Brooklyn-based composer Kevin O’Connor has spent twenty years refining Talkdemonic’s approach to instrumental storytelling, but his sixth album Very Cool Yesterday feels like both a culmination and a complete reinvention. The release abandons the percussion that anchored earlier works like Beat Romantic and Mutiny Sunshine, trading rhythmic drive for synth-led atmospheres that carry the weight of exposed emotion and deliberate rough edges. Recorded in single afternoon sessions while O’Connor juggled graduate school, these songs capture the immediate aftermath of love’s extremes – all that connection and dissolution preserved with tape hiss intact. What emerges is Talkdemonic’s most personal statement yet, a record where ambient textures and melodic fragments chart a path through heartbreak toward something resembling renewal, proving that sometimes the most powerful music happens when you strip everything away except what matters.
Very Cool Yesterday is out on September 12 on Bathysphere who are hosting a listening party this Sunday, September 7th. Check all that out and pre-order a copy HERE
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What were your earliest sound memories? What first made you understand that music could be a language for things that couldn’t be spoken?
My earliest sound memories were sonic booms coming from the nearby airport. These were accompanied by the large plumes of steam that rose like massive clouds from the nuclear reactors at Hanford, cooling the cores, and hitting the sky. Growing up in the desert of Eastern Washington was a surreal experience..
The first instrumental music that blew my mind was Queen’s score for Flash Gordon. They used all sorts of distorted synths and weird sounds. It sounded like synth-metal, especially ‘Ming’s Theme’. As a kid, I didn’t know what the hell I was hearing, but I knew it was unique. Later in life, when I was lucky enough to assist Johann Johannsson on a film score, I was working at night in his studio space, cleaning up his Cubase sessions for the film Mother! He had left a few YouTube tabs open on the computer, and one was ‘Ming’s Theme’. He was using it as a reference for the incredible music he was writing that never made the film, unfortunately.
How did you first discover that drums could be more than rhythm, that percussion could create atmosphere and texture?
I remember finding rhythms or beats banging on my bedroom door as a child. I think many of the earlier TD albums were very percussion-heavy; I played each instrument as though it was percussion. Even my melodies were percussive at times, maybe they still are. My former bandmate Lisa Molinaro used to provide the layers floating on top of the percussion. When it comes to drums, I want to play them like an instrument and not a timekeeper. Cymbals crashing and then pulling them away gives you control of the higher frequencies of your music, and so on.
Can you remember the moment you realized you could make instrumental music that was as emotionally direct as songs with lyrics?
For me, it began with my Yamaha 4-track cassette recorder during my final year in college. It was the first time I could record my own songs, doing all the overdubs and parts by myself. This was right before the accessibility of DAWs like Logic and Pro Tools. If you didn’t have access or the money to record in a studio or a functioning tape machine (no one did), then the 4-track was everything! It was so exciting, the tape hiss mmmmhmm.
I was obsessed with all sorts of music during my college radio days at KZUU at WSU. I never really thought of instrumental music as having limitations. Instrumental music does have a limited audience, but I feel like you can convey more emotion sometimes without vocals. It allows you to free up the listener to make it the soundtrack to their commute, or their walks, or their travels, without any infringement on theme. Of course, there are vocalists who are such great lyricists that they do the same things as well; Adrienne Lenker comes to mind. I have always felt boxed in by the ‘instrumental’ tag. In the earlier days of TD, I always felt like not having a vocalist provided the freedom to play with genre, specifically allowing us to do shows within other scenes like electronic or hip hop..
You describe Very Cool Yesterday as “a drumless record by a drummer.” What did removing your primary instrument reveal about the music that was waiting underneath?
It was very liberating. Approaching music from a new perspective is something that I needed. I had always planned on making a fully ‘ambient’ record ‘someday’ and that day finally came. By leaving the drums behind, I was able to focus fully on the melody and the spaces within. My rule was that I wouldn’t use drums or percussion at all, but of course, some cymbal textures made it in a few mixes. I started writing songs that were ‘ambient’ sounding. So I thought, I’ll make a very structured ‘ambient’ record that has progressions and distinctive parts, while also not paying attention to rules. I honestly thought that my new label, Bathysphere was gonna come back and say, uh, this isn’t really an ambient record. Maybe it isn’t. Luckily that didn’t happen!
These songs were recorded in “singular sittings” as “time capsule songs.” Can you walk me through what one of those sessions felt like? What does it mean to capture a complete emotional state in real time?
Each song was recorded in one sitting, usually one afternoon over the span of 3-5 hours. My time was very limited this past year and a half as I was getting my Master’s degree in Library Science and working full-time. Limitations can be helpful. Yes, I’m now a Librarian in Queens! So, typically, it was a free Sunday afternoon at my studio in Brooklyn. The idea was that I would compose and record a song in one day, if the inspiration appeared. I’d sit down at my Wurlitzer or one of my synths and see what happened. If ideas struck, then I’d immerse myself in it until it felt ‘finished’. There usually comes a time when the expression of an emotion, experience, or mood finds its place. Music is almost a coping mechanism or therapy. If I can channel it into the music, that is success. I would track out the different sections and experiment with sounds and instruments until the idea took shape. Since I wasn’t recording drums, the process was streamlined. My rule was that I wouldn’t tinker with it after that initial session. I only allowed for a process of elimination, not unlike EQ, cutting instead of boosting. Over that time frame, I recorded about 34 pieces of music. I picked my favorite 12 to be on the album. Some other artists would call these demos, but re-creations lack the luster of the original idea.
