Music / Get To Know
Get to Know: t l k
Bristol vocal and electronic artist t l k, winner of the Best Newcomer crown at the Bristol Legends Awards 2026, shares their musical origins, gig highlights, and how Bristol has helped shape the musician they have become.
How would you describe your sound?
“An ‘intricately layered frisson’ is how Saffron put it recently.
“For me, it feels like collages. Songs and non-songs. Words and non-words. Instruments. Electronic, organic, processed, untouched. Memory stored in recordings. The in-betweens, where things come together.
“Voice is central, though what is (re)contextualising it… this changes quite a lot.”
How did you find your voice?
“I had some classical training as a child, sung in school choirs. There was always music in the house. I wrote hushed songs, made recordings, listened back, beginning to encounter a sensitisation process.
“This fascination never went away… expanding the smallness of a sound, finding more nuance with each listen. As my music taste widened, I tore recordings apart in Ableton, putting them back together in chaotic / considered ways.
“Finding my ‘voice’, both anatomically and artistically… it happens both gradually and acutely. There are these distinct moments, encounters, where you’re immensely humbled by learning a small amount about alot you didn’t know before…
“The world gets cracked open, you feel alive, then very existential… But you persist anyway, because you have to. It’s vital, to ‘music’, to sing, and it’s exciting that it never stops, the cracking.
“The voice can be reframed again and again. The more experiences we gather – i.e. the deeper we go with persisting – the more dense, colourful, full a picture we find… Until the slate gets wiped all over again.”
t l k has performed at a wide range of Bristol events and collaborated widely with other musicians in the city – photo: @guigliotto
How has Bristol helped shape you as an artist?
“My agent Hari (SNOG) says it’s the best music scene in Europe. It’s about the people. The people of Bristol ask why things are the way they are, and then say ‘that’s not good enough, we can do better than this’.
“You can feel it in the music, in the independent venues at the heart of our scenes, the creative communities that move collectively, not competitively. We support each other, and it only seems to deepen with time.
“People move here to find chosen family; they come with purpose and a sensitivity and excitement towards the legacy they are building on.
“It’s always changing but I have a sense this feels like a particularly special time to be here.”
Their debut album is in the works – photo: Allistair Brookes / Kollab
Any standout performance experiences in your career?
“FORWARDS West stage, sandwiched between Erykah and Aphex. The Barbican, Wembley Arena… The big ones, they carry a certain weight. The air is vast, like you could reach out and not touch anything solid for a long while. It’s rare to be in rooms that big; the scale feels like the dreamworld.
“But there’s something irreplaceable about the small, intimate rooms. You can hear people’s weight shifting every now and then, exhales in the pauses, each hum in the dark discernible from the next.”
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What is currently exciting you in your musical world?
“I’m moved by ongoing research into grief practices, laments, mourning song. It’s clear that we’re struggling to connect with the seismic griefs of our time, yet we have no widely shared practices here to know what to do with it all. I’m curious about how we can find ways to grieve using our voices.
“I’m excited about collaborations with friends, whose work I’ve long admired: MONOSUM, amaia, yumé net, to name a few.
“I’m also currently learning Imogen Heap’s extensive back catalogue, to sing backing vocals with London Contemporary Voices at her Roundhouse headline… wasn’t on my 2026 bingo card.
“Sharing music that’s been in the works for a while… Preparing for the release of my first album. Playing in places I’ve never been before. Aunty-ing in the in-betweens.”
t l k performed at Real World as part of the Saffron Sessions project; the video will be released in the coming weeks – photo: Emma Davies
Main image: @guigliotto
This article originally appeared in the Bristol24/7 May/June magazine
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