Talk Talk (RIP Mark Hollis)

like how instruments fade in before their bit,the voice, the intimacy, i believe in you is one of my alltime faves - remember Mark Goodier's interview with Catherine Wheel when they want to listen to 'Desire' and i go out and buy 'black metallic' coz i thought 'what great taste'.

i love the early singles too

Hey, if you hadn't made a faovrable comparison between them and fried potatoes, no need to ask what you thought, eh? ;)

Genius, full stop

Yeah, that sums it up nicely,

So Talk Talk -- classic all the way. Laughing Stock is my personal favorite. Also love how other bands have picked up on them, from Bark Psychosis to some of Catherine Wheel's better moments. Ever hear the latter's "Thunderbird"? Completely lifts the drum pattern of "After the Flood," which means it's obviously one of the best things they've done. Then UNKLE sampled "New Grass" for the "Rabbit in the Headlights" single, which -- ta da -- brings us full circle due to Thom Yorke's vocal contribution to the same song.

Too bad Mark Hollis has decided to "retire". That solo record of his is brilliant.

I think my favourite Talk Talk album is "Spirit of Eden". "Laughing Stock" has greater highs ("Taphead", "New Grass" etc.) but it takes a while to get going and doesn't flow quite as well. "Spirit of Eden" on the other hand is stunning from the get-go - the trilogy never ceases to amaze me, and by the time the choirs on "I Believe In You" come on I feel like I'm floating in a sea of morphine.

However I feel it's necessary to state that the album prior to those two, "The Colour of Spring", is definitely necessary if you like "Spirit of Eden" and "Laughing Stock". It's more pop-friendly and has a greater reliance on song structures, but the songs are mad fun and the ambition and attention to detail had already begun to manifest. Songs such as "April 5th" and "Chameleon Day" wouldn't be too out of place on "Spirit of Eden".

Anyone else notice the way Hollis references other songs? "Does Caroline Know" ("Caroline, No"), Laughing Stock and "The Daily Planet" (Love), "Inside Looking Out" and "It's My Life" (Animals), "Mirror Man" (Beefheart)... I know there are more.

That's why they're so great. The Colour of Spring is one of my favorite records.

Tim, I'm rather curious about the connection you see between Bark Psychosis and Radiohead. I'm a big BP fan but I've never really sensed their influence in Radiohead's stuff.

And, maybe just the fact that Bark Psychosis and Radiohead seem to still bear some allegiance to post-punk, which to my mind is totally non-existent in Talk Talk (in all three a matter of residual evidence of past incarnations).

Re. Radiohead and Bark Psychosis. Yes, they do have elements in common, the paranoia being the most obvious one, but they seem to have taken them in different directions. Late-period Radiohead is much more claustrophobic than Bark Psychosis; there's an feeling of the whole world weighing down on you, and the music tries to encompass that world. Whereas BP's stuff has much more light and space about it and seems to contain an acknowledgement that there is a world outside that isn't touched by the paranoia and that it is escapable to. Even after Kid A and Amnesiac, I can't imagine Radiohead putting out anything like Hex (the song) with it's huge wall of static that abruptly gives way to the gentlest shimmer.

I suppose that what I'm arguing is that they do share elements, but these are more likely to be derived from a common root rather than BP acting as a mediator from Talk Talk to Radiohead.

The O.Rang guys made this weird dice game called Go-Rang. It came with all sorts of tiny gadgets and some rather detailed instructions in the form of a dinky scroll. If anyone should happen to have BP's "Clawhammer" flexi or the release that has "Reserve Shot Gunman," I'd be more than happy to part with my extra Go-Rang.

I have not actually listened to orang, which practically is talk talk w/out vocals...has anyone else? how does it measure up?

and i am pretty sure lee harris is drumming on it, as well as it featuring the old dude who played vibes on hex.

How did you find out about this?

What kind of record deal are they looking for? (being serious here. feel free to email me)

just to tie things together (and keep this post OT), Sutton contributed ("guitar") to both O.rang albums. he also provided a great Boymerang 12" remix of "p53" on Echo(UK)/Hit it!(US). i don't believe this track was ever anthologized on CD. hmm. a disc compiling all the Boymerang remixes would be such a nice thing. though i've hunted and collected them devotedly.

new Bark Psychosis. oh, glory!

the bark psychosis album may be released through the web!

Mitch you probably don't want to hear this but I reckon you should have started with Spirit of Eden instead - it's a more deliberately beautiful record so it makes it easier to get a handle of what Talk Talk are doing that is good.

Yes you did. This has nothing to do with the fact that I regard the Sea and Cake with at most a shrug, of course. *hides from Josh* (More seriously, Tim's advice to Mitch is sound, Jaymc -- and Anthony is right in that the early stuff is equally genius in a different world; heard "It's My Life" out at brunch yesterday and remembered again how great it is. However, there is no album actually called Talk Talk, that's a mistake from MST3K. ;-))

It's sort of weird. If jaymc or mitch had made similar comments about, say Trout Mask Replica or something, I'd be totally sympathetic! I mean, Beefheart rules but I certainly understand if it isn't everyone's cup of tea. That's fine. He's sort of creating this totally oppositional aesthetic; but the fun thing about it is the self-relexivity in 1969, absorbs all these elements of insider culture, outsider culture, basically coming to terms with the different camps and aesthetics and general cultural awareness the 60's had wrought (ok yeah, Zappa too; and the Beatles and basically everyone else - of course - who didnt't make it explicit). Talk Talk, in their own way - more than ANY other group seemed to embody a late 80's trajectory of reflection, becoming, what have you. If you can't get into those two late Talk Talk records .. I mean, what are you asking for in music? What do you want? The fucking Sea and Cake?! That's the worst milquetoast horseshit in the fucking history of humankind!

Oh fuck, I dunno. I shouldn't post to this board late at night. I've had some beers, I should go to bed. I don't know, jaymc. You seem like a nice guy. You're a homeboy from Chicago, which I have to give you points for. But if you like that Sea and Cake garbage over Talk Talk I just have to ask what you're looking for in music? I think you need to try to put these records in context. Nothing sounded like those records in the late 80's. The Talk Talk records are the sound of life lived gently, jaggedly, coagulating into these song forms full of mystery and beauty and humility. Instruments asserting themselves, pulling back, hesitating, shouting; it's the sound of life writ large. Lyrically, Hollis deals with lots of horribly emetic, traditionally "rock" tropes on these records - addiction, spirituality, redemption - but he always renders them in a touching, riveting way. There's very much an improvisational - "happy accident" - quality to the proceedings (sounds simple, right? try it, try to make it sound this good; sorry, the chicago dorks don't come close if they were trying [and many of them, O'Rourke not excluded, most definitely did cite Hollis as a big inspiration]), which was completely Hollis' vision; he says as much on a promotional interview cassette I have that was released circa Laughing Stock. In fact, on it he claims his big inspirations were Can's Tago Mago, Coltrane's Live at Birdland (he actually describes loving the sound of some technician setting up / adjusting Elvin Jones' drum kit on the record; that "accident" aesthetic), and something else well fuck it i'm drunk and i'm not gonna listen to it reight now.

In Hollis, you've got this guy starting as a great craftsman of pop melodies mutating into this sort of studio hermit, perfecting his craft, making two fucking absolutely arresting albums, then moving on to a life in the monastery. And never looking back. Oh shit, wait he made the solo album which is just as great!! it's a great story, sort of like Van Vliet, maybe better. Ultimately, forget about my mythologizing - listen to these records, give them some time; it's all right there you give it some time, if you listen intently to the sound of human beings working together.

Nick wrote the be-all and end-all study of Spirit here which is so dense I haven't even read the whole thing.

I actually blushed when I clicked on anthony's link and it lead to my piece! I thought he must mean someone else.

if 'spirit of eden' is a more 'tightly composed' or 'conventionally structured' record then i definitely DON'T want that: 'laughing stock' is interesting to me at its *most* protracted moments, hovering between event and non-event. I can kind of objectively see how hollis' voice works within those tensions - guiding, sculpting, directing, whatever.. but where you hear pure gospel soul or whatever i hear something that's stopping me from listening to the songs as the 'sound happenings' that i want them to be. so yeah, i was being flippant, there ARE things that jaymc is missing, it's just that the noises coming out of mark hollis' throat are making it harder for me to appreciate them. but maybe that's just me, and maybe that's just me NOW, i'm on a bit of an ambient and electoacoustic kick at the moment.

Talk Talk
"Talk Talk (version 1)"
Talk Talk

at the end.

I don't think it is either of those things; it's more on that intensely perfect organic development vibe a la Vocalcity, with lots of gorgeous ebb and flow, whereas Laughing Stock always struck me as a bit more self-consciously live-jam affair (and consequently a bit patchy? It's controversial to say this around here but what is the point of that first song, exactly?). Laughing Stock is actually the more songful of the two albums; the first three songs on Spirit Of Eden form a quasi-proggish suite whose entire point maybe is to blur the lines between event and non-event - long sections of drift building up to and melting away from moments of intense melodic and emotional focus.

What's relevant here though is that the music on Spirit of Eden is so unambiguously *stunning* (eg. the choirs on "I Believe in You" make me want to swoon like Ned Ned) that I think it's easier to ignore Hollis's vocals - which I also found jarring to begin with - until you've internalised them and don't notice anything odd about them anymore. Even though I can definitely see why it's a lot of people's no. 1 pick, I think Laughing Stock is a record of more ambiguous qualities, and perhaps can only be appreciated fully from within the mindstate of being a Hollis fan.

Of course, if you end up *really* not being able to stand Hollis's vocals *at all* then I recommend going straight to Bark Psychosis' Hex instead.

I will say this about the power of the press -- if it wasn't for this review by Jim Arundel and this interview by Steve Sutherland -- both in Melody Maker, late 1991 -- I wouldn't have take a chance on Laughing Stock used when I found it a couple of months later. And my life would have been the poorer, frankly.

what I mean by 'obvious' is partly that the choices made on the record feel like such a perfect fit for a certain audience - one that, given its tastes and the general sort of tenor of records like this, is prone to finding it an acceptable way of achieving that tenor.

I also mean that it just seems like lots more people could easily make records kind of like it. that's probably contentious. especially since I don't even think there are lots of records like it. or maybe that's wrong, and there are (see mitch above regarding kranky, etc., or hello jazz and folk and electronic music, and hello post-rock) lots of them - but the territories they're working in are slightly different, and the choices they make are slightly different. if that makes the records sound even slightly different, those differences can be huge, from the inside.

I'm reminded of something I said once, to fred maybe (on here?), about the beach boys and the way people from certain musical backgrounds engage with 'pretty' and 'highly spiritual' music. this is clearly pretty complicated, though, especially with people like melissa who have a much deeper engagement with that terrain.

I have no idea what hollis is singing about on 'laughing stock'. and I often start losing interest near the end. I don't know what this means.

more and more i'm thinking colour of spring was their masterpiece, at least in terms of joining the "oceanic" and "80s stadium pop" aspects of their careers.

i suppose what i mean is that i'm afraid i'm officially getting more from the associated memories (and feelings) of laughing stock and my history with it than the actual document itself, and that's a slippery place to be.

