Teardo Teho

Ballyturk is the new album by Teho Teardo, his first release after Still Smiling, the succesful collaboration with Blixa Bargeld.

Ballyturk is the music for the new incredible play of Enda Walsh, one of the most interesting writers of our time. Enda Walsh wrote also Hunger, Steve McQueen’s movie. Now the play will be in London at the National Theatre.

But the music for Ballyturk isn’t simply a soundtrack, it’s an album that has it’s own life built around magnetic strings, atmospheric cellos, Teho’s unique guitar and electronics.

Some great musicians played on this album: Joe Lally, Fugazi’s bass player, Lori Goldston who added layes of her amplified cello. Lori played with Nirvana and Earth. Another great cellist on this album is Nick Holland from the Balanescu Quartet.

Ballyturk is a very powerful album, the cinematic element of this music reveals its closeness to the darkest nighths on earth.

This is what Enda Walsh said about this music:

“When I started writing Ballyturk I was listening to Teho's film scores a lot. We hadn't met at that point - but I suppose - invisibly/secretly - our communication started back then. Certainly his music shaped the tone of the world of the play. If I could write as lonesome, as free, as primal as Teho had done, so many times - I might have accomplished something. The music he created for ‘Wilder Mann’ haunted me and spurred me on into the mysterious heart of Ballyturk.

When I finished the text I sent it to Teho in the hope that we could collaborate. Remarkably he agreed, arrived in London and we began our conversations. 

One of the themes of Ballyturk is the end of an innocence - watching a relationship crushed by the force and truth of the outside world - beyond their hermetically sealed room. The play is performed in real time - the events of the 90 minutes unravelling the two characters in front of us. We returned again and again to the image of lab rats and manipulating and placing these characters under immense pressure.

I think Teho's music reveals the characters souls like only great music can. There is a yearning in it that tears open the play and asks for some sort of clarity or truth. Or combined with Helen Atkinson's soundscape - it pummels the characters - squeezing and killing the innocence of their world. 

It has been the most wonderful collaboration - the beauty of his work - laid out in these tracks”.

Enda Walsh