I have been playing with Elephant Talk since it was formed in 1995! We began by plugging-in just about any acoustic or unusual instrument (dulcimer, jaw harp, didgeridoo etc) into boards of effects boxes and playing different styles of roots-type music (folk, jazz and reggae etc)     

There were up to 6 of us in the band and gigging soon became logistically troublesome! On reflection, a large crew of sound engineers and stage managers would have helped. We simplified matters by using a groove-box and an old sampler to get our sound across. This turned out to be the making of the band as people began dancing at our gigs and we were able to start touring.
We visited Ireland, Italy and France many times and recorded several albums, most of which we sold busking in many a European square. (And a few UK ones also!)

After this we took a different direction and did hundreds of workshops in schools, youth centres and community projects mostly around our base in Yorkshire. A challenging but good experience!

Around 2004, we decided to go our separate ways. I moved to Southwest England where I was writing and recording music for various projects. I was becoming increasingly interested in mixing traditional music with Electronic styles and eventually met up with Matt and Sarah who shared similar goals. We have reshaped our sound and added songs to the set (something we haven’t done since playing with Eddie Reader 10 years ago)

Elephant Talk has attracted many excellent musicians during its life span, which has been very fortunate for me. Some of you will remember Adrian Sykes, Joe Greenfield and Jules Marley without whom the band would not exist!

Checkout our back catalogue at www.iTunes.com/elephanttalk

Hi, I'm Sarah Joy, I'm a singer/songwriter.
I've been writing songs most of my life but they only started sounding any good when I was about 16.  

I love singing and believe everyone can and should! As well as singing with Elephant Talk I sing acoustically and with various bands here and there. I'm the musical director for The Wonder Club and I also run 'Presence' an Open-No-Mic in Bristol every Tuesday.

I joined Elephant Talk in 2009. Jon & I had worked on a recording project the previous year & when he needed a singer for the band he thought of me. I was really excited, I used to dance at the front of Elephant Talk gigs in my home town of Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire during the early days of the band, I bought their tapes (yes tapes!!) and have been a fan ever since.

I love singing with Elephant Talk, I love the combination of pumping, electronic dance beats and live, folk rhythms and solos and I really love what Matt and Jon do to my songs! I'm really looking forward to the new CD, which should be finished this summer... watch this space!

      
When I answered the ad in the Musicians Union magazine for a fiddle player in 2008 I had no idea that it would be for one of my favourite live bands Elephant Talk. They were an integral part of my musical diet for a good part of the late 90's and at the time I'd often thought about what it would be like to play in this kind of line up.....

I had always had a great love for sequence based composing since those heady early 90's (I owned an Amiga 1200 with it's revolutionary 4 tracks of simultaneous sequencing on an 8 bit chip with hundreds of samples stored on floppy discs, ahh those were the days!)

This passion for electronica, coupled with my professional career in the mid 90's through to 2001 as a Paris based fiddle player working Europe, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe would be the building blocks for where I find myself now.

In Elephant Talk we are a versatile 3-piece band. We all come from very different musical backgrounds but we have the same vision of what we want to sound like. Each of us are using effects processing units to loop, delay, phase, distort and generally mess up the sound of our instruments as much as is humanly possible! :-)

I now find myself using equipment that I used to fantasize about in my wildest dreams in my Amiga days to create new beats and sounds. I couldn't wish for anything more, apart from a massive sound-proofed practise room maybe!!