Dublin’s telekura rail against the absurd expectations of adulthood on ‘big nothing’ & announce Dublin/London shows

In a world of increasing AI content and LinkedIn life coaches, where the promise of becoming a ‘proper adult’ can feel like little more than becoming a big nothing, the multicultural Dublin collective telekura are back with their wonky, maximalist synth sound, taking aim at the hollow promise of success on their new single ‘big nothing’.

A tongue-in-cheek take on the pressure to have your life figured out, ‘big nothing’ skewers the strange gap between the person we’re expected to become and the person we are. Beneath its grunge-pop instincts lies a frustration with the endless frameworks, rules, and expectations that tell us what a successful adult should look like. “It’s about coming up short against what’s considered a properly-functioning adult. This really began as a rant against these ‘life coaches’ on LinkedIn and how they seem to have a framework on how to succeed in life,” explains frontwoman Rachel. Tan.

‘big nothing’ hits hard; its angst driven by the drumming intensity and emotionally fuelled 90s-haze vocals, with the off-kilter synth underpinning the track. Songwriter and co-founding band member Stephen Purcell muses on the writing and recording process: “It started with the opening synth line, creating that strange lead sound you hear before we came up with that arpeggiated bass synth line that runs through most of the song. This was another sound first affair, and the rest wrote itself pretty quickly.” Recorded at home using the equipment they had to hand and mixed by Ruadhri Cushnan (The Maccabees, Snow Patrol, Mumford and Sons), the track finds telekura pushing into a grittier, more guitar-heavy direction.

That tension between expectation and reality runs throughout telekura’s new material. Without setting out to write about a particular theme, their songs have increasingly circled questions of adulthood, arrested development, and the often ridiculous behaviours we adopt as rebellious coping mechanisms when faced with the expectation that we should have everything figured out.

The telekura sound is a vivid anomaly, a collision of technicolour psyche-pop, acid-soaked electronica and fuzzy warped pop instincts that draws from every era without being tethered to one. Fronted by vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Rachel Tan, their influences stretch from XTC, The Beach Boys and Scritti Politti to St Vincent, Mitski, Nirvana, The Pixies and Faye Wong.

Following their first outdoor festival appearance at Forbidden Fruit back in May, telekura are set to take their music further afield this autumn with appearances at Other Voices in Derry/Dingle, as well as Rotterdam’s  Left of the Dial and Spain’s Pro Weekend Fest.  Headline shows are also coming to The Social in London (tickets here) and Upstairs at Whelan’s inDublin (tickets here) this November.