I'm mindful of Josh's criticisms - the distinction b/w Talk Talk and a lot of post-rock and other stuff often seems largely contextual eg. here was a former pop band doing this in the eighties in england. Not that I don't think context is important and relevant but these distinctions can harden into unthinking orthodoxy where Talk Talk are obviously better than [insert post-rock band X here] but we don't really say why.

Again one of the reasons I maybe prefer Spirit of Eden is the fact that in retrospect it still sounds more startling and out-of-leftfield (likewise Colour of Spring, maybe?). Whether it's a tribute to its influence or a sign of something else, Laughing Stock is much more representative of generalist post-rock inclinations in the same way that Music Has The Right... is representative of post-intelligent IDM. This is not necessarily a bad thing, obv.

Possibly the existence of Bark Psychosis is k-necessary to Talk Talk's reputation. BP getting TT "right" (cf. [post rock band X] getting TT "wrong") is convenient mental shorthand for what is "right" about Talk Talk. Also it nicely links them into Lost Generation continuum by which they have ultra-stretched relationship to A. R. Kane et. al. --> they are not in the Sting Continuum.

i do find mark hollis' voice to be heartbreakingly beautiful, but then again i feel the same about green's voice on cupid & psyche in places, so whadda i know

Hasn't Graham Sutton explicitly said that Talk Talk were, like, his biggest formative experience? And the fact he's now working with Lee Harris must count for something too.

"like the bass in bark psychosis gives it a much more kraut/p-punk edge/ballast, and the guitars sound more like mogwai's ascension riffing (yes yes in the sense that the gang of four sounds like the rapture) than tt's brittle scrapings and plinking chimes, and it's all so much denser than the aerated (or arid?) sound of laughing stock and spirit"

Maybe this is part of the way in which BP reposition TT though - retro-wiring TT as post-post-punk. (speaking of Mogwai - has ever a band's quality been so explictly tied to how closely they reflect their predecessors???).

of the many things that can be said about t.t. here's one: i feel eslly affectionate toward the daring silence at the beginning of "spirit of eden" ... not literal silence but an extremely slow crescendo. also the endings of their last three albums are similarly understated.

i have to say that i came to t.t. like many people--in the late 90s, after they had been namedropped by j o'rourke et al, and retroactively dubbed the godfathers of postrock and whathaveyou. so i can't say in honesty that a certain narrative hasn't always been in the background while i've listened to them. but just the same all these observaions about their innovations and so on are sort of academic to me; i find their music beautiful, arresting, etc. beyond any considerations of context. that goes for the mark hollis album as well, though it's deliberately a less visceral experience.

x-post. jess i like your comments on hollis's voice. i like how he seems totally comfortable slipping into a pocket in the arrangement and then shifting back to the fore, but not shifting according to the changes....

I recall that alan and mimi of low, at least (don't know about zak), have said how much they prized these albums. I seem to remember andrew kenny from the american analog set saying something similar to me, in terms of albums that were of central importance for him ('another green world' was another, interestingly). I've probably often implicitly thought of a different kind of secret history involving the 'slowcore' and related bands of the 90s taking advantage of quiet and beauty in related ways to talk talk. that these qualities have so many other antecedent proponents within rock-oriented and -derived music and without probably made it easier for me to see those particular musical choices as not THAT striking (though certainly still marginal in some ways).

nick's piece is a case in point: i often suspect that when people invoke "god" in relation to music (not talking here about explicitly religious music) it's just a way of trying to transcend the superlatives that have become worn down through overuse. "god" is like the ultimate superlative in this case. but as always i think that rather than upping the ante on superlatives we should try to convey distinct impressions of the music itself. any narrative should probably be built up from that.

SoE
CoS
Hex
LS
MH

In that order. Which is, with the exception of MH being last (should be third, between CoS and Hex), the order I heard them in. And I've only come across all of them in the last 18 months.

Jess is remarkably OTM with his observations about Hollis' voice. I love how contrived/controlled/mannered Hollis sounds, how he refuses to follow normal patterns of vocalisation in his delivery, and how he subsumes his own presence within the music. It's definitely an acquired taste though - Emma can't stand listening to TT because of the vocals although she likes the music, whereas half the time I don't even notice they're there, as if the acquisition of the appreciation of Hollis' vocals only comes to exist when you can lose sight of them in the greater picture, and that comes through familiarity.

NB. Still waiting on Independancy...

NB2. Strange thing; I don't actually like the Talk Talk piece I did for Stylus all that much (either of them; there's another composed entirely of adjectives). I think it's far too mannered and prissy, and verges on being up its own ass at times (up my ass?- yes). Much as, yes, SoE (and LS) make me want to believe in God when I don't (can't - and believe me I've tried, faith and divinity and religion has been something I've been obsessed with for years), the pure fact is that I really fuckin' enjoy listening to SoE (more than the others listed of its type) for the visceral thrill of it (especially at volume!), the drums, the bass, the movement of the dynamics, I love the way it twists my guts and shakes my shoulders, and as such it does that better than LS, which, while incredibly beautiful, never reaches the level of fluid, physical POWER that SoE does. When I'm listening to LS I often feel as if I'm just waiting for those opening bars of New Grass as, like mr Arundel said, I'd wait for the dawn after a really frantic sleepless night (for whatever reason) which is not always pleasurable but becomes worthwhile in that one moment of sublime birth (and really, man, it is like the sun coming up, so, so much, after a storm, and not even a spectacular that you can observe from the picture-window, a dull, headache storm that crushes pressure onto your head...)...

Interesting how few women have contributed to this thread; apart from Mel it's very much been 'the sensitive boys club'. Apart from Jess, obv. Who ist not sensyteev!

Sorry!

Anyway, keep talking, this is interesting...

that is much better than the studio version I've heard.

I like spirit of eden (all the reasons for that are here) but just want to say that Hollis voice is meant to be listened to as part of a texture like james says. The lyric sheet in my copy has hollis' writing, which is a scribble, and that makes sense when you listen to the vocals.

oh jess is sensitive. oh yes he is.

Would I like Talk Talk? Some people whose opinions I value highly rate them, but then again, their name gets bandied about in the same context as some I loathe. The only thing I've heard is "It's My Life" which I always get mixed up with another 80s song, as I've not heard it in a decade.

yeah! get yr 'with the programme' and get in touch with yr 'sensitive side' NOW!

Someone answer the question... Would I like Sounds of Eden? Maybe I should add it to my list of stupidly obvious records to buy.

Hollis insistently referring to his music as ?art? to the NME, the wilful disconnection of image and music (illustrations, not photographs), the combo originality (within pop) of jazz prog folk pop (as pointed out above).

Boring story so far stuff: high sales of The Colour of Spring -> high budget for the making of Spirit of Eden -> disappeared for a coupla years -> came back with SoE (EMI erupting into fury: released a scurrilously edited ?I Believe in You? as a single at the behest of the band)! Also, an album so intricate, complex, arranged couldn?t be toured -> further discontent, rebellion!

Do Make Say Think, surely.

Ominous: intense: ghost: swells: pulses: whales: ebb, flow, overlap: lap: wax: wane: the Moon as unidentified unintended unifying image? No.

Hollis? voice: always had a non-specific urgency for me (?muted trumpet? muted) (I get a similar feeling from Johnny Marr?s guitar playing, a sense of felt regret and anticipated sorrow driving the playing, forward forward go on get there, but that?s perhaps a too idiosyncratic, personal-syncretic connection to be useful here)?

Sure, it's "tasteful" music, but it's far, far more sparse than a lot of AOR fodder of a similar mood, not to mention less repetitive. Still, who cares if it resembles AOR fodder? I'm with Jess here; it could very well be a one-off for me. So what? I'm not worried about "missing out" on a whole world of goodness -- that kind of worrying will kill you. It's like with _Gaucho_ by the Dan -- I bow at its shiny feet, but I'm not about to go surfing through piles of late 70s/early 80s smooth jazz wibble just to make sure I'm not unknowingly avoiding something life-changing. Like SoE/LS, I'll just assume it achieves its particular mood through an interesting synthesis of things many of which on their own would not appeal to me.

actually lee harris was involved in the making of hex in some way, although it's not exactly clear to me how (at the moment). i believe he and graham sutton have known each other since about 1991 (though don't quote me on that one).

as much as i love SoE and LS, i like Hex better. you never hear mark hollis and his kru breaking down into the philip glass/steve reich style video-you-were-shown-in-science-class music.

let me put forth a "nex-gen" of the SoE/LS/Hex continuum ... hood's cold house is a post-IDM take on the whole "muted" sound. hood publicly make clear their love of Bark Psychosis, and I believe Graham Sutton was initially asked to produce the record. while i don't think it's quite as aw-shit! as talk talk or BP, hood did good on that one.

steely dan : lite jazz :: talk talk : ???

Re Harris/BP connection: Harris is credited with "assistance" on Hex. Sutton also sampled his drums for the Boymerang tracks.

One thing I find significant in Hex's credits is Henry Binns' presence (another assistant). His other involvements? Tilt and Kid A. Since Kid A came out, I always heard a connection between the three records -- so discovering that tiny fact somehow made it seem all the more valid to me.

but I'm SHOCKED there's so little discussion of Talk Talk by
Talk Talk off of Talk Talk. That song is fucking genius.

ANTHONY & ALEX IN NYC IN UTTERLY VEHEMENT AGREEMENT SHOCKAH!

Ironically, this thread has way too much talk talk in it.

One thing that I think distinguishes Bark Psychosis (from both Talk Talk and Slint) and particularly BP on Hex is that they were on the verge of taking the sound somewhere else *again* - on "The Loom" and "Big Shot", there's a real sense of them making good on the bandied-about "lost generation" membership (eg. Disco Inferno, Insides). "Big Shot" in particular is a revelation, something between "Soon" and Spirit of Eden and Aphex Twin and microhouse, and it mixtures up all of those conflicting values really effectively, almost like a piece of sample collage rather a performed song.

If there's a potential limitation to Talk Talk it's that their increasing focus on organicism and looseness can seem like an affirmation of the pre-eminence of those values; BP sound much less tied to a specific aesthetic, and as such had the potential to go further - the percussive section in "The Loom" for example sounds like a tribute to Talk Talk's "Desire" framed through a familiarity of everything *else* that was happening in music.

It's a shame Sutton wasn't able to follow up Hex more speedily than it's evidently taken - a lot of potential contextual "disruptions" might have been possible over the past nine years.

Stripey to thread!

As usual, I'm being contentious but out of all of TT's records, it's LS that I listen to the most, certainly more than the other albums combined. One of the few albums that I can think of where the band's playing is completely together, but also sounding like it's just on the edge of splitting apart.

Brown's resume is utterly massive, but check out what other band he worked with...

Yup.. Bark Psychosis.

