Talkdemonic creates huge sound
A duo based in Portland, Ore., Talkdemonic makes its own kind of music. Kevin O’Connor and Lisa Molinaro travel with his drum kit and synthesizers and her viola and effects pedals. Pre-recorded tracks complement the pair’s electro-symphonic-melodic-post-punk. There’s no singing.
Glacial Place Records, an indie label owned by Isaac Brock, singer-guitarist in the popular Pacific Northwest rock band Modest Mouse, recently released Talkdemonic’s fourth album, Ruins.
O’Connor started Talkdemonic alone in 2004. Originally it was a studio project based on beats and synths. And then Molinaro, a violist who’d graduated from Stetson University in Deland, Fla., with a minor in music, introduced herself to O’Connor after seeing him playing drums at a show in Portland.
Impressed with his musicianship, she told him so. She also suggested they try playing music together. The two of them played a show with another musician about five weeks later but that was the end of their collaboration for some time.
By the time O’Connor approached Molinaro about collaborating again she’d grown less musically adventurous.
“It took a little persuading for me at the beginning,” she said from Portland. “I don’t blame the music or Kevin. I blame myself for being shy about trying things.”
Trained in the classical tradition, Molinaro had been taught to faithfully play the printed score. Improvising with the viola was foreign to her.
“It was really, really new for me,” she said.
There were other difficulties as well, such as making her bowed string instrument loud enough to share a stage with a drum kit.
“I had no idea how to amplify a viola,” Molinaro said. “And I had to figure out what pedals worked for viola. Pedals may sound good with a guitar but they can sound like junk with a viola. So I had to weave my way through all this stuff.”
Working together before their first public performance, Molinaro and O’Connor realized they were into something good. But it wasn’t till their on-stage debut that the violist knew she could thrive in the new world she’d found.
“I realized, ‘Oh, yeah, this is fun,’ ” she recalled. “I can perform and people really seem to like it, because it’s different.”
Amplification and effects pedals offered Molinaro and her viola new audio frontiers. She has the option of producing a natural tone through the Schertler pickup inserted into her viola’s bridge or she can radically alter its tone through the pedals.
“I started moving almost beyond a viola sound, using this viola as a tool to create sounds,” she said. “But I try not to get too far into the effects because you can get lost and never come back. But I do love pedals. I don’t have enough room on the pedal board for all of the pedals I want.”
Molinaro’s possibilities run from sounding like a guitar to approximating a small bowed string section.
“That’s something I really love,” she said of the latter option. “And it’s a lot more affordable than bringing a string quartet on the road with us.”
The combined forces of Molinaro’s viola, O’Connor’s synthesizers and drums plus programmed tracks create a powerful sound.
“That’s a compliment we often receive,” she said. “It’s nice to hear, ‘Oh, you have such a huge sound. There’s so much going on up there.’ ”
Being an instrumental duo creating symphonic-indie rock has its challenges.
“I sometimes feel like we are a square peg in a round hole, even in Portland,” Molinaro said. “There are a lot of duos and electro-poppy stuff happening in this city but what we do is still a little different. If we change our format, it might make us more accessible to people. But that’s not why we do it. We do it because we like what we do. If more people catch on, that would be nice.”