Talk Show is the American duo of New York-based trumpeter Steph Richards (who also plays on resonating surfaces) and Brooklyn-based drummer Qasim Naqvi (who alternates on almglocken bells and modular synth, of the Dawn of Midi trio). Richards and Naqvi have worked together on different projects for almost two decades since their studies at CalArts in California, but Miss America is their first project as a duo. The album was recorded live at Studio A in San Diego, California, in May 2023.
Richards and Naqvi have developed their own experimental, irreverent aesthetic as Talk Show, rooted in visual-theatrical acts, reflecting their shared experiences with directors in the theater program, choreographers, or experimental and character animators. Accordingly, in their first premiere as Talk show, they were costumed together inside a giant two-person dress sculpture that consumed a drum set. Richards’ trumpet and flugelhorn are played through timpani, snare, and water, and sound as if they were filtered through electronic devices, though every sound she produced was acoustic. Naqvi’s sparse and fragmented drumming is integrated with his otherworldly real-time electronics.
The five free-improvised pieces refer to the horrors of 80s daytime reality talk shows and suggest evocative and cinematic collisions of sounds that often gravitate toward nuanced conversations. These pieces visit the noisy, grimy, and grotesque, but also offer some more imaginative, poetic, and dream-like images.
Eyal Hareuveni
Steph Richards (trumpet, flugelhorn, resonating percussion), Qasim Naqvi (drums, modular synthesizer, almglocken)
