Talkdemonic 'Beat Romantic' album

One night, shortly after Kevin O’Connor moved to Portland, OR in 2002, the now 28-year-old musician was hanging out at a local club when he heard a voice uttering a single word: TALKDEMONIC. It’s a name that O’Connor says fit perfectly with the hip-hop and electronic influenced project he had just started.

Talkdemonic released its first album, Mutiny Sunshine, (Lucky Madison) in the spring of 2004. The album is a wonder of O’Connor’s meticulous mind, featuring a sweeping orchestra of instruments, dead-steady programmed beats, a mournful concertina and a soaring viola all tethered together by O’Connor’s drumming. But this isn’t drumming that simply settles comfortably in the rock ghetto of the “rhythm ?section.” O’Connor uses his kit to both push and pull the songs, creating explosions of emotion and deafening silences with the power to move your ass or move you to tears.

Live, Talkdemonic’s music revolved around the mop-topped blonde’s drum kit, his primal beats informed by an obsession with instrumental hip-hop. In the summer of 2004, Kevin O’Connor finally convinced Lisa Molinaro, the phantom violist whose instrument played out of O’Connor’s laptop during his live sets, to join him, completing a small band with a huge sound. Talkdemonic’s music was powerful as a solo act, but, as a duo, it turned into something even more: a complicated, multidimensional force churning out hair-raising compositions. O’Connor captured the power and curiosity of his compositions, but it took the addition of Molinaro to bring out the true wonder of the songs. Her beautiful viola parts pulling at the listener’s heart while O’Connor works the head and the feet.

Like nothing you have heard before, Talkdemonic melds the primal, the classical and the modern to create songs that are as sweeping in scope as they are shattering in intensity. The band has created a devout fanbase through college radio airplay, massive downloading, and tour dates across the country with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, M83, Ted Leo, The National, Explosions in the Sky, Macha, etc. Willamette Week named Talkdemonic Portland's Best New Band in 2005.

Beat Romantic is available through Arena Rock Recording Co. on March 21, 2006.

TALKDEMONIC is Kevin O’Connor on drums, synths, pianos, programming beats, bass, accordion, banjo, guitar, Rhodes, Wurlitzer and Lisa Molinaro on viola and synths.

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Talkdemonic - Beat Romantic