EIF: Talisk

The word ‘sedate’ is derived from the Latin word for ‘seated’, and although the three members of Talisk remained seated throughout this gig, they are anything but sedate. The simple instrumental line-up of fiddle, concertina and guitar might lead the viewer to expect a particular kind of sound. Thanks to electronic enhancement, however, what these three acoustic instruments produce is a mighty blast of musical innovation. 

Their opening number, ‘The Crooked Water Valley’, gives a foretaste of what’s to come with its teasing tempo shifts, sudden leaps from tranquillity to sonic mayhem, counterpoints and almost symphonic grandeur. The viewer might well rub their eyes to check that there are still only three people on stage. One of those, concertina player Mohsen Amini, is one of life’s enthusiasts. Not content with the lukewarm response to his opening greeting, he rouses the audience into raucousness and keeps them at a pitch throughout the evening. He is the focal point of the group, knees moving like pistons, stretching the bellows of his long-suffering instrument hither and yon. 

Although they do promise to “slow things down for about fourteen seconds” before one number, they are assured at any tempo. Some of the faster tempos are quite staggering, with fiddler Hayley Keenan matching Amini quaver for quaver. There’s no sense of ‘deil tak the hindmaist’, however, as they are all three impeccably locked in with one another, with guitarist Graeme Armstrong providing the bedrock. Using the chordal and single-line possibilities of all three instruments they prove that with skill and imagination there are no limitations to what is possible. A tiny criticism might be that the arc of the pieces can be a bit predictable as time and again the expected storm surges in after the lull, but in the end the intensity of their performance and their mastery of dynamics carry the day.