Spurred on by all this discussion, I dug out SoE, LS and MH and had a good long ironing session listening to all three. I didn't need to listen to Hex as I've learnt it note for note in my head over the years. Opinions? SoE is superb from end to end, and sounds natural, and lovely. LS is the least of the three, being too artificial, airless, and too much of its time, and the songs aren't as good as on the surrounding LPs, MH is nearly up there with SoE, only more natural (apart from those French voices on "A life" - why?). What I'd not done before was read the lyric sheets with all three - which made quite a difference actually. I'd not noticed the religious connotations before. Take the music away and some of the words would not be out of place in a church service.

Incidentally Nick, do you want a second CD of other BP stuff, the two Circa EPs and tracks from "Game Over"?

*stumbles in*

Apologies for getting here so late. Thanks for the kind words about what I've said in the past about this band. :) Hopefully I'll be thoughtful/useful to this discussion, too, though lack of time to think this over is going to be a big obstacle, and my writing's probably going to sprawl messily as a result. Anyhow ...

Lack of ladies on the thread? Well, that's just alt.music demographics for you. We've been out-numbered on other lists too. It's odd though, I'd think that Talk Talk would appeal to more women, since it is very warm and textured and generally positive in vibe, and isn't too far from, say, the music of Japan or Roxy music, both of whom have huge female followings.

Would you like Talk Talk, Kate? I think you would, but I don't expect you'd want to listen to them every day. Not many fans do that. I don't either. Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock aren't albums that you can just throw on the turntable any time you feel like it. And they can't easily be assessed in a record store listening booth, or on a tiny sound-file on a website. You're better off not listening at all. It would be like trying to decide how you felt about Chinese food in general after only having eaten two bites off of one dish! You can, however, get a pretty good sense of how Colour of Spring will sound if you listen to the little soundbites on those websites. So if you want to preview a Talk Talk album that way, choose that one instead. Like someone said : it is a nice transition album between pop and whatever it was that they became after pop.

Whoever compared them to fine wine had the right idea : something rare that should be savored, with your mind focused on it completely -- but also something that could would ruin you, or deaden you to the pleasant effects, if you tried to do it too often.)

As for Mark's voice. Well, if you can handle Bryan Ferry's (which it is often compared to, probably because they both prize texture over clarity) or David Sylvian's (who has a good voice, but deliberately sings "off" in an attempt to be more "interesting") then you shouldn't have any problem with Mark's voice. Since you come from a shoegazing background, Kate, you're already familiar with the concept of "voice as instrument" -- so if you don't like his voice, think of it as an instrument, and it might not bother you as much as it would if you thought of it as a voice!

Most people want you to play this loud, but my preferred way of listening to it is just after bedtime, with the headphones on, lights off, in bed, blankets pulled up, at a very low volume. That way, you give it your full attention, and your mind shifts into "sleep" mode faster. It has a way of embracing you if you do that, as opposed to assaulting you if you play it loud. I find "Spirit of Eden" to be very comforting. I often play it when I'm upset. The jarring moments echo my distress, but the lull that surrounds them then surrounds me too, and helps contain my feelings and makes me feel better. (It's almost like the feeling that you get when a good day follows three bad ones -- how in light of the bad days, the good one seems more hard-won, more profound).

About Bark Psychosis : I once compared Spirit of Eden with Hex and said that while Spirit had the feel of actual transcendence, Hex had the feel of a near-miss. But when I said "near miss" I didn't mean that the album was flawed, I meant that the mood of Hex was more unstable than Spirit of Eden's. If Spirit's course is a steady ascent into Heaven, Hex's course is more like a fumbling first flight. You can hear the band striving for lift-off in Bark's music -- the many tone changes, many rhythm changes, many mood changes -- a melodic scrambling around for the one thing that will get them airborne. (They do get airborne eventually, but only for a few moments. Moments I loved so much, that when I first heard them, I couldn't help rewinding the tape, playing those moments over and over again, instead of moving on to the next song). In some ways, that's what makes Hex the most listenable album of all those mentioned on this thread : it is a feeling that we all can relate to -- the striving and failing -- but with lyrics that are less blatant and music that is more melodic than most ofhter albums with "rise and fall" as their theme.

Graham sums the album's mood up well in the first song :

"you work so hard,
but you don't know what it's like
to feel so sure ..."

then, said almost as an afterthought, but repeated twice, with growing emphasis :

"it's gonna work out anyway.
it's gonna work out anyway."

And I agree. It does. In spite of their floundering, it's a beautiful album.

So I'd actually recommend Bark Psychosis "Hex" first to you, Kate.
Not only because it is more "human" than Talk Talk, but also because it is a bit more familiar in terms of sound, structure, themes and style. Also, you won't have any problems with the voice on this one : Graham sounds just like a dirty-dronerock boy -- probably because he _was_ one, up until a couple of years before recording this album. ;)

If you like Bark Psychosis, I think it will pave the way for you liking Talk Talk, too.

Ok, about Orang : if Talk Talk is an avoidance of noise, Orang is an avoidance of silence. You will not hear a more cluttered record -- let me rephrase that : you will not hear a more cluttered record that still holds together musically and melodically (stuff like Stockhausen is easily more cluttered, but nowhere near as pleasant to listen to). "Herd of Instinct" and "Fields and Waves" are musical collages, boh with strong emphasis on rhythm (Orang consisting of the two guys who were the rhythm section of Talk Talk, so it stands to follow). If you like Peter Gabriel's "Last Temptation" soundtrack, then you will probably adore "Herd of Instinct", since there are many parallels. In the same way that Gabriel immersed himself in the here-and-now to seek transcendence for that album, Orang do too. With Talk Talk, it's in the clouds. With Orang, it's deep down in the Earth. They sample freely from the folk music of just about every culture, and mix them all up into an "It's A Small World" approximation for the anti-Disneyland set. The first two songs of "Herd" rank among my all-time favorites. Whoever compared them to gamelan was on target. Though they don't have gamelan's frantic pace, they do share gamelan's love-affair with the clatter of cymbals, triangles, brushed drums and other tinny, rainy sounds. It's a sound you don't often hear in roCk music -- so it's like a tickle in the ear.

Sea and Cake sometimes manage that -- walking a line between Talk Talk and Orang. But that is a whole different subject and I've already worn everyone's patience out with such a big posting!

Hpe at least some of this made sense. Sorry for the length and lack of proof-reading!

this would be news to my wife, my kid, everyone in our apartment building and anyone passing by on the street below our windows.

now i've read this and all the linked reviews guess i'll have to check these guys out. don't think i've ever heard a single note by 'em.

I like this.

I always found Grace by Jeff Buckley to be a particularly good record for getting women to shag me...

It's funny because it came in a double CD set with "It's My Life" and I had to turn it off after 2 or 3 songs because it had dated so badly. (Which is odd cause I can still listen to The Teardrop Explodes, even though that is just as dated to the 80s.)

i think the teardrop explodes will be one of the most name-dropped bands of 2004. believe.

Zing! :) Wow Scott, you ARE an uber-fan! Maybe playing Talk Talk loud has a different effect than playing them softly? I'll have to give it a try ... and hey, having more than one copy of "Spirit" is understandable -- on lp format, the James Marsh illustrations look much more beautiful. (People who don't even _like_ the band have been known to squirrel away copies of those lps, just so they can have huge, high-quality versions of the James Marsh illustrations).

--------

> It was really interesting to me to see where early Spiritualized nicked all their ideas from.

There's a theory about how "Velvet Underground only had 100 fans, but all those fans went out and formed bands" ... Well, I think the same is true of Talk Talk -- only in their case, it wasn't that people formed bands after hearing them, it was that already-existing bands altered their sound dramaically after hearing them!

---------

> Don't know any of the names of any of the songs, cause I was, ha-hem, too busy to look at the tracklisting.

After thousands of listens, I still can't correctly name most of the tracks! Partially because they flow into each other (so it's hard to tell one song from another) and partially because I listen to the album all the way through (so I've never needed to know which songs to skip) ... As for the erotic possibilities of Talk Talk albums *blush* well yes. It is catnip for sensitive shoegazer types (both sexes), as much, if not moreso than Cocteau Twins.

------

> It's funny because it came in a double CD set with "It's My Life" and I had to turn it off after 2 or 3 songs because it had dated so badly.

Errr, bad choice for accompanying cd! Much better would have been Colour of Spring. ("Life's What You Make It" hasn't dated so badly as "It's My Life"). Yeah, don't listen to both in the same sitting! Ironically, what dates the earlier albums so badly is often the wimpy-sounding drumming ... a contrast to the later albums, where Lee's drumming is so strong, so "right", so distinctive, and so timeless.

Glad to hear you like Talk Talk, Kate!

chris: my engineer friend has a copy of this (the spirit of eden one) on the coffee table in the studio -- my mistake was picking it up (i couldn't put it down!) it is quite simply one of the best magazine articles i've ever read. you'll never think of talk talk the same way.

Well, I think the same is true of Talk Talk -- only in their case, it wasn't that people formed bands after hearing them, it was that already-existing bands altered their sound dramaically after hearing them!

stripey: this is a great comment. the most interesting thing is that it continues to occur at relatively the same rate even (roughly) fifteen years after SoE.

Hey Scott, here's an excerpt from the interview Chris mentioned that relates well to what we've been talking about :

" ... We came up with the conclusion, in the end,that was either put on it, “Please play quietly” or, as I tried to point out to Mark, that you’ve got to leave people to their own resources ..."

:)

"I loathe the post-rocky cd with relaly long boring tracks, lead singer sounds as if he has longblonde hair and possibly should relocate to a Christian tinband?"

(luckily he likes the 'ardkore, skeptics, PiL & disco inferno I sent with it)

i've never heard 'laughing stock' and the two bits i've heard off 'spirit of eden' were the bits on the 'best of' that came out in 1990 (u know when 'its my life' was a hit again ?) that were bstrdzd edits just kind of stuck on at the end.
but... i didn't like the two bits i heard.

maybe i give the whole thing a listen in the dark when i'm a bi glum.
that's the idea is it ?

on the norman records update they mention Bed as a band that is an exact duplicate of laughing stock era tt. has anyone heard them? any thoughts?

I have indeed heard them thanks to Doug Watson -- there's a definite, obvious similarity, though I would ascribe it mostly to how the feller sings and the minimal arrangements rather than the exact sound. On that level, though, they work for me more than, say, Elbow.

What's the word that means being nostalgic for things you've never experienced? Thats what TT does for me.

(I picked up a vinyl re-issue of TCoS over the weekend. Beautiful pressing. Simply beautiful).

