TIMOTHY FAIRLESS

KEEP TALKING TO ME

1. Tullamarine (7:55)
2. Means of Mutation (9:07)
3. Emanation of Smut (7:16)
4. The Sun Can't Touch You Here (9:42)
5. Currency Exchange (11:37)

At its core, Keep Talking to Me questions how we construct narratives in an era where interactions are increasingly mediated by technology. The album borrows from an installation that “listened” and “responded” to its surroundings, yet the responses were mere echoes—reconfigured remnants of what was heard. Fairless extends this process by feeding field recordings into the same system, further distorting and recontextualizing them, highlighting the gaps and ambiguities in perception.

Through techniques like delay, re-sequencing, and smearing, Fairless reveals how easily context can be altered, urging the listener to confront the limits of their own interpretative frameworks. The result is an unsettling but thought-provoking meditation on how stories are shaped—not just by what is included, but by what is omitted, displaced, or rerouted elsewhere.

Despite its moments of unease, Keep Talking to Me remains impartial to the quality of its input, mirroring the ceaseless churn of modern information systems. It does not dictate meaning but instead holds up a mirror to the way we absorb and reconstruct the world around us, leaving the listener to navigate the shifting terrain of signal and noise.

Keep Talking to Me was released on Dragon's Eye Recordings, and received radio play on 4ZZZFM and FBi.

Visual Ephemera: Video

Tullamarine

Reviews: Complete Transcripts

AVANT MUSIC NEWS
Online 13th May 2025

Australia's Timothy Fairless uses a generative sound installation to create what is heard on Keep Talking to Me. This makes the album interesting in both a procedural and a substantive manner.

Given noises, the installation repeats them back in a different fashion - echoes of the original snippets. With voices, this results in not only sonic but also semantic changes - a call and response through a lens that distorts both audio and morphology. But Fairless submits field recordings as well, extending the installation's' reflectiveness beyond just language.

As for the listening experience, the five mid-length tracks present rough-hewn constructs that crackle, loop, resonate, and fade. Falling motifs permeate what otherwise resembles a take on mechanical decay - perhaps an analogy to devolution of discourse or thought. Background drones surface now and again to add a haunting atmosphere.

But Keep Talking to Me is not overtly dark. Instead, it is an investigation of transformation. It illustrates how meaning changes through mediums of communication to take on interpretations that were likely unintended by the creator.

The unsourced sound of acousmatic music is an especially fertile ground for these notions. Without presupposed narratives based on lyrics or instrumentation, every one of Fairless's sonic events - whether from field recordings, processed voices, or electronic tones - become a signifier that is jointly constructed by the listener's imagination.

Needless to say, Keep Talking to Me is very well done and sets a high-water mark in experimental abstraction. Highly recommended. The album will be released June 20, 2025 by Dragon's Eye Recordings.

Chain D.L.K.
By Vito Camarretta - Online 15th July 2025

Timothy Fairless's Keep Talking to Me is a cerebral meditation on communication's fragility, a sonic labyrinth built from overheard speech, field recordings, generative installations, and glitchy electronics. Over five long-form tracks, Fairless treats sound as language's unreliable echo - each phrase is stretched, delayed, re-sequenced, and subtly smeared until its original context slips into the ether. The result is an immersive interrogation of how we decode, distort, and reconcile meaning in an age where machines mediate our every conversation.

While reminiscent of experimental ambient's best - dark but never indulgent - Fairless's work steers clear of icy minimalism. Instead, it offers a moody yet engaging drift through shifting textures, where fragmented voices wash over resonant drones. The listening experience is akin to eavesdropping from behind a curtain on a packed train: familiar tones ripple through, but comprehension fades just at the edges. That imperfection sparks curiosity, as we instinctively fill in gaps or simply bask in uncertainty.

Fairless is no stranger to this territory, with a lineage of installations and audiovisual projects exploring place, identity, and technology. His golden touch lies in balancing intellectual rigor with a warmth that never alienates. Though the atmosphere is occasionally unsettled, the album is surprisingly accessible - an invitation, not a barricade.

According to my humble opinion the standout tracks are “Tullamarine” - setting the tone with hazy whisperings and glitch-lilted tones, laced with emotional undercurrents - and “Currency Exchange” - closing the album with circular, almost ritualistic decay, an elegy to how language loses integrity over time!

Technically, the reworking of installation material into distinct album pieces is deft - transformed into coherent yet elusive narratives. Mastering by Lawrence English ensures depth without drowning subtlety.

In essence, Keep Talking to Me is a poetic reflection on miscommunication, a mirror that reveals how easily signals fracture through amplification. It doesn't preach; it invites you to listen - and mislisten - with intention. In a world drowning in data and noise, Fairless's work reminds us to cherish the spaces between words.

Fans of installation art and ambient introspection - those drawn to headphone listening and quiet revelation - will find much to unpack. This album is an invitation: come closer, but don't expect clarity.

Musique Machine
By Paul Casey - Online 25th June 2025

Advanced communication is arguably humanity's greatest trait, and one that remains as important now as when the first utterances left our ancestors' lips. However, over time, the increases in technology have only exacerbated the inherent flaws in our systems, and no matter how hard we try to close these holes, miscommunication will always persist. Our sensory organs are wonderful and a marvel of evolution, but sometimes the firmware has trouble processing for any number of reasons. Timothy Fairless looks into the subtleties of communication, miscommunication, technology, and how it all works together with Keep Talking to Me. Taken from his sound installation mirroring the communicative process, this album utilizes conversations, electronics, and varied effects to put his thesis forth: altering the context of the communication will force the listener to question their interpretation. What they end up receiving is up to them, whether on purpose or subconsciously. Is it the brain truly interpreting the signals or, like Paul Simon sang, "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"?

Immersive and accessible, Fairless' sonic inquiry into the journey of communication and interpretation plays out like a literal game of telephone; words and responses are fed back into his system, furthering them from their original message. In the end, the original is unrecognizable. While this use of technology forces the hand of misunderstanding and miscontextualizing, it is necessary to achieve a result in a normal amount of time. With the sheer amount of information we take in daily, most of the attempts at communication we see/hear are pushed to the background while we amble through our day like robots. Bright signs and loud ads are directed at us only to fall short, unable to penetrate our shields. We often forget that even these brief statements are part of a large and complex system of communication, just a part we choose to trivialize. But what would it sound like to us without that noise? While not speaking to the abundance of unsolicited words, sounds, and jingles that are always around us, Keep Talking to Me utilizes a more familiar base of conversations; those communications that we should be present for. The result is a very listenable bit of droning darkness, something akin to keeping your ear close to the wall on a train ride. The sounds come and go, the voices ebb and flow, but the listener is somewhere else, hearing but not understanding. "What are words for, when no one listens anymore?" One interesting question that arises is that of inability to comprehend. With technology conveying almost all of our daily communication, what happens when that goes awry? Try as you might, the conversation could be lost and there's nothing you could do about it. Interestingly, Fairless' work obfuscates obvious context, but through this, gives the listener an open canvas to create what they want to hear and feel. And at the end of the day, sadly, everything that comes into our brain is subject to our own brain and interpretation, so can communication ever be completely objective?

Keep Talking to Me moves very slowly through the speakers, but brings with it a strength and vibe that speaks to the listener (pun fairly intended). Like a beam of light barely penetrating the dark ocean, the music has depth and soul, but remains natural feeling and avoids being grim or heavy. Perfect for headphones and thorough re-examinations, Timothy Fairless' Keep Talking to Me is a treat for those looking for something more to dissect and revisit.