I aimed to keep the mistakes and the roughness of the recordings. I wanted it to sound raw and over-exposed. I kept all of the tape noise from my Roland Space Echo tape delay. I asked my friend Gus Elg from Sky Onion mastering in Portland, to not clean up the sounds, and he did an amazing job mastering the record.
The title Very Cool Yesterday suggests a kind of temporal displacement, looking back at something that felt significant. What was your “very cool yesterday,” and how did that inform the album’s emotional landscape?
Initially, I liked the play on words, the numerous meanings the phrase can have. I have always rejected nostalgia; it makes me feel uncomfortable. But over time, you can’t help but look back on your former selves and former lives; we all have so many. The title informed the album’s emotional landscape in that I was looking backwards while also looking to the future. I wanted to preserve my musical ‘voice’ while aiming to create something different, constraints and limitations that could inform a new path. However, there’s this un-sustainable idea that artists must continually reinvent themselves or do something different. This is true and not true. We don’t get to the future without our own yesterdays, our very cool yesterdays will always inform our more creative tomorrows. For me, I think it was also remembering my past selves and embracing my current self. Nostalgia still feels painful to me, though.
You mention this album concerns “the heights of love and subsequent dissolution.” Without being too personal, how do you channel those extremes into instrumental music that others can inhabit with their own experiences?
My process has always been about expression and channeling ideas in a moment. This record was about surviving a tough relationship that had extreme highs and lows. Over the past few years, I’ve learned that I am an emotional person prone to these fluctuations. If I walk into the studio with my heart full, there’s a good chance that the music will reflect that, if I’m lucky. If I show up there with my heart ripped open, which was the case many times during the process, it all went into the music. I think you can hear it with this album, especially with tunes like ‘SW’, and feel the honesty of expression there. I make music selfishly to feel better about being alive.
Your music has always had a cinematic quality, but this feels more like a series of emotional photographs than film scenes. How do you approach composition when you’re trying to preserve moments rather than narratives?
For me, it’s being present in the moment. Not trying to make something, but just aiming to let the piece write itself. Not thinking too much, letting the process guide you. Writing music for films etc, helps you really be yourself when you write music of your own. With film, you are serving the story or the scene, and in a voice that is not always yours. Of course, it helps you expand your musical skills and hits a different part of your brain. But writing music free of all those constraints, selfishly, exactly what you want to express. The cinematic element of my music hopefully captures the feeling of the moment.
You’ve moved from the percussion-driven textures of earlier albums to these synth-led ambient spaces. What drew you into this more atmospheric territory?
Every Talkdemonic record has a few ambient tunes. But what if it was all ‘ambient’? Spending time writing music for film, docs, helped me embrace a more atmospheric tone, and I think that has carried over into my own music. An excellent film score becomes inseparable from the story and the film itself; it merges in a way where you can’t imagine it not being there, or even becomes less noticeable or distracting. It fits.
Twenty years into this project, how has your relationship with silence changed? With space between sounds?
I struggled with ‘space between sounds’ on my previous record, Various Seasides, my first album without Lisa. Understandably so, I was afraid of space. The first four records had all my ideas and melodies stacked up with all of Lisa’s string parts, so much so that we had to cut sections of the songs to make space for those lines. With Various Seasides, I was a bit unsure about whether or not a song carried without more instrumentation or leads. On VCY, I went all in and embraced spaces, silence, and pure melodic expression. I felt confident, finally, that doing less was more.
After six albums and twenty years of Talkdemonic, what still surprises you about what instrumental music can accomplish that nothing else can?
I used to think that vocalless music was less likely to be dated. Vocal styles can be attached to eras, but not always. So, at this point, I have been excited by the idea of ambient and experimental music becoming more popular and accepted as an art form. There have been periods in music where instrumental music has thrived, for example, the early 2000s electronic music scene was rich, diverse, groundbreaking then kinda disappeared. I think more people are listening to instrumental music than ever before. I believe that instrumental music can be more personal to a listener.
In regards to the 20 years of TD, I’m grateful to still be making music. Beat Romantic turns 20 this coming March, which is insane to me. My plan is to keep putting out records for as long as I’m breathing.
And to close, as always, what are some of your favorite sounds in the world?
Currently, my favorite sound is from the crowds at concerts happening a mile away from my apartment at the Under The K Bridge outdoor park/venue. I can hear it from my rooftop or bedroom on weekends. It always makes me happy to hear cheering people, especially at live music. It’s one of my favorite things about living in New York. Feeling the energy, knowing that things are happening all around you, all the time. Even if you’re not there, you can feel the humanity, the action. This past weekend, I was at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens with a friend, and we could hear the crowd intermittently from the Mets-Mariners game nearby. I love that sound.
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cool music very relaxing after a hard day of work 🙂