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.