The reason why TCoS stands out for me is that it exhibits the genius of Talk Talk in a somewhat embryonic but no less impressive state. I betcha the same kind of people who like TCoS best are also the sort who prefer Isn't Anything.

the point

I'm reminded of something I said once, to fred maybe (on here?), about the beach boys and the way people from certain musical backgrounds engage with 'pretty' and 'highly spiritual' music. this is clearly pretty complicated, though, especially with people like melissa who have a much deeper engagement with that terrain.

made by josh apparently interested me then and interests me now because i really think that there are certain musical qualities--obv shifting ones over time, given the shifting contexts--that evoke "spiritual", "transcendent", etc. i suppose one could even set up a kind of experiment to determine the superlatives that people attach to certain music, but i suppose this would have to presume a large enough sample of people with exceedingly similar experiences with music.

i think its obvious that TT brings an enormous amount of talent and skill to their work, which is why i can say without reservation that i'm a fan, but i think it's a combination of this skill AND the particular metier...the particular nature of t he work...that produces the sort of (what seems to me) hyberbole or at least...peculiar range of superlatives. this can be illustrated better perhaps by responses to lesser bands with similar aims. maybe even with U2...i dunno.

teasing out what musical qualities track to these adjectives would be a worthwhile endeavor which i suppose few living rock critics (or whomever) would be prepared to undertake

there are albums and films i love despite their being adored in the laziest terms by all kinds of poseurs...

i think the battery of adjectives applied to their later albums actually does the band and its music a disservice

you can stretch this comment to include a good chunk of the sort of music thats covered in the wire etc

Maybe that's why the critical fawning doesn't bug me (although the gave-it-two-listens negative reviews are still funny after all these years).

(BTW, don't mind Matt and I - we're friends from way back.)

the mythology is that it was ignored completely and then rediscovered thanks to tastemakers like jim o'rourke etc in the mid 90s (not a long path to rediscovery mind, but still)

but is this actually true? certainly the emergence of post rock etc. gave the album a new home, a new sense of approachability etc., but i would think a symapthetic audience would have existed in 1991 as well, however small

Some contemporary reviews (scroll downward) It most certainly was not ignored completely -- Melody Maker, for one, ran a big interview with Hollis, a follow-up technical interview with Brown and Hollis and a review all within a couple of weeks of each other.

From NME, September 28, 1991

TALK TALK
Laughing Stock (Verve)
Once upon a time Mark Hollis was the intense-eyed ranting lad who shouted "All you do is talk talk !". Then he became the anthemically melancholy lad who moaned "Its my life !" and never looked back from a life of anthemic melancholy.

As time goes by, Mark Hollis' music has slipped into a vat of dark, brooding melancholy so deep that even David Sylvian would join Right Said Fred rather than partake of its glummo brew.

In despair did EMI release an anthemically melancholy singles album and in more despair an anthemically melancholy dance remix album - an act on a par with releasing an Ambient House mix of Sham 69's "Hurry Up Harry", only not as interesting.

Now Hollis has gone to Verve and recorded "Laughing Stock" with 23 acoustically-oriented bass and organ and drum people. There is a slight jazz feel to this record. There are elements of soundtrack ambience. There are songs called "After The Flood". There are lyrics like "A hunger uncurbed by nature's calling". The whole thing is unutterably pretentious and looks over its shoulder hoping that someone will remark on its 'moody brilliance' or some such. It's horrible.

(4 out of 10)

David Quantick

what's funny is that certain phrases in hollis's lyrics DO irritate me, but only when i can make them out. it doesnt seem to be an album that really puts much pressure on the lyrics to signify anyhow.

I know that John McEntire of Tortoise namechecked SOE or LS in The Wire around '95. But I don't think he was a fan much before that, as I know the guy who turned him onto them only a few years previously...

1. i think the battery of adjectives applied to their later albums actually does the band and its music a disservice

amateur!st, i've been trying to divine what you and other threaders mean by this, and i'm still not quite sure. (i'm assuming it's not a "they don't understand it like i do" type of reaction.)

2. What on earth is that thing on the cover of the Mark Hollis album? It looks like a ferret trapped in a can of sardines.

?

I bought both late period records when they came out (I actually had the 45 of "Life's What You Make It" too but it took me much longer to finally pick up Colour of Spring). Sorry if that sounds annoying; that's my "losing my edge" moment for the day. Anyway, I first heard "I Believe in You" on WLLZ-FM in Detroit which was like an AOR station by day, but had a weekend alt program (I wonder if Andy K. remembers it; hosted by Mike Halloran I think?) I was immediately transfixed; it just sounded so unlike everything else they would play. I remember hearing that organ and ascending bass kick in after the first verse and feeling like I was floating away. And then the choir at the end .. goosebumps. Laughing Stock was definitely one of the most anticipated albums of that period of my life. Badmotorfinger was probably the other one though, so that my lose me some coolness points.

Anyway, I don't remember seeing anything written about them. The one guy I do recall writing a really positive review that seemed to "get it" is the sometime-maligned Thom Jurek in the Metro Times. So I've always kind of respected him for that, no matter what I've thought of his writing since.

I was the music director at my college station when Laughing Stock came out, and anyone who's done that job knows one of the worst aspects is taking calls from annoying major label reps promoting all sorts of horrible records. I remember once the PolyGram rep phoned, and preparing to take the call I'm thinking "Oh great, this shouldn't be too irritating, I'll just talk to him about how much I like the Talk Talk record." But he was all like "oh, we don't care about them" (!) Like, he didn't even want to push this record of theirs that I had actually expressed interest in (for once). It was like, they were completely resigned to it doing poorly and weren't even bothering or something. Or maybe they had the jazz department working it or something. Anyway, I just found it shocking and depressing.

But is SOE the best record of the bunch? I know it's become kind of hip to like LS, esp. in light of our revisitation of all things 90's lately. Plus, it's even more oblique in many ways. Still, I wonder whether SOE is the best of the three (better of the two). On the basis of its very strong tunes, the originality of the concept, and the risk Hollis took making it (it supposedly made the record execs cry it was so uncommercial), I think it might be...

I'd rate the other ones in decending order per their order of release, with Mark Hollis a definate last. But that's just me.

i like all of the cited records and dont feel any need to decide, although as noted above i took spirit of eden with me to paris in a clinch

Still one of the greatest ILM threads ever.

The voice, the production quality, and the melodies, both vocal and guitar with the lite-jazz beat made me think initially of 80s 'organic' adult pop/rock (and certainly not of medieval music). The Sting comparisons upthread seem apt (though I haven't listened to a whole Sting album either). It sounded like how 'organic' music was produced at that time. (I actually quite like, on the other hand, the sound of glossed-out 80s studio synth-fusion. I don't know if I was hoping for more of that kind of sound, maybe because I'd heard they used to be a synthpop band.) But, like I said, that feeling does change as the track progresses.

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), January 19th, 2004.

Mark Hollis is the best of the three

(for now).

I just bought Spirit of Eden....It's very cool...bewitching....unstructured but not really arty at the same time....This is the first time I've heard Talk Talk (except for the No Doubt covers)....pleasantly suprised that I can't really think of many records that sound like Spirit of Eden.....Almost in a weird was reminds me of some meld of Scritti Polliti and Van Morrison Astral Weeks, but I'm probably wrong.

Interesting cool stuff....Next up I think is Bark Psychosis I'm finally going to hear those dudes as well....

Matt: good on you with Bark Psychosis. Next, Disco Inferno. AND THEN YOU WILL BE MY SLAVE. Er, anyway.

Disco Inferno the wrestler?? He was okay I guess.

Oddly enough, a friend in another corner of the Internets just got a Chameleons record and is raving about it....I've still gotta pick one of those up....Ragget-rock renaissance I guess.

Nick Cave - Abbatoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus
Exploding Hearts - Guitar Romantic
PIL - Second Edition/Metal Box
Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden
Dillinger Four - Midwestern Songs of the Americas

ALL THESE RECORDS ARE GREAT!!! I'M ON FIRE!!!

Chuck Eddy gets pride of place for being the first guy I know of who liked these fellers. Or so I thought. Good album, RIP.

Car Accident Kills Three Exploding Hearts

I haven't dug farther back into their discog though.

xpost

That's so sad that they died. Extra poignant cuz that record is so youthful and hopeful and full of life and promise. It would have been interesting to see how they developed as a band, whether they would have kept on with the lo-fi undertones/buzzcocks thing they'd already pretty much mastered or tried more ambitious songwriting and production style stuff....I guess I'm wondering whether they would have taken a Jam-like artistic trajectory or been more like the Ramones....

I'm a huge fan of The Party's Over, actually (their much-maligned debut). A completely different beast from Spirit of Eden, it's minor-key synth-pop that sounds nothing like Duran Duran (they never did).

Talk Talk never put out a bad record. FACT!

Tell that to Colin Thurston.

It doesn't sound a thing like Duran Duran! For a start, Hollis' vocals are nothing like LeBon's. Secondly, Duran Duran aren't nearly as keyboard-driven as Talk Talk (Talk Talk had no guitarist). Duran Duran used actual drums, whereas Talk Talk used synth drums. Duran Duran sing about romance and one night stands and nonsensical adventure, Talk Talk sing about miscommunication, struggles with faith and disillusion. Talk Talk had a more solidly "synthetic" sound, whereas Duran Duran -- by contrast -- sounded pretty conventional (not knocking them, mind you). Apart from the facts that (a) both bands were British and (b) both band names featured a repeated word, they don't have much in common.

Except for the way the chorus's "All you wanna do is talk talk!" sounds, that is.

Oh, and Thurston's a fucking hack -- from 1981 onwards, anyway...

Not being flip either, but I don't hear it.

synth-pop Talk Talk > Spirit of Eden

(I have the POWER of SCIENCE on my side here.)

Found this on YouTube, their last ever TV appearance:

I Believe In You

For fanatics, something sublime (even though it's mimed).
For the unconverted, it'll swing you one way or the other (RadioWho?).

Found this on YouTube, their last ever TV appearance

Moreover, the Bark Psychosis subplot had a happy ending after all: wasn't Codename: Dustsucker an absolute peach of a record?!

Bump, as I am trying to write a short para about LS, and may just lift what I wrote two months ago.

i liked that ldn song

http://www.qwantz.com/fanart/talktalk-talktalk.png

At last: a new insight into Talk Talk.

Why was the 1990 compilation of 80's singles such a hit? It went Top 3 and it's just struck me how incredibly odd that was. It was their biggest album! And gave them a big hit! Did EMI really push it marketing tv-advert-wise or something? Was it just a weird fluke?

it's a great compilation

I was just searching for this thread and while I was reading it, it popped up on New Answers, weird. Great thread, obv, but while the idea of comparing Spirit Of Eden with Laughing Stock is laudable and (on most of this thread) illuminating, the idea of ranking them is a monstrous dud. My favourite comment among many compelling comments here is Nick Southall's:

LS and SoE do different things. I think I find SoE more enjoyable and LS more rewarding. But it's not black and white by any means.

As OTM as anything I've seen on ILM.

If there are such things as heaven and hell, Spirit of Eden is the one record I'll be bringing. Regardless of which place I'll end up at...

does anyone have the SACD version of Spirit?

I had Talk Talk: The Collection on the other day. The song 'It's getting late in the evening' is awesome.

'everybody's laughing'

The only Talk Talk albums you really need:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e9/Talktalkalbumcover.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/ItsMyLife.jpg

Tasteful sleeves!

The one I like best is "The Colour Of Spring" - the ideal blend of the poppier early TT with the more profound later stuff. I wish they'd stayed with that sound for one more LP before they went hush-hush.

