From seeds scattered previously, Talisk harvest a bumper new crop of rediscovered bangers, having you both counting your fingers and tapping your toes.

PROGFOLK GOES PUNK?

So, something a little different from Mohsen and Co., that much obvious from the cover, where the trio, or two of them, at least, stare blankly, almost confrontationally, out, with the third seeming to avoid such eye contact. This is what you got, take it or leave it, they seem to say, as the third mulls that thought over. Given their usual artwork often summons up a widescreen imagery of swords and sorcery, with albums largely arranged around a single set concept, is this the moment where their progfolk goes punk?

OCTOPUS MEET SLINKY

Let’s see, but first, a little backstory won’t go amiss, before we start. Mohsen Amini everybody knows, the lanky showman, incapable of sitting comfortably, perpetually riding his chair in a riot of ripped-knee skinny leg jean action, simultanously squeezing the bejasus out of his concertina, itself a hybrid between an octopus and a slinky. The only constant in the trio, there have been a number of musicians filling the fiddle and guitar seats by his side, ahead the current incarnation, with Benedict Morris and Charlie Galloway now playing those respective roles. However, as friends, they go way back further, with the seeds, geddit, of this album germinating long before either Morris and Galloway were recruited. Yes, we are back in lockdown territory, which, irrespective of all the confounding horrors of the period, certainly prove integral to the initiation of many a musical project bearing subsequent fruit.

On the first day following the call to confinement, Galloway sent his old buddy Amini a tune to play with, the plan being to conjure up some sort of shenanigan for social media. Thinking some strings might further enhance things, the tape was duly shared with Morris, it soon becoming apparent there was something weightier here. Further musical ‘stems’ went back and forth between them, as momentum built and the project took root, if then never deigned for public consumption. Flash forward and first Morris, and then Galloway, are in the band, it now clearly the opportunity to run with a rather different sound than fans might expect. This album represents those six year old stems, borne out of the circumstance of three pals playing for the fun of it, experimenting outside the constrictions of any then extant band, now precision honed into the Talisk template.

RAMPANT SQUEEZEBOX

05.20 opens the set. Is this the time of day? It certainly isn’t the length of the track, it being barely a minute of what sounds like a piano, repeating over eerie background vocalisations and a metronomic beat. As it echoes into the fade, a picked guitar starts to hesitatingly unfold ahead becoming a deep fuzzy electric riff. With concertina then diving off a highboard, this is an unmistakeable Talisk footprint, at least for a moment. Dipping between the opening melody and the rampant squeezebox, a deliciously dirty bass line then muscles in over electronic beats. This is Ultra and I’m in.

Now, with the trio credited solely as playing only concertina, guitar and fiddle, it is any guess as to whether different instruments are actually being plied, or whether it is the famed Talisk array of footboard pedals that is transforming the sound, together with some studio wizardry from Scott Wood, the Skerryvore piper always adept at the alchemies available. (To be fair, the sleeve notes do say more, specifically around this project “letting us all jump into a new world of music making where we weren’t just using the 3 instruments that we were so used to.”)

New Quay now blends in with more FX led percussion and that piano sound, the bed for a further Amini excursion into his more notes per second than should be possible. There is a wash of treated fiddle adding a layer of fauxchestration, and a bubble of repeating treated guitar. As it hurtles into Elephant Sessions sonic territory, it is all rather jolly.

MORE BALEARIC THAN BEARSDEN

Mustang opens then with a terrific burst of sequencers and synths, more Balearic based than Bearsden, with fiddle and box then scything in sideways with full pelt jiggery pokery. Clangs of guitar chime in to add marker pen reference notes, the mash of genres co-habiting with glee. D.U.A. then ramps up the funk, a 4:4 beat, with bass and choppy guitar to the fore. Is this Data Use Agreement, Disaster Unemployment Assistance or maybe a nod to Islamic prayer? I don’t know, but it is a compulsive and inclusive track. And, whilst concertina sits centrally, Amini throws in sufficient scattered curve ball deconstructions to both break and build the flow, bolstered with guitar FX, ahead a brisk full stop.

Shangri-La is suitably shimmery and soft-focus, before Amini and Morris bound out the traps. All the while electronic textures bob and weave about them, and, should there need to be a way of describing this, I’m going with Islay Trance. And, if every post banger night needs a chill down cafe reflection, Inner West is here to provide that, as Eastern fumes flit around, with some rapid-fire strumming from Galloway then supplying almost a sense of Flamenco. One of two tracks over the five minute mark, it breaks and builds repeatedly, bringing in new textures at each iteration, the rhythms scampering between the given tempos, before heading for home somewhere between 120 and 180 bpm.

Suburban is a complete change of tack, emerging out a post-punk indie swagger of guitars and percussion, suggesting there are as many new ponies as new tricks in the Talisk bottom drawer, even if the tried and tested instrumental fiddle/box combo remains stage central. However, just as you rue that point, in comes Galloway with some transformative distorted electric guitar, owing more to Nile Rogers than to any ceilidh I’ve been to.

A WILDCAT IN THE BAG

A breather needs after that one, June offers 90 seconds of respite, guitar and presumed keyboard just the job to restore flagging limbs. But a flickery tick of background rhythm returns, with strummed and then picked guitar setting up a new sense of mellow. Vocals, female vocals, add a keening presence at the beginning and the end. My copy says not from whom, so I’ll attribute them to the name of the song, Somebody. The longest track here, it has distinct movements, placing the three musicians under adjacent spotlights. The percussion on this one is mixed and some of that sounds certainly organic and manually driven, the jury out as to which member is wielding the sticks. And so well, for that matter.

Capital letter, FOCUS, is up next. those capitals perhaps a prompter to the fact that there is still one cat left in the bag of tricks, and a pretty wild one at that. A shimmer of electronica opens the tune, before Richard Miles style piano ushers in more of the Ibiza/Islay interplay, with concertina then pushing to the front. Morris applies a slow soaring middle eight of Hebridean fiddle, before, a fuse lit, he fiddles faster and faster, with further real drums taking the show into motorik.

What could possibly top that? Galloway going the full Hank, with some splendid twang, that’s what could, and does, with a tremendous finale that mixes the Shadows into a poteen crazed frenzy of musodiversity, all genres in a mashtub mess of satisfaction. The sound suddenly ripples, like a break in the fabric of time, and the same melody is still there, if slower and more stately, for 09.25, a lilting acoustic reminder of the trad from whence all this came.

TENEMENT HOOSE MUSIC

So, revisiting that earlier question, no, it isn’t punk they have gone, even if the music is derived from a similar DIY bedroom ethos. No, the trio have missed out that step in the programme, as their trad meets prog emerges, fully fledged, as trad meets house. Or hoose, should that be? And much, much more besides. Tremendous.

Nothing from this album yet available to view, here’s a good wee example of the live Talisk experience, from this year’s Sidmouth, with thanks to Tony Carsley for the video lift.

Talisk: Website

At The Barrier: Facebook /Instagram/ X