TALCO celebrate their twentieth birthday with a live album, their second in the band's history... at least their stage birthday.
So TALCO from Venice has been on the road for 20 years now, enchanting, fascinating, thrilling, and still exciting audiences.
If you haven't been living on Valium in a deep bunker for the last 20 years, you should have at least heard of TALCO. The band calls their style Punkchanka, which means taking the roots of punk, mixing in influences from Balkan sounds, ska-punk, and whatever else the band likes, and out comes what TALCO does.
One thing that TALCO loves as much as Ferrari drivers is speed. This is something that has fascinated me from the very beginning and continues to blow me away. The songs are all played fast, or faster, or really fast. Especially live, it's a blast.
At the same time, the lyrics delivered in Italian are never shortchanged. Singer Dema sings the lyrics quite quickly at times, but always understandably.
It's always a party that the band celebrates live.
While others today talk about demolition parties, the band has been celebrating this for years.
The essence can be heard on “20th Anniversary Live.” The band presents a total of 24 songs on their anniversary release.
The songs are not from a single concert; rather, the band recorded over thirty full-length concerts during their 2022 tour with the help of a specially hired mixer. This gave them the luxury of selecting the best songs in the best atmosphere with the best sound quality. There are recordings from Potsdam, Prague, Zurich, Madrid, Kiel, Santiago de Compostela, Amsterdam, Chemnitz, Hannover, and Bologna, among others. The transitions and recordings have been arranged so that the release sounds as if it were a single concert that was recorded. Everything flows seamlessly.
I really enjoy live recordings because I think they convey the atmosphere, power, and often speed better than albums do. This is no different here. The audience can be heard well. They enthusiastically sing along and go wild (there's really no other way to behave at a TALCO concert).
The band's style is unique. This comes across wonderfully in the recordings; however, I find that the constant high speed does bring slight signs of wear towards the end. It's of course fantastic what the band offers, but maintaining just one tempo can be a bit exhausting in the long run. A little breather here and there, a calm piece, or a new arrangement of songs would easily remedy that. But that's probably more of a topic for a future album by the band.
I congratulate TALCO on 20 years of stage presence, and I am already looking forward like a little child to the concerts the band will play at the beginning of 2025. It will not only be good; it will be fantastic, and especially in the dark months at the beginning of the year, the band brings more than sunshine into the concert halls; they bring smiles to the winter-weary faces.
More from TALCO can be read here at ramtatta.de:
Current interview: https://www.ramtatta.de/s/interviews/f/details/id/10318/
Review album “Videogame“:
https://www.ramtatta.de/s/reviews/f/details/id/9394/
Review album “Insert Coin“:
https://www.ramtatta.de/s/reviews/f/details/id/9147/
Review album “Silent Town“:
https://www.ramtatta.de/s/reviews/f/details/id/details/id/7541/
Review album “Gran Gala“:
https://www.ramtatta.de/s/reviews/f/details/id/details/id/4100/