Actually, with Spirit Of Eden, they should have renamed themselves Hush Hush really.

jesus i believe in you is gorgeous

that's always been my pick for "most beautiful song ever" kinda questions.

Hard to believe it's been TEN YEARS since Mark Hollis's solo album.

besides the thom yorke/UNKLE track, have there been any other notable examples of people sampling Talk Talk?

Girl Talk

granted, that's an answer to every sampling question

jesus i believe in you is gorgeous

― Dominique, viernes 5 de diciembre de 2008 3:22 (15 hours ago) Bookmark

yesssssssssssssss

quite possibly the only time a children's choir has been used in 'pop/rock' music to good effect

oddly, Jay just e-mailed this to me:
http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?p=3423

You mean your brother, Arthur founder/editor Jay Babcock?

yes I call him Jay

quite possibly the only time a children's choir has been used in 'pop/rock' music to good effect

― With a little bit of gold and a Peja (bernard snowy), Friday, December 5, 2008 7:36 PM (56 minutes ago)

I know this is a talk talk thread but if you're going to throw down the gauntlet like that: Tokyo Jihen live at Budokhan, February 19 2006

'I Believe In You' is an amazing song

Something appropriately contrary on the IMDb search page:

Mark Hollis (II) (Soundtrack, White Chicks (2004))

Do you think there's ever a chance he'll return to music?

quite possibly the only time a children's choir has been used in 'pop/rock' music to good effect

'You Can't Always Get What You Want'?

Oh, good effect.

that wasnt kids

Eunuchs?

The song features the 60 children of the London Bach Choir powerfully opening the song (they were double-tracked to make it seem as if there were even more of them)

We are all forgetting Take That's "Never Forget"...my word, the pathos!

What, no mention of "Happiness is Easy"?

I don't think it's a kid's choir in I Believe In You, is it? Just a regular adult choir.

Does anyone else hear Heroin in the beginning of Eden and then the melody suddenly, streams sideways out of it in a way that sounds so wrong and then it slowly resolves itself back to the heroin bits again.

yeah, I can see that. I assume by "the beginning" you mean that two-chord thing that it hangs on for a while after the first minute of scronks and squeaks?

yes that

can't stop listening to talk talk this week. all the records, not just your coveted spirit of eden.

is the mark hollis solo record worth trying?

I think so but hearing it and then listening to the .O.rang albums gives you a sense of how the two aesthetic paths work best in collaboration rather than mutual exclusion. It's not a complete split but they are distinctly different.

and where is tim friese-green today?

i like the hollis album very much, maybe as much as i like SoE and LS (when i listen to it it's my favourite, put it that way). there's much more silence in it which is right up my street and it's beautifully recorded.

'Mark Hollis' is a much slower burn than 'Talk Talk,' and isn't the one to play for neophytes with headphones late at night to get the "holy shit" immediate effect like the last two Talk Talk albums.

But over the years, I've realised it pretty much completely captures the essence of a certain strain I'm seeking in music, and at this point I probably feel more in love with it than the Talk Talks. It's elemental, essential.

i agree to an extent. s/t is basically the pure distillation of everything that is core and central to what I like about talk talk. I have to say I don't care for the oranj records at all.

no overt production / sudden rock moments / guitarscapes that grab your attention, but the songs are so much stronger than the ones on 'Laughing Stock'. and the pacing which builds up for the last four songs, each one slightly quieter.

steve coogan to play mark hollis in my biopic

With both Laughing Stock and the Mark Hollis album I'm still liking both of them slightly more each time I play them - even after ten+ years or however long I've had them both.

"I think so but hearing it and then listening to the .O.rang albums gives you a sense of how the two aesthetic paths work best in collaboration rather than mutual exclusion. "

On the one hand I think this is right, but on the other both the Hollis album and Herd of Instinct follow their separate muses into such distinct territory (the absolute unblemished perfection of the Hollis album; the shimmering ethnodelic melange of the 'O'Rang album) that I think they gain almost as much as they lose.

I listen to Herd of Instinct more than any Talk Talk/Hollis actually, though that SOE/LS are more important to me.

One thing it always makes me wonder is the extent to which Harris and Webb actually had a shaping influence on the last two Talk Talk albums. The rhetoric around them always implies they were effectively Hollis/Friese-Green collab-os, but then, as you say Ned, 'O'Rang is so clearly the extension of the side of the late Talk Talk sound that Hollis moves away from on his own record that that version of events seems rather implausible.

"One thing it always makes me wonder is the extent to which Harris and Webb actually had a shaping influence on the last two Talk Talk albums. The rhetoric around them always implies they were effectively Hollis/Friese-Green collab-os"

That's what I always wondered as well, especially since Webb wasn't even on LS, and Harris was just a DRUMMER. The writing credits go to Hollis/Friese-Greene. But if the O.rang album - which I haven't heard - stimulates you to use the word "ethnodelic" then I guess that changes everything.

Mark Hollis album I would recommend highly, especially for the uniquely lovely "The Colour of Spring", which is probably the only song on it that would be accepted for use on a Diana memorial documentary, but the achievement of a mainstream idea of pathos is certainly not inherently a bad thing.

and where is tim friese-green today?

http://www.heligoland.co.uk/

I don't see any mention here of Shearwater's cover of "The Rainbow". Way more plausible than I would have thought possible.

http://www.prefixmag.com/news/shearwater-the-rainbow-talk-talk-cover-mp3/18778/

I love this, from an interview with Tim Friese-Greene about a decade ago:

Interviewer: (fumbling) What sort of thing do you listen to at home?

Tim Friese-Greene: .....well not very much really. Serge Gainsbourg a bit I suppose......I like the ‘Primal Scream’ album....I mean.... the daytime radio in England is unlistenable; there are a couple of European alternative stations which you can get webcast, but in England where local calls aren’t free you can rack up a bit of a bill. Otherwise you have to spend your evenings listening to John Peel in the hope of latching on to something stimulating....

Int: (excitedly) I met John Peel once, really I did! - I bumped into him as he was posting a letter at the post office in Great Park...Great Pork...

Tim: Great Portland Street.

Int: Yes yes ...exactly!.............sorry, carry on....

Tim: ...and although I really like seeing bands live, you’re very limited out in the provinces. It’s the thing I miss most about London....Ultimately I’d have to say I’m just not really a fan of other people’s music much any more, probably because I don’t have access to the stuff that I might find diverting. It can’t bother me that much though, can it?.... or I would make more of an effort......

Int: Do you listen to your own, then?

Tim: Actually I do, I listen to it quite a lot, if only to remind myself of its brilliance.

Also:

Int: What do you think of Mark’s solo album?

Tim: I’ve never heard it, I’m afraid.

that shearwater cover is quite amazingly close to the original. the singer's voice is so similar to mark hollis', it's almost frightening. there is less pain in it though, i find. it's more restrained and less expressive.

Also:
Int: What do you think of Mark’s solo album?
Tim: I’ve never heard it, I’m afraid.

And as of November 2008, he still hadn't heard it.

What a dork. (Tim, that is.)

guys, there's an element to the breakup of Talk Talk that, while not acrimonious per se, wasn't quite amicable either. Under those meddling circumstances, would you be excited to hear your former bandmates' work? Just a POV rhetorical question...

What a dork. (Tim, that is.)
― Soundslike

I don't think that's a fair evaluation at all.

the problem is not that he didn't listen to mark hollis solo album. what makes him very dislikable is that he is so full of himself ("to remind myself of its brilliance"). what i have heard on his site was more bland than brilliant.

I let the "remind myself of its brilliance" bit slide; but that egomania combined with (likely lying about) going out of ones way to avoid hearing an ex-bandmate's album for a decade is just plain dorky.

That said, I haven't heard Pitcher, Flask, & Foxy-Moxie, maybe it's secretly "brilliant".

I can only give dorkiness a pass for so long on the basis of having produced 'The Golden Age of Wireless'.

Whole helluvalotta projecting going on in this thread. Not that I need to know artists generally hate being interviewed, but this thread brings the point home.

I mean if Tim is a jerk, I'll keep the comment in mind, as I'd do for anyone whom I don't know, but Jesus feckin Christ...

The brilliance comment is so obviously a joke though.

For what it's worth, "dork" is hardly the most damning pejorative. . .

i hate to drop the B word but "the colour of spring" = balearic

(the album, not the song off the hollis s/t)

Name some bands who'd love to sound like Talk Talk - latter day Shearwater, early Elbow, Reckoner by Radiohead, any odd song here and there that betrays the influence of Spirit of Eden etc; I'm making a playlist.

Catherine Wheel - "Thunderbird" is a fucking awesome power-ballad take on TT imo

Stars Like Fleas - The Ken Burns Effect

Hood show a TT influence, albeit manifested in a very different way.

Tortoise - TNT

Blu Mar Ten - "Home Videos"

I'm pretty sure it actually samples Talk Talk. This is not a drum and bass track by the way. It's ambient/leftfield. Or something.

I think XTC should have a song on this mix but after watching youtubes of XTC songs I can't find any that really match Talk Talk.

Something off of Skylarking maybe, but not really.

Sweet Billy Pilgrim - http://www.myspace.com/sweetbillypilgrim
Autistic Daughters - http://www.myspace.com/autisticdaughters
The Slow Life - http://www.myspace.com/theslowlife

I love Reckoner, but I don't think it sounds anything like Talk Talk.

"Cheerleader" or "Dory" from the new Grizzly Bear?

It's the drumbeat in reckoner; I've always thought it was going for a radio-friendly New Grass vibe.

Bark Psychosis - "Scum"

Oh Yeah, that first song from Pygmalion by Slowdive, the long one.

Anything by the band Bed. The album 'The Newton Plum' is a beauty.......

a precursor would be japan. as a sideline: like mark hollis voice david sylvian's voice is an acquired taste. even more so actually.

slint maybe. but i only know their great cover of "cortez the killer".

tortoise's djed from "millions now living will never die" should be mentioned here. probably my favourite post-talk talk track in the vein of talk talk.

i don't know if i agree with any of those statements. and you've only heard slint's cover of cortez the killer? no desire to look any further into their catalog?

a precursor would be japan.

Just heard "Ghosts" on shuffle this morning and now I'm on a huge Japan kick today.

probably i have listened to other slint songs from spiderland. but they didn't leave any impression.

i think it is extremely different to find bands sounding like talk talk. but i would really like to listen to one of them right now. talk talk should not have been allowed to finish with "laughing stock". how can a band get away with stopping at their peak? the mark hollis solo album doesn't really do it for me, it is a little to spare for my liking. and his voice is too much in the foreground.

"happiness is easy" dub mix killin it for me right now

a precursor would be the first three sylvian solo albums, more precisely

bark psychosis is very talk talk, if you are looking for stuff in the same vein

bark psychosis comes close. and i like them. dustsucker more than hex. but there is something missing in the dynamics department. their stuff is usually quite slow and measured. again their singer's voice is an acquired taste.

i don't find anything weird about his voice at all

maybe that is the annoying thing about his voice. that it is too normal. too unremarkable. i mean he is a singer so there should be something special about his voice. otherwise there is no point in singing.

