We first heard the beautiful instrumental soundscapes of Talkdemonic when they opened for Menomena at Portland’s Doug Fir Lounge on May 3rd.The Portland-based duo of Kevin O’Connor and Lisa Molinaro weave together electronic rhythms and textures with warm string accompaniments. Molinaro’s viola and synth contributions well complement an arsenal of instruments that O’Connor wields to create a unique style of vocal-less melodies. Talkdemonic began in 2002 as a solo project for Kevin, before enlisting Lisa full time after several recordings and live shows. Their third LP, Eyes at Half Mass, was released in 2008. Yet they’ve received more recent attention concerning potentially working with Glacial Pace Recordings, run by Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock. As the band began a tour with Modest Mouse, Kevin shared some thoughts on his musical influences, background and said work with Glacial Pace.

Apes on Tape: First off, I wanted to learn more about your relationship with Glacial Pace Recordings. I know you personally record/mix the albums, so is this just a distribution arrangement to complement what Arena Rock does as well?

Kevin O’Connor: We haven’t really officially announced our relationship with Glacial Pace yet, but I guess it’s kind of obvious huh? I can say that it has been very refreshing to start an album cycle with new ideas, renewed enthusiasm, and a bevy of good advice and insight from a talented team with years worth of experience. .

AoT: Have you got to spend any time with other artists, on the label like Morning Teleportation (we actually did an interview with them recently)?

KOC: I haven’t spent much time with them, though Lisa has. I saw that they were on Letterman last week. That’s a huge achievement in and of itself.

“Ending the Orange Glow” Talkdemonic
“Ending The Orange Glow” Talkdemonic

And have you developed a pretty good relationship with Isaac Brock (Modest Mouse) working with Glacial Pace?

Working with Isaac is the best. He always tells you exactly what’s on his mind, never minces words, and his advice is always pretty damn solid. We’re kicking off a little tour with the Modest Mouse folks tonight as a matter of fact, piling in to the bus and hitting the road with them for a few shows on our way out to Sasquatch.

Will this be your first time playing with Modest Mouse. Are you getting pretty giddy for that tour?

We are very excited to say the least. A couple of my old bands opened for them in the ’90’s but tomorrow night will be the first time we’ve ever played with them. Its also gonna be fun being on a tour bus with a big crew and obviously to play to the big audiences every night…

Moving onto the music itself, could you elaborate on your passion for the intersection between instrumental hip-hop and electronic?

The passion for those genres was really intense with the first record, but has faded a bit since then. Our second records’ influences gave way to all the music we’ve ever listened to and since then I think we’ve kind of been hauling around our own sound. I was incredibly obsessed with electronic music around the early 00’s along with instrumental hip hop, when both of those genres were still flowering.

On the hip-hop instrumental end, were there any particularly influential artists for you? Was fellow Oregonian RJ-D2 a large influence?

DJ Shadow was more of an influence though I do love RJD2. Even though he’s from Eugene, he’s never really been a part of the Portland scene. Some of the other influences were Boards of Canada, Four Tet and Manitoba (Caribou). I’ve always hoped that our music was being made influence free, especially post first record, letting Lisa’s classical background interweave with my indie rock past. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Dungen, Tame Impala, Deerhunter, and of course the new Panda Bear.

Concerning fusing those two genres together, was the “folk-tronic hop” sound a preconceived destination or just sort of a road-mark in your own musical exploration?

That word was a poke about critics’ need to classify music into neat and tidy genre categories and unfortunately seemed to stick. If I could go back in time, I never would’ve mentioned that hideous word combination. Bands beware of labeling your sound as it may come back to haunt you..

I read that you think electronic music peaked around 2001/2002. Could share your thoughts on that? Or any opinions on the current state of electronic music, electro or otherwise.

I think electronic music definitely peaked around that time, or at least my interest in it did. These days all types of music interweave all in the same album, which makes a term like “electronic music” almost obsolete. Unless you want your album shelved in a hard to find spot in your local record store, it’s a good idea to stick to the rock/pop category. That being said, I loved Matthew Dear’s “Black City” record, sounds more like a Bowie record than an “electro” album.

You wield quite the wide range of instruments. You’ve mentioned tinkering around with a number of bands/instruments during your time at Washington State, but could you give a bit of background on how you learned to employ all those pieces in your work?

I like to pick up whatever instrument is lying around and try to make something cool with it, even if I have no business playing that instrument. It stared with the guitar, then a drum set and eventually led to my obsession with synthesizers, you can never have too many! Sometimes buying an old analog synth is the equivalent to buying a used car so you have to save your money. Our new record has a ton of synth on it and highly effected viola lines that sound like guitar. We are however, electric guitar free since 2003. Someday we’re going to make that into a t-shirt. Why are we bragging about this? Cause not using an electric guitar forces us to be creative with other instruments. Oh yeah, and we don’t have vocals to rely on either. I think I’m just talking someone out of listening to our music right now so I’ll stop.

Speaking of WSU, I read you ran the college radio station for a while. I actually started one in school as well (www.USDRadio.org, shameless self-promotion). Could you tell more about that endeavor?

I was one of those kids who probably should’ve gone to UW, but was charmed by the campus and small town life of Pullman. On my first day of school, I was shocked by the abundance of straight-laced folk that attended the school and fortunately found all the weirdos, musicians, and counter culture types at the college radio station. I lucked out in that the Music Director was my RA so I became the Rock Director at the beginning of my sophomore year. Over a 5 year span, I probably spent as much time reviewing music and doing my show as I did studying.

With Eyes Half Mast, you aimed for a sonic improvement with your own studio upgrades and such. But you also mentioned that you wanted to capture the sound of your live performance more, capture a more intense recording. From listeners’ responses and your own feelings, do you think you succeeded there?

It’s hard to be objective about your own music, but that album was highly personal for me and it’s the one I’m most proud of.  I think we definitely achieved a fuller edgier sound with that record and fully realized the sound we created on Beat Romantic. As a whole, most folks tend to like the latter better as a record though. Our new record is pushes our sound into a new place, which was important for this one. I threw out atlas two records worth of songs because I wanted to take the next step as a band, and not write Eyes at Half Mast part 2…

You toured with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah a few years back. Did you see they’ve got a new record coming in September? We’re pretty excited about that.

That tour was really fun for us. We were first of three with CYHSY and the National. It was Clap Your Hands’ first tour ever, and all the shows were sold out across the country. Half of the crowd left after their set since the National were headlining. I have to say its’ been nice watching the National get bigger and bigger since that tour. The best night we all had together was playing drunken soccer inside the venue in Cincinnati. We also had an impromptu soccer match in a park in Portland, Talkd/Nash vs. CYHSY. I think we lost though.

And finally, the Beat Romantic album cover completely reminds me of the massive pulp tree farm on I-84 on the way from say Tri-Cities/Pullman to Portland. Given that you probably made that drive a number of times, is there any connection there?

That’s the exact spot I shot those photos! It’s a very creepy place indeed. I wanted something natural but manmade and this was as close as I could get to the actual sound of the record. Folky organic electronic stringy music that was all overdubbed, kinda like the trees. Another cool thing is that the LP jackets were made from poplar trees grown on a farm like the one in Oregon.

 

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