Telenova - Complete Artist Review
Complete Artist Review after listening to every record. Here you will find an overview of Telenova as well as my personal rankings of their first three records. You will also find my Best XI Songs as well as a link to an Essentials Playlist in this pages 1st photo. Check other photos for easter egg attachments!
Telenova
Some artists write songs. Others build worlds. From their first release in 2021, Telenova made it clear they belong to the latter group. Formed in Melbourne by filmmaker and vocalist Angeline Armstrong alongside producers Edward Quinn and Joshua Moriarty, the trio emerged from an APRA SongHubs session curated by Chris Walla. What followed wasn’t just a collaboration, but a fully realized creative language.
That language became known as Telenova & Telenoir: a blend of cinematic indie pop, trip-hop, and noir atmosphere, where production, performance, and presentation all move in lockstep. Their music doesn’t just suggest mood. It commits to it.
The Tranquilize EP (2021) introduced Telenova as a band with uncommon clarity of vision. Built on pulsing bass lines, smoky synths, and tightly controlled tension, the EP felt immersive without being overwhelming. Songs like Tranquilize and Bones established their balance of atmosphere and structure, proving the aesthetic had substance behind it.
Their Triple J Like A Version cover of Madonna’s Hung Up further cemented that identity. By stripping away the original’s dance-floor urgency and reframing it as something shadowy and restrained, Telenova showed how naturally their sound could reshape familiar material.
With Stained Glass Love (2022), the band expanded their palette. The production became fuller and more dynamic, drawing closer to dream-pop density while retaining their noir edge. The title track, a slow-burning six-minute centrepiece, marked a turning point, where restraint, melody, and scale came together seamlessly. This era also formalized the Telenoir alter ego, reworking songs into darker, late-night forms that treated Armstrong’s vocals as an atmospheric element rather than a purely narrative one.
Their debut album, Time Is A Flower (2024), is where Telenova fully embraced maximalism. The record moves like a film score, blending orchestral arrangements, trip-hop rhythms, and pop structures into something expansive but carefully controlled. From the reflective opening of The Wallpaper to the immediate, groove-driven pull of Discothèque Inside My Head, the album shows a band confident in both subtlety and scale.
Tracks like Power and Margot highlight their ability to balance emotional directness with cinematic ambition, while January stands out as one of the most intimate moments in their catalogue. Even at its biggest, Time Is A Flower never feels overdesigned. Every choice feels intentional.
The deluxe and Telenoir editions reinforced how flexible this world really is, allowing the same material to exist in both widescreen and shadowy, stripped-back forms without losing its identity.
With their second album THE WARNING on the horizon, Telenova are pushing into darker, rougher territory. The singles suggest a shift toward more industrial textures and sharper edges, without abandoning their cinematic core. THE DEEP captures everything that defines the band, emotional urgency, precision, and atmosphere, while BITCRUSH leans into distortion and grit in a way that feels deliberate rather than aesthetic for its own sake.
Tracks like VAPOR // SLOW DANCE, IN THE NAME OF YOUR LOVE, and PARALYSIS GHOSTS suggest a band comfortable letting their world fracture and destabilize. As the sound gets heavier and more volatile, the songwriting only becomes more compelling.
PROJECT Rankings
Time Is A Flower (2024)
Stained Glass Love - EP (2022)
Tranquilize - EP (2021)
THE BEST XI
In No Particular Order
Margot (Time Is A Flower)
Discothéque Inside My Head (Time Is A Flower)
Why Do I Keep You? (Stained Glass Love)
Stained Glass Love (Stained Glass Love)
THE DEEP (THE WARNING)
IN THE NAME OF YOUR LOVE (THE WARNING)
Blue Valentine (Tranquilize)
Bones (Tranquilize)
January (Time Is A Flower)
Hung Up (Triple J Like A Version)
Scarlet (Stained Glass Love)
Telenova are a band in full control of their evolution. They’ve grown from trip-hop noir beginnings into a cinematic pop powerhouse without losing the emotional clarity that defines them. Whether they’re working with orchestral strings or distorted digital textures, their music feels cohesive, intentional, and unmistakably theirs.
With THE WARNING imminent, Telenova aren’t just expanding their universe. They’re sharpening it. And right now, there are few artists in alt-pop operating at this level of confidence and vision.
Find Warewolf Reviews’ Telenova Essentials Playlist on both Apple Music and Spotify