Talk Talk (RIP Mark Hollis)

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.