– Telegram – Live at Best Kept Secret – 2014 – VPRO/3VOOR12
Playing deep-dive with a set by Telegram at the 2014 Best Kept Secret Festival.
According to UK music paper NME, Telegram were one of the essential and unmissable bands of 2014. I would go along with them on that.
According to The Guardian newspaper, Telegram were described as “This Anglo-Welsh band’s pace is motorik, their beat kraut, and their tone psychedelic, with a dash of glam”. I would go along with them on that one too.
Telegram got serious word-of-mouth, ever since their one-track demo lit up Marc Riley at BBC 6 Music in 2013, and this all-too-short set from them at this year’s Best Kept Secret Festival in The Netherlands offers a good reason what all the fuss was about. The group’s hotly anticipated debut studio long player, Operator, arrived in early 2016 via the band’s own Gramgram label.
In the mold of a lot of New-Psych that had been making the rounds since 2011, Telegram offered something a bit different -maybe it was the “dash of glam” as The Guardian described it. Whatever it was, they were definitely a band you kept an eye out for. As of 2025 they are still very much together – a new album is slated to drop in 2026 – so be prepared.
As always, recorded by the ever-present/ever-trusty VPRO in The Netherlands, Telegram were an unexpected hit at the Festival that year. Harbinger of more to come.
Play loud.
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