Telescreens Are On A Mission to Emit Freedom of Expression and Human Connectivity

Kapoorhouse
4 hours ago
6 min read

Interview by Nancy Gutierrez

Photos by Sam Kapoor

Ahead of their new album Why The Light's Flicker, out June 12, Telescreens stopped in Atlanta for the first time. Fortunately enough, Kapoorhouse correspondent Nancy spoke with the New York City rockers before their set at Smith's Olde Bar over a game of pool talking origins, bonding on tour, brisket burritos from Buc-ee's and collaborating with Kareem Rahma of Subway Takes / fellow NYC band Tiny Gun. Telescreens consists of Jackson Hamm (lead vocals/guitar), Oliver Graf (Drums), Josiah Valerius (keys/synth) and Austin Brenner (bass).

The Telescreens from left to right: Josiah Valerius, Austin Brenner, Oliver Graf, Jackson Hamm (Photo: Sam Kapoor)

Oliver: Remind me the name of the-

Nancy: Kapoorhouse

Oliver: How do you spell that?

Nancy: K-A-P-double O-R-

Oliver: Oh, Kapoorhouse! Cool- Just making sure.

Nancy: You're on tour right now. Has anything bad or good or weird happened on tour?

Oliver: Anything weird happen on tour? I feel like the whole concept of it (touring) is really weird. Waking up in a new city every single day, spending way too much time than you'd want to in the gas station bathroom. There's been some magical moments. We had a really magical pee in rural eastern Oregon watching the sunset.

Nancy: What does a magical pee entail?

Jackson: We peed outside during sunset in the pacific northwest, far away from each other, it was maybe the highlight of my life.

Nancy: Would you call that a bonding experience?

Oliver: It was! It was nice to share a moment like that all together, we're all spending a lot of time together and luckily we don't want to strangle each other yet.

Nancy: Your music video for "Baby I Know You Well" is really beautiful, I think its really visually stunning, who's been leading the creative direction?

Jackson: That's been me and my lovely beautiful friend Jack Cohen and my brother Monty.

Nancy: Are you kinda looking at references from other artists?

Jackson: Yeah the baby video is like a love song meets the "LSD" A$AP Rocky music video.

Nancy: I love that video!

Jackson: Yeah I saw that video in high school and I was blown away by it. So it was an attempt at that kind of style, fear and loathing in Las Vegas. We got lucky, we shot it all at Times Square during a snow storm. It was just kind of beautiful how it all worked out.

Nancy: Do you ever take an approach that if the weather is beautiful that your dreams are being supported by something beyond yourself?

Jackson: Yes. Definitely. I'm happy you said that. When things line up you gotta pay attention. That's kind of the whole point of our band, things lined up in ways none of us could ignore and whether we planned on being in a rock band or not we're eight years deep and fully committed to this being our lives, thats because the universe put us in this place, you can't ignore what makes you feel like you're doing what you're supposed to do on earth.

Nancy: You are the common ground, the base for so many people's interests, what does that do for how you move through the world?

Oliver: It's like the biggest blessing in our lives; The fact we're able to have this opportunity to bring people together. That's always what I think is the ethos of our music and what live and recorded rock and roll music should be in general. We're a form of escapism. What I love about our live shows is we try to make people forget about the BS in their lives. Everyone is dealing with hardship. Everyone has a certain form of struggle. Whether its a tough day at work or interpersonal stuff. If we can just get 1 or 2 people tonight to forget about the BS in their lives and just be present with us for a moment, thats incredible.

Josiah: The brisket burrito at Buc-ee's. We get that every time. Like can't wait to get the Buc-ee's.

Nancy: Dude yes, and such an astoot observation.

Oliver: That was like the perfect piggy back off my point. It's the honor of my life that we're able to have so many brisket burritos.

Nancy: So the music video for "Preacher" features Kareem Rahma of Subway Takes. He also has a band Tiny Gun, you've played a few shows with them. Outside of that, how did this collaboration come to be?

Jackson: Kareem and I like hanging out and drinking beer and thats fun and we're friends. Basically we had an idea to like a Beatles on Sullivan-Nirvana on Sullivan parody, us on an old tv show parody and we were like wouldn't it be sick if Kareem was the host, so I texted him like can you come by for 20 minutes and pretend to be our host and he was like yeah.

Nancy: How did you guys end up meeting?

Jackson: He found our song "Stare" on Spotify and then one day just DM'd me and we started hanging out. Just like that.

Nancy: What artists inspired you?

Austin: So many. When we first met there was this big bond over like Nirvana, Pixies, Kanye, Kendrick and Frank Ocean. Especially at the time, we all met around 2016.

Jackson: That year did a lot for us as a band. So much good music came out that year. We were all 20 or 18 or whatever.

Nancy: Well everyone's saying 2026 is the new 2016.

Jackson: Well, I feel like we're waving the flag for rock and roll. I'm proud of our record.

Austin: I think part of what keeps us going is the yearning to stay inspired all the time. I think part of the fun is bringing new inspiration to the table. Once we start sharing we're sort of on common ground so we're always discussing some album or song or some artist doesnt have to music or production technique or era.

Jackson: We still like albums, I hope this new generation of kids who are in high school now, rediscover albums because there's an entire generation that missed what a record is and can be because of Tik Tok and social media promotion made all of the singles go to the top, and hope theres a whole counter-culture swing where high schoolers decide albums are cool again. Its always the kids who decide the pulse and they usually hate what comes before them so maybe theres going to be an entire wave of 13-14 year olds that love reading and movies and they dont like scrolling because unc is scrolling.

Oliver: Unc is scrolling.

Nancy: Did anyone bring a book to read (on tour)?

Oliver: I've read like 50 pages of a book. I stare at it in my row everyday and I think should I read it and then I dont.

Josiah: I brought this one book by a Chinese philosopher, i read like one paragraph. It was like the beginning is the beginning but in the beginning is there a beginning and that gave me enough to think about for all of tour. My favorite quote that I did also read from it is that a crooked tree gets left alone and a straight one gets cut down for wood. So be imperfect, be different, don't conform.

Nancy: That's really insightful.

Austin: I actually destroyed one of his (Jackson's).

Nancy: What book was it?

Austin: 1984.

Oliver: That's where the name Telescreens comes from.

Nancy: Really?

Oliver: Telescreens, they're the propaganda machines in the book 1984 by George Orwell.

Nancy: Cool! So you guys all read it and loved it?

Jackson: When I was younger I got obsessed with that book, scared the crap out of me basically. How I describe it now is like: Imagine if the ads never turned off, right? Imagine if you couldn't skip the ad and it was just on forever.

Nancy: Which I feel like it's headed towards cause like they're trying to ploy for like ads in your dreams, you know that?

Jackson: I didn't know that, but that's basically the concept of this book. For me, I got very frightened of that being our future even though it was written in the 60's about the 80's and I read it in 2010's and still scared of it. I was so obsessed with the name that I decided to make a band, call it Telescreens and try to push towards the exact opposite of that which is human connectivity and freedom of expression.

Oliver: He (Austin) tried to be nice and put something in his backpack and didnt realize the first edition copy of 1984 was also in the backpack.

Nancy: It was a first edition?!

Jackson: It's okay, it was about to break anyway.