production and consumption, disaster is looming. The dark industrial moods of the mostly improvised pieces emphasise the oppressive atmosphere. “Mother Engine”, “Red Steam” and “Lost in Fuel City” paint a soundscape of machine hordes and electrical circuits, abruptly ending in “Doom”.
With this album, Teleport Collective have succeeded in revealing the critical potential of music: it enables us to study the present from a future perspective, thereby unleashing transformative forces.
Teleport Collective is an electronic jazz trio from Vienna. Their music can be described as “electrified jazz”, drawing influences from contemporary avant-garde, film scores, delicately layered hip-hop grooves and mechanical dance beat with a tendency to delve into the free-fall of improvisation and sound experimentation.
The formation (formerly known as Killah Tofu) was founded in 2014 by Aaron Maria Steiner (keys, sampling, lights), Michael Naphegyi (drums, toys, electronics) and Joachim Huber (bass, tiny machines). They released their debut album Do The Pump in 2017 (recognized as one of the Top 10 Albums from Austria in 2017 by Beatboxx), and their second album Scarraphon in 2019. Throughout the past years, their live concerts have progressively evolved into captivating amalgamations of composition, improvisation, and experiments with various sonic elements. Various feature guests expand the band's musical spectrum both on stage and in the studio. In 2023 they launched an event series that took place on selected tuesdays at the well-known club for viennese underground, the rhiz.