Totally concur with the Autistic Daughters suggestion upthread. Such a great band. Mostly just voice, double bass, guitar and some pretty free-range drumming so it obv. doesn't have the orchestrated feel of Talk Talk, but it does share the same sense of quiet drama conducted behind a gauzy veil. The Dean Roberts solo records are well worth picking up too.

Youtubes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOuN36Vg5DQ

hay guys, how is O.rang? been meaning to check them out lately

Pretty stellar, both albums excellent. It's a crude division but if Hollis solo is the restrained, fragile side of late TT, then O.rang is the free flowing experimentation and strangeness.

I found the O.rang albums very dull and dated sounding (I think I said this elsewhere). they have a kind of 'electronic world music' feel to them that I don't care for. Or at least, that was my impression years ago.

I love both albums, particularly Fields and Waves as it beefs up the weaker elements of the first record

what akm said. what i heard of o.rang was rather unconvincing. insipid world music. about three leagues below talk talk.

U.rong

I like the really dubby moments of Herd of Instinct, but I've never been totally bowled over by O.rang beyond that. Bed I found very sedate; far too sedate, really. Slint I don't hear as related to TT at all; I only heard them for the first time about 3 years ago, and to my ears they were just a bog-standard instrumental rock band.

Graham Sutton's voice is pretty nondescript, but I like how it works with BP's music; reminds me a bit of Bernard Sumner, and makes a nice steady / calming presence amid the sometimes unsteady, uncalm music. When Dustsucker came out and I interviewed GSD we talked about bands who were influenced by latter day TT and how most of them had ignored the noise elements - TT being "absolute calm to absolute chaos" - and how we were both really disappointed with that.

Shearwater have a big TT influence going on in their last two albums, and get somewhere towards the dynamics that TT managed, although in a folksier context.

Mainly though I just hear little echoes of TT in other bands, little snatches of abstract instrumental breaks or unusual string arrangements; The Notwist's last album being an example of that.

bog-standard instrumental rock band.

Try and hear Spiderland - not bog-standard, not instrumental. Not much like Talk Talk either though.

Spiderland's what I've got: true it's not instrumental; my bad. I'll listen again at some stage.

All the math rock bands that followed in the wake of that record have definitely diluted its strangeness. At the time though there was not a lot else quite like it, and I don't think that anything that could be described as Slinty has matched it since.

whoa some people really not getting slint here

slint are a rock band with more who have more common with sonic youth than talk talk. I think maybe the use of the term 'post rock' for both complicates things, but british 'first wave post rock' (talk talk, disco inferno, bark psychosis) is something different from US 'late 90/early 2000s post rock'.

So,erm, has anyone else heard any Bed then?

Found an 86 live show on a blog this weekend. They were great live, shame they're not reuniting for the cash. Coachella 2010?

slint are a rock band with more who have more common with sonic youth than talk talk. I think maybe the use of the term 'post rock' for both complicates things, but british 'first wave post rock' (talk talk, disco inferno, bark psychosis) is something different from US 'late 90/early 2000s post rock'.
― akm, Thursday, 6 August 2009 20:34 (1 week ago) Bookmark

Slint are a decade away from being a "US 'late 90/early 2000s post rock'" band. But I agree that they should not really be compared with Talk Talk.

I remember clearly the Talk Talk comparisons in the UK music press when Scum came out. And that song really did evince TT's influence on Bark Psychosis. It's a wonderful track, definitely worth seeking out. (The one-sided 12", natch)

Of course it helps that TT and BP had many of the same players and producer.

It's slightly more complicated than that from a production standpoint and I would say "many of the same players" is a really dramatic overstatement.

Did I just read somewhere that Tim Friese-Greene has a new LP out? I did? Well then, who's heard it, who likes it and who don't?

Did I just read somewhere that Tim Friese-Greene has a new LP out? I did? Well then, who's heard it, who likes it and who don't?

It's here: http://www.heligoland.co.uk/ - there's some sound samples there, but they haven't induced me into picking up the album

I would say "many of the same players" is a really dramatic overstatement

It's a useful enough shorthand when everyone is OMG BP sounds like TT!

Did Beth Gibbons ever do more stuff w/the Talk Talk dudes?

Well, they did more stuff with her, one of them is Rustin Man IIRC.

i think he meant more stuff after that

Yeah I meant after Out Of Season. Like, what are Lee and Paul doing with their time these days? Seems like there is no 'O'rang forthcoming. Production work maybe?

Paul produced an album by James Yorkston.

so, like, Hollis is basically done with music at this point, isn't he?

i think he's become a monk or something (seriously)

last news from wikipedia:

"Hollis provided "musical accompaniment" on Anja Garbarek's 2001 album Smiling & Waving."

Never heard the tracks he did a few years back with Anja Garbarek. Anyone else?

haha x-post

Yes. MH has chosen to spend the rest of his days in rarefied contemplation.

Paul and Lee don't have that excuse. The 'O'rang stuff was v promising!

Why are all my heroes recluses (Hollis), shiftless (Tom Verlaine) or super slow burners (Scott Walker)? Is there something wrong with me?

^^ this

So, no one's heard of Bed then? (I'm going to keep posting similar things until at least one person acknowledges...) :-)

Bed- tell me about them.

Yass! Tell!

what a cool name. impossible to find anything about them. wikipedia just knows the album and the song. any clips?

Hey wait, are you one of the guys actually in Epic45? (Because if so, that's good stuff y'all do.)

xpost and practically impossible to download for the same reason? No flies on these fellers!

Yep, I'm in epic45, Ben's my name, glad you like our stuff! As for Bed, I wouldn't really know where to find any clips or mp3's to be honest, I got into them through my friend Scott (who made music under the name Portal for a while). The album's called 'The Newton Plum' and it's a lovely thing indeed. Very much indebted to the late Talk Talk sound, but stands on it's own I think. I'm rubbish at describing or explaining music, so all I'd say is try and track this album down, I reckon you'll all be into it......

Yep, I'm in epic45, Ben's my name, glad you like our stuff!

Yeah Nicky Edward at Crumbs in the Butter got me into you guys around the time of the big Disco Inferno feature he ran last year. Hi there, etc!

And obviously everyone else reading this thread should check them too, so:

http://epic45.com/

Anyway, Bed and all that.

epic45 your new album leaked today fyi

I have two Bed albums; they're alright, but not what I was looking for. Too.. sedate. Not enough chaos.

Yeah, they're definitely at the quieter end of the spectrum, but that's what I like about them I suppose.

Cutty - Yeah, well, I'm used to that now. I always wonder who the first person to offer it up is though......!

I've got the first two Bed albums as well. I think a lot of people own the first two and didn't buy the third. Funny how similar people's reactions are.

I think it's that Bed has a really Gallic connotation... in Bed's world the girls are too pretty, everyone drinks café au lait instead of beer, and people ride around on bicycles with baguettes in the panier.

In Bark Psychosis we have the underside of the Westway as a landscape and later "petrol stations and plastic people," and I think that's about as different you can get.

In Talk Talk we have Mark Hollis' weird sort of... Protestant mysticism. It's not as social, as jovial, or as concerned with continuity of history and tradition as Bed (in that Bed never really wants to achieve escape velocity from chanson but Talk Talk plays out a very abrupt and alienating rupture of selfhood).

when i listen to bark psychosis they make me think of the lights in the city by night. whereas talk talk evoke pastoral images of the countryside. could that have to do with the covers and the song titles?

When I interviewed Graham Sutton ages ago he very pointedly talked about BPO being "urban music".

i think i read that interview. the subconscious is the last remaining world power.

Yeah Talk Talk is NOT city music. Love u guys tho.

I guess not. But it really ain't pastoral either? Maybe it takes place in some kind of mystery-play kind of space like Bunyan.

you are right, it's not only pastoral. there are bukolic, pastoral passages and loud parts which hurt where mark hollis is shouting like a wounded animal. but it all seems very close to nature. nature is cruel.

nature is cruel.

chimes nicely with the nature-evil theme explored by flaming lips on 'embryonic'. i'm sure the flips would acknowledge musical connections too.

Jeez, honestly, fuck Slint.

ugh- really? people are comparing talk talk to slint?

They always have, in that both have also been cited as founders of postrock. Obviously they founded it from pretty different directions.

i really like the 'the cure's pornography invented post-rock' argument, mostly because 'post-rock' is a bit of a bogus term imo

I think Dinosaur Jr. invented post-rock, with their song "The Post".

And I think the Pixies invented postal-rock, their quiet-LOUD song structure perfectly capturing the frenzied breakdown of a harried service employee.

i don't suppose anyone ever worked out the chord progressions and tablature to the later Talk Talk stuff (as well as the Mark Hollis album)?

I could play that one chiming, melancholic chord from Myrrhman for eternity

And I think the Pixies invented postal-rock, their quiet-LOUD song structure perfectly capturing the frenzied breakdown of a harried service employee.

― henry s, Friday, November 20, 2009 8:35 AM Bookmark

Whereas it was really the Postal Service who invented pixie-rock.

And the Troggs who invented pixie dust.

but didn't like a jillion things 'found' postrock? i always figured people attributed it to sonic youth, rhys chatham, etc. tho i'm sure you could trace it back even further

I'm gonna start SBing here pretty quick so guys better get out of this thread.

reminds me why i told myself a good while ago to keep away from ilm.

but here u are

leaving

Ok, finally got around to posting this on youtube. Anyways, reminds me of late Talk Talk about as much as anyone. Healthy dose of Pink Floyd in the vocal and melody, but that's not a bad thing. And christ, this album doesn't seem to get any less obscure as the years go by:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQkU23crm3U

"Such A Shame" imo

^^^^^ why is this song not brought up every time talk talk are discussed

I blame radiohead fans

Talk Talk based their sound on "Treefingers" iirc

Steve Winwood "Spanish Dancer" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpyug3kAp2M

i did not know jaymc had released an album

sure he has--

http://migs.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/noel_josh_groban.jpg

lol

I actually own a Belgian pop album that my musical namesake plays on:
http://houbi.com/belpop/media/melongalia.jpg

How to do a band interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrgA2gzN3AA&feature=player_embedded

how great is the video for "such a shame"? great concept and execution. it seems like they really didn't want to do a video and were taking the piss, but it ended up great anyway (and with a couple of lols too).

http://www.escuchar-musica-espagnola.com/Musica-De-Los-80/Talk-Talk/images/Talk-Talk-Such-A-Shame.jpg
http://content.internetvideoarchive.com/content/photos/381/016037_2.jpg

xpost That interview clip is awesome. I don't think I've ever heard Mark Hollis speak before, it kinda made me love him even more.

I think I finally "get" O Rang.

So Spirit of Eden/Laughing Stock producer Phill Brown has published his autobiography:

http://www.amazon.com/Are-We-Still-Rolling-Recording/dp/0977990311/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305859189&sr=8-1

Engineer, rather. Still, one of those v. important people in the room.

