Talk Talk (RIP Mark Hollis)

I think "It's My Life" (the album) is pretty good. Like a less melodramatic, more melancholy Japan album.

While I'm at it, "It's My Life" is still such a great track, like a bizarro world reverse image of a Motown single.

When I saw this thread get bumped I was going to ask about It's My Life (the album)! I've always liked their early synth pop stuff, but I've only ever owned the Natural History comp which I got on tape when it came out, never listened to the albums. In fact I've never heard any of Laughing Stock cos it came out after the best of. I should rectify that. But I was wondering if the middle-era albums were worth a listen or if they were more a singles act.

Great post, salmon. I haven't listened to either LS or SOE in years, likely because they're kinda all-encompassing and demand listening to front to back. However I will always rep for tracks like "New Grass" and "I Believe In You"

It's My Life (the album) is solid

Laughing Stock sounded like crap on my dad's nice stereo. It bummed me out.

"Such a shame" rules

on some days "it's my life" is my favorite talk talk album

almost every song on there is v v good, except for "the last time" which isn't that good, and "such a shame"/"it's my life" which are towering masterpieces

Laughing Stock is a very odd-sounding record especially by noughties pop standards. I think it's amazing but it needs massive volume for full effect. And the experience is so far removed from Radiohead even.

Even a song like "New Grass," I don't know how many times I listened to it before I finally turned it up and really heard/focused on the bass line.

"New Grass" is the song I'd play to someone just about to kill himself. No. Maybe that should say that's the song I would play to myself if I was about to leave this world on my own. The beauty of this song transcends the appeal death could have for someone who has lost all hope. It is the warmest, most caressing, most soothing song on Laughing Stock. It's a holy song, the lyrics use Christian terminology: sacrament, Christ, heaven, vow. Mark Hollis is English, if he had been from India he would sing about Vishnu or Krishna, the words and names don't matter. It's all about the music. What reaches our brain via the ears directly without the interference of the ratio. Call it truth, love or anything. I think I would call it trust. (2006)

You're trolling, I get it.

I'm excited to read that Tim friese green interview!

Really with the talk talk albums the more decades go by the more richly they all inform each other and the more sense they make sense next to each other

I can't write sentences atm

I don't think Laughing Stock sounds odd at all from a production/mixing standpoint, although I agree that the record blossons a great deal when turned up. The thought of someone remastering this record without any consideration for dynamic range makes my piss boil, tbh. It would just kill this record.

alfred you should make spottily playlists of these lists

Write-in vote for John Cope and Pictures of Bernadette as best TT songs; b-sides that get forgotten about but which are spectacular. The former an incredibly minimal piece of SoE atmosphere, the latter a guitar-driven, angry rock song from circa TCoS.

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy)

"for what it's worth" was the first tcos-era song to grab me

You're trolling, I get it.

laughing stock and spirit of eden were so hyped up to me on ilx 16 years ago, that when i finally heard them i was like "eh."

wonderful posts salmon and alex, and thanks everyone for making me want to relisten to the 'silent trilogy' 88-98 after a while.
oddly enough I've yet to listen to TCoS in its entirety - the time has come. yoo-hoo!

Never heard (ha) that term, "silent trilogy." I like it!

Oh god no, 'silent trilogy' totally misses the point. This isn't ambient music.

Not at all! But I think its space and silences are partly what sets it apart. Miles Davis' "He Loved Him Madly" isn't ambient music, either.

Ambient music is not a fucking genre, dammit, it's a mode of listening

xp
absolutely. especially "spirit of eden" and "laughing stock" even more so are a lot about the clever use of silence as a musical device. following from that there is of course a lot of quiet/loud dynamics. all these pauses totally focus the attention of the listener. whenever there is a quiet passage he/she listens even deeper and more attentively. on the other hand there is also the palate cleaning effect during the spaces, he/she can stop short (and/or reboot) for some time just to get even more immersed into the ocean of music again after.

I would never describe SoE and LS as cold. I've never been able to make out much of the lyrics, so maybe that's people are referring to, but the band use a lot of organ and soft sounds and things I associate as being warm. Even Mark's voice I think of as being muted and warm. I mean, these are terms for temperature we're applying to music, so I guess there's room for hearing things differently

and "cold" is not a pejorative in my book

oh yeah, definitely not. some of my best friends are cold

i do not feel the music as cold neither, it has always had a warm soothing effect on me. i think i'd use "detached" as adjective, which is esp. true for mark hollis voice.

I definitely feel there's a movement 'away' in Talk Talk, or maybe I mean 'into' - as if Hollis performed some kind of occult trick and found a way to occupy the affective spaces he'd opened up. The solo album utterly inhabits this - or performs it - like he'd found his state of grace and that was enough.

Late talk talk is definitely warm to me in every way

I think there are aspects of the Blue Nile that are "cold," but the way they're subverted is one of their greatest pleasures. I think Colour of Spring can be a bit "cold" in the same way - it's very precise, it's very tightly arranged - but Hollis's voice (like Buchanan) is the opposite of cold. He's totally plaintive and raw, almost transparently human. Eden and Laughing Stock are too abstract and amorphous to be cold, anyway they're like living organisms, but in the strictest sense