And having read the book, his accounting of both the album sessions was amazing stuff -- I knew some of the general details of how long/drawn out/involved both recording sessions were but man. Apparently after Laughing Stock was finally done and dusted he sat down his family to hear it so they could know why he'd been essentially gone for half a year (something they'd already gone through with Spirit of Eden which had driven his wife to distraction). After listening to it she removed it from the CD player and apparently has never referred to it or asked about it ever again.

Meantime, also reviving this thread since Ba Da Bing is reissuing both Laughing Stock and the Mark Hollis solo album on vinyl. (Brown talks about the Hollis solo in his book as being much less complex an experience to record but still a memorable one and regretfully mentions a falling out with Hollis afterwards which might explain in part why Hollis has quietly gone to ground.)

I think I finally "get" O Rang

Brown talks about that first album as well! He says it was initially meant to be more of a collaboration between all involved but as the album came together it turned back into more of a band thing with Brown slowly worked out of the picture.

Meantime, also reviving this thread since Ba Da Bing is reissuing both Laughing Stock and the Mark Hollis solo album on vinyl

Original vinyl copies of Laughing Stock are insanely rare since so few copies were pressed, fetching up to £250 on ebay. Not selling mine though obv.

Very excited to finally be able to have Laughingstock on vinyl (I found Spirit of Eden years ago)... That story about his wife is crushing.

Holy shit I am so buying that book! Missed your previous revive. Exciting!

omgz such good news!!!

Loved Brown's series of articles in Tape Op from a few years back (nearly a decade ago, now that I think about it). I would guess the book is an expanded-upon version of what he was writing about then. Going to go order it!

And excited about the Laughing Stock reish and new Mark Hollis

Well I see Tape Op is publisher of the book, so yeah

Okay that explains the somewhat choppy nature of the book! I kept wondering why he repeated a couple of points throughout.

That's great they are putting out his solo album on vinyl, would love to own that. I feel someone should tell the guy hoping to get £640 for it on Amazon.co.uk.

I didn't find it that hard to get Laughing Stock on vinyl earlier this year. It usually goes for around £30 on Ebay but I was lucky enough to find the red vinyl reissue in a shop in Manchester for just £15.

Holy shit I am so buying that book! Missed your previous revive. Exciting!

― Axolotl with an Atlatl (Jon Lewis), Thursday, September 1, 2011 6:00 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

Totally otm!

So I've given up speculating how Mark Hollis spends his time these days, but what the F are Harris and Webb up to?

Seem to have gone to ground. The Within Without fanpage had the last concrete update in 2008 saying that they were allegedly 'still recording.'

This might be the Lee Harris in question but I'm not sure...

https://www.facebook.com/mrleeharris

I wonder if they still have The Slug? (Recording space where the 'O'rang records were made...)

i love this picture of hollis from 2004, just dropping by the BMI office to pick up an award: http://www.bmi.com/news/entry/234221

Two to one says that's the only photograph of him from the past decade.

LOL "who was unable to attend this year's London Awards"

Would love to read that book - and to hear the Hollis solo album. I'm a relatively new Talk Talk convert - one of those "where have they been all my life" bands.

Ya gotta start somewhere. Think of it this way, sir -- you had Slint from the early nineties on to lock into, where I went for Talk Talk. (Obv. a lot of people went for both.)

I wonder how Hollis can actually afford to do nothing. Talk Talk weren't that huge were they? Surely you can't retire forever off the back of a few synth pop hits in the eighties?

He could just live very simply for all we know. They were certainly enough of a commercial success in Europe at least that if he squirreled away enough then he could take it easy, and it seems that he might well feel he's said what he has to say. See also: Bill Withers.

bill withers had HUGE hits in a much bigger country that are still on the playlists of many radio formats AND were sampled by many million-selling hip-hop artists. just sayin'.

gonna pull spirit of eden out tonight. break the headphones out.

Yeah, it's very feasible for Withers to be living off his royalties, a bit less so for Hollis. A few big European hits in the 80s might have netted him a few hundred thousand at most.

Like I said, though, dude could be living very simply! Or even just doing some quiet work somewhere at his own pace. My point re: Bill Withers wasn't in terms of comparative success so much as the latter point of my sentence before it -- if he's said what he's said to the extent he feels moved to, then his stepping away makes perfect sense.

I think No Doubt probably act as pension for Hollis.

yeah 'it's my life' is still on the radio all the time in the US in the talk talk version, plus the no doubt version...I'm sure he's doing ok.

I still hear Life's What You Make It quite often, too. The steady drip-drip-drip of PRS and royalty checks just from those two songs is probably enough for Hollis to live comfortably (if modestly); given the aescetic nature of his solo album one suspects he probably doens't live in a lavish penthouse anywhere.

Pretty sure Mark Hollis supports himself by writing jingles and adverts these days.

Josh, are you joking?

laughing stock and mark hollis s/t two albums i'm perfectly happy to own on cd. they sound amazing. i bought spirit of eden on vinyl when it came out and that sounds great too, but talk talk records - going back to colour of spring one of the first CDs i ever bought - sound great no matter how you slice them. if every cd sounded as good as laughing stock i might, uh, own a lot more cds!

^^ agree

I bought both Spirit and Laughing Stock on CD about ten years ago, because my vinyl versions were getting annoyingly crackly (especially LS). But if you're a vinyl freak, I suppose they're very tempting to own

xpost Yes, I was joking ... as far as I know!

feel like if he made another album it would just be one note on a piano for a few seconds followed by 69 minutes of silence.

it would be one perfect chord, resonating. Followed by a bowed cymbal.

It would prob be a lot like Morton Feldman

the joke will be on all of us when they regroup to tour "the partys over" in it's entirety

Two to one says that's the only photograph of him from the past decade.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, September 1, 2011 1:47 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

Third picture down:
http://talktalk.rmc.fr/8/

I think that's a pic of the french guy who runs that talktalk site... (although I love the thought of Hollis wearing a Marillion t-shirt on his birthday)

^^ yeaah!

Oh y'know, the usual influences... Tago Mago, Sketches Of Spain, Forever Changes... MARILLION

There's another pic of what looks like the same guy at the bottom of this page...

http://talktalk.rmc.fr/14

...where he appears to be presenting the TalkTalk story to a group of alcoholics.

A good read here:

http://thequietus.com/articles/06963-talk-talk-laughing-stock

That is a great read. He repeats the point of "but was it really a David vs Goliath struggle? One tends to think not!" a couple of times too many to my liking, but otherwise it's a very insightful and interesting read.

"If you understand it, you do, if you don't, nothing I say will make you understand it. The only thing I can do by talking about it is detract from it. I can't add anything. Can I go home now, then?"

Was just about to post a link to that piece. Really nice.

Illuminating post on the Drowned in Sound forum of not to us Hollis hunters;

"interesting for those who wonder what the great man (hollis) is up to now - last wknd at the Electric Picnic festival in ireland he was spotted by a few people back stage. Turns out he was a guest for the wknd and was there with his wife. Not sure if he was a guest of Reynolds (the promoter who apparently is a massive fan and asks him to play each year) or Arcade Fire. I think it may be the latter as in a recent interview with the Irish Times the guitarist of AF was saying that the band were meant to meet him backstage at a gig but it didnt happen (apparently they are massive fans) and that they would try and rearrange soon (maybe the soon was Electric Picnic)"

Also, a glance over the comments section on an Irish Times article about the Electric Picnic festival yields this tale;

"Nope, not joking. Yes, Mark Hollis, bizarre but true. I got a VIP ticket through a friend who designs the site-map and I met him in the VIP area, queuing for the toilets, of all places. I recognised him as I saw a more recent picture of him in a magazine receiving some award, then when I heard the English accent I politely asked him was he Mark Hollis and he said yes, told him I was huge fan of Talk Talk, blah blah blah and left it at that. Seems like a nice guy, very unassuming, just enjoying the festival with his wife. Saw him again at Big Audio Dynamite standing at the back with his wife. A friend I was with said her Talk Talk-mad brother also met him on a plane coming over to Ireland, he told him was going on holiday in the West of Ireland and was also going to take in the Picnic. Apparently, he comes over here quite often. Gotta say I was a bit stunned after meeting him as Spirit of Eden is in my top five albums and always will be, a timeless, incredibly contemporary-sounding masterpiece of an album that bands like Radiohead owe a huge debt to."

uh oh: http://pitchfork.com/news/45195-talk-talk-celebrated-with-tribute-album-book/

'Spirit Of Talk Talk' (as it is named) is still a mighty affair which, in testament to Talk Talk's 30th anniversary, will feature 30 artists and acts and personalities including King Creosote, Alan Wilder, Jason Lytle, Zero 7, Crispin Hunt, Linton Kwesi Johnson, White Belt Yellow Tag, Electric Soft Parade, Joan As Policewoman, White Lies, Goldheart Assembly and many, many more guesting cats from Bon Iver to Arcade Fire covering 30 Talk Talk tunes from 'Today' to ‘Life’s What You Make It’ to ‘After The Flood’ in their own inimitable style.

ugh do they have to really do this

Most of that list there are contributors to the book.

(i.e. LKJ is not doing a cover version for instance)

Well we've been keeping it under our furry hat but the truth will always out. And so it is that likes of Pitchfork have picked up on the factette that we have been working in our top secret bunker on a compilation tribute album to those abstract ‘80s synthpop wonders TALK TALK. It was 1982 when Mark Hollis and pals first soared into view with a slew of deceptively commercial hit singles. However by the time Talk Talk delivered the seminal 'The Colour Of Spring' album, which brilliantly merged pop instinct with experimental flair, they'd long since shed any hint of being mere also(Duran Du)rans ... We also think Talk Talk are quite splendid because the video for 'It's My Life' featured polar bears, flamingos and flying squirrels.

Is this record being sponsored by Innocent Smoothies or something? Who writes this fucking drivel?

^ that's a quote from the Fierce Panda site btw

http://fiercepanda.co.uk/news.php?story=289

(i.e. LKJ is not doing a cover version for instance)

Y' wha?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_UygMpqz9fco/SnvKMKEOkUI/AAAAAAAAAD4/xI4CVnQumrk/s320/__lintonkwesijohnsonmoretime5dh.jpg

Also, could it not be possible that Mark Hollis is getting some sort of 'fee' from the mobile phone company?

LKJ is apparently on the cover version of Inheritance with Alan Wilder.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/talk-talk-mark-hollis/talk-talk-tribute-album-book-project/10150206532049171

At least they're not soliciting for a fucking Kickstarter campaign for this.

Bring it on, sacrificial tribute album lambs.

You know what a good tribute to Talk Talk would be guys? Not recording anything!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSVC5v-evkc

http://spiritoftalktalk.com/

Now this I will buy, unlike the Felt book which I had to pass on. James Marsh is amazing.

looking forward to seeing Hollis signing copies of this at launch events the length and breadth of the land. preceded by a short acoustic session, natch

"Such A Shame" imo

otm

Colour of Spring and Spirit of Eden getting vinyl reissues.

http://www.factmag.com/2012/03/26/emi-to-reissue-classic-talk-talk-albums/

One of these days I will finally buy The Party's Over on CD so my T-shelf no longer says ALK ALK on it.

That's the only reason I own it.

It's a cunning marketing ploy. I have resisted all these years, but one day I know that it'll be deleted by EMI and I will be stuck with ALK ALK for life.

Cummon folks, 'Talk Talk' and the title track are great tunes!

They're not I Believe In You, though.

Someone give me their own personal pitchfork scores for all five albums

5.5
6.6
7.7
8.8
9.9

(Actually I think SoE and LS are about even.)

8.8 tsk tsk

6
7.5
9
10
10

^ that i'd almost subscibe to myself, particularly regarding the last three

4
7
7.5
9.6
9.4812

5.5
8.1
9.6
10
10

Funny list of contributors to that book.

Cummon folks, 'Talk Talk' and the title track are great tunes!

Yeah, seriously -- it's only bad in comparison to the other albums.

Preorder is go:

http://spiritoftalktalk.com/

So... $115 for the regular edition, $295 for the deluxe. For copies shipped to the USA, anyway. $60 shipping fee seems... high. But maybe the thing is heavy as shit.

yea.. i was going to order this until i saw the ridiculous shipping cost

Looks like they're only willing to ship UPS and not Royal Mail, due to previous bad experiences. Which essentially doubles the shipping cost.

I snagged a regular edition though... I really do love their album art. Wish they would do a poster set!

Covering Talk Talk seems like a losing game, but some of these attempts seem respectable:

https://www.facebook.com/SpiritOfTalkTalk?sk=app_178091127385

If I could wave a wand and have a covers album by contemporary artists of my choosing who might do a good job, I think it would have:

Low
The Knife
David Sylvian
Bjork
Anja Garbarek
Fennesz
Swans
Rachel's
Caribou
Robert Wyatt
Matthew Herbert
Portishead/Beak>

Said book does look utterly gorgeous but delivery costs to this remote outpost of the world, well...

Have Cadel bring you back a copy.

>I really do love their album art. Wish they would do a poster set!

James Marsh sells signed giclee prints (including all the Talk Talk covers) through his website, £55 each but they look like high-quality prints and obv. nice to have it signed by the artist.

hey wow, you're right! thanks for sharing that information.

I've listened to that 'Spirit of Talk Talk' cover album a couple of times now. It's a mixed bag, mostly terrible but there are a couple of genuinely great attempts. Do Make Say Think's version of 'New Grass' is divine. I've always detected a bit of late Talk Talk influence in their sound and I'm glad to see it pay off in so literally. There's a lot of attempts at setting songs in different contexts musically, like King Creosote's plodding acoustic take on 'Give It Up' or Zero 7's pitiful chill out version of 'The Colour of Spring'. The Nils Frahm / Peter Broderick / Davide Rossi cover of 'It's Getting Late In The Evening' is wonderful, all you'd expect from anyone who had the good taste to pick such a pivotal Talk Talk track (For me it's the moment where the band really evolved into something unique and spectacular). The guy from Grandaddy pitches 'Tomorrow Started' as a Grandaddy original and that really is as bad as it sounds. Still, it's a passing treat to hear someone even attempt to cover songs as texturally sparse and seemingly unreplicable as 'Myrrhman' or 'Runeii' and it's mostly the songs from 'Laughing Stock' that are the most interesting to me.

Basically I wouldn't buy it but it's worth a listen. The book on the other hand I can't wait to own.

Heard a couple of tracks from this tonight. Largely just seemed wrong.

Tried listening to it... didn't last long.

I could be wrong-headed about this, but their music doesn't seem like it would benefit so much from a tribute. A lot of their magic was in the presentation (performances, production, engineering, mixing) rather than the sheet music side o things.

It's the same reason I can't imagine getting anything out of a Timbaland tribute album.

I don't know what I want to hear less, this or that Fleetwood Mac tribute.

I can see some out-jazz collective doing a decent Talk Talk tribute, but that's about it. Haven't heard the Fleetwood Mac tribute, but my gut feeling was that if ZZ Top covered most of the Peter Green era it might be interesting.

Very hard to listen to this tribute album but I did enjoy the house remake of It's My Life on the bonus disc.

I'd totally agree with Mr Raffles re; the point of this thing. Glad I've heard bits of it because it's convinced me that I don't need to buy it.

I might've been more tempted if people had done some other songs; Why Is It So Hard?, John Cope, Pictures of Bernadette, would all feel like they'd lend themselves to cover versions more than Ascension Day or Inheritence.

Spirit of Talk Talk book came in the post today, really lovely presentation. feels heavy with a thick paper stock throughout.

Its divided into an essay on the bands career with interviews & band shots interspersed throughout, then a separate section for the artwork..

some of it is just lovely, the artwork especially.

@geordie racer "didn't like LS as much - ideas taken further becoming less effective." agreed.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I listen to THE PARTY'S OVER the most...

Is there a line on "Renee" which goes "baby have a Wheat Thin"? please tell me I'm not misheading this. were Wheat things around back then. thanks

"Baby how the weeks fade"

And yes Wheat Thins were around back then, though I preferred (at the time) Chicken-In-A-Biskit.

hmmm. i think SM is probably right. oh well

Hollis doesn't really have a clear singing voice

I revisited "Laughing Stock" a couple days ago to see if I still hated it as much as I did, and I do. Gorgeous voice, gorgeous recording, but both those things make it all the more aggravating, it sounds like "five guys with no ideas spend eight months burning money and incense to make something a half decent jazz outfit could've (and did) record in a day".

It's weird though, b/c the "fritter away time in studio" process has worked great for Talk Talk imitators (Portishead, "In Rainbows"). I like "Spirit of Eden" a bunch and "The Colour of Spring" a hell of a lot though

You crazy, dawg.

Maybe, but Laughing Stock is still a record I dislike. If you handed me "In a silent way" and "Laughing stock" and asked me to do a blind taste test I probably couldn't tell which one was recorded in 1969 in a day and which one was recorded in 1989 in eight months. But on "Laughing stock" I feel the lack of focus to be suffocating, like, desperate, like these people grasping at straws...

AND like many other people round here my enjoyment of a record is influenced by "legacy" and "backstory" and SO I'm bringing a whole lot of baggage to the table, i.e. the memory of a decade of instrumental post-rock-- lots of it being totally awesome-- but lots of it being unapologetically watered-down new classical and jazz and was lauded and played to death by everybody. Not for me.

ok

laaaaaaame

Never really felt it to lack "focus"--if anything it seems pretty single-mindedly pursuing a certain effect, if a diffusive one.

Cool talking to you guys!

"Laughing Stock" could have been recorded more quickly. And "Pet Sounds" probably could have been recorded in a couple of takes, too. (God only knows, I've seen that album done live, start to finish, but the live band had a great blueprint: the finished album, in all its fussy, studio-perfect glory.) With Talk Talk, the voyage and mythology is part of its appeal. Not just what "Laughing Stock" is, but how this New Romantic band got to that point, and more specifically the number of permutations "Laughing Stock" itself probably went through to evolve into what it is.

And "In A Silent Way" (for example) may have been recorded during one session, but that's not the same as saying the album only took one day to make.

xp

hhaha I love both IASW and laughing stock, would never think to compare them though they share some...moods

though I find myself com to spirit of Eden a lot more lately

coming back to...

I don't dislike the process in itself-- how could I? I'd hate almost every record-- but it rests with the knowledge that This is the album that required this process. It's like, really? Plus: I can hear you guys struggling to make it work. If the album sounded the exact same but they practiced it up before the studio, tracked it in a week, I'd probably feel differently-- but then, if that was the case, how would that record fit within their "voyage", you know?

Albums I really dislike are few and far between, but typically, after a little verbalization and distance, I realize that it's not the album itself I dislike but something extra-musical. Wasteful use of time and/or money, exploitative aspects, singer hits women, etc.

"you guys struggling" = Hollis and co., not you guys

Last Saturday I went for a late night walk listening first to "Laughing Stock" and then "IASW". That was awesome. Both albums are of course absolutely amazingly stunning. It was as fitting a soundtrack for a walk (and my particular mood that night) that one could ever find. I have no further point. Just felt like mentioning it, since both albms were discussed.

i will forever associate talk talk with coke-y yuppie new york discos and michael keaton. in a good way!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0hbhf8TvF4

damn, why is my video not in a nice lil youtube box like everyone else's? pls explain

laughing stock is hella focused, the focus is groove

Yeah, bass part in "New Grass" rules, though you gotta turn it up to feel it.

damn, why is my video not in a nice lil youtube box like everyone else's? pls explain

I think you need to take the 's' out of 'https'

again, i thank you anagram, and proudly present to all of you: michael keaton in coke-y yuppie new york disco, with talk talk talk talking in the background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0hbhf8TvF4

Early 1978 version of "Talk Talk" from Hollis' first band The Reaction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aniltOIzzv8

mark hollis was in a punk band? i didn't know that. pretty great version btw.

Here's their first single (also from 1978)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llm1tiEePLc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XsdbcvnMvA

Found a mint copy of Colour of Spring in shrink wrap but opened for $2 today.

A year or two ago it seemed I could find the Talk Talk 12"s for between 1-5 bucks. Just been looking to fill in some gaps and the prices have gone up pretty significantly. They're now about 8-20 depending on the single.

Is this supply or demand, I wonder? What happened a year or two ago to alter the market for Talk Talk singles? I only have two or three Talk Talk singles, but I purchased them all around ten years ago and even then they were in that 1-5 price range (big resurgence of Talk Talk interest between 2000–2004). My suspicion would have been that there would be an average price increase in 2005 or 2006, but not a year or two ago...

I was wondering the same thing. I think it's mostly the overall rise in vinyl pricing mostly, but it could legitimately be a decrease in supply over time. All the 1-5 dollar singles were snatched up after the resurgence and now there are just fewer of them in the shops.

Surely there can't be just me that loves the first two Talk Talk albums? No!?

I mean, that The Colour Of Spring, Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock are works of genius is pretty much a given, but in my opinion I think that Talk Talk in their early phase were still several leagues ahead of many acts that were attempting the same thing.

heard this the other day for the first times in ages - a tim friese-greene production from the same era, that's like a perfect cross between early talk talk and um, kajagoogoo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80CInBBXYeU

i loved that song. and i'm actually kind of ashamed to admit that and i am almost never ashamed to admit things like that.

and yes i have heard the entire Blue Zoo album.

"Surely there can't be just me that loves the first two Talk Talk albums? No!?"

i love it all. from first to last.

when you read about the record company wanting talk talk to be the next duran duran, you can kind of see where they were going when you hear blue zoo. except blue zoo weren't the next duran duran either, they were just the precursor to king

they used to play that song on the college radio station i grew up with. they played "Love & Pride" a lot too. also the first place i ever heard "talk talk".

they turned me on to so much. first place i ever heard "like dust" by passion puppets. still one of my favorite songs ever. AND the first place i ever heard "slang teacher". can't thank them enough for that. lifelong wide boy awake fan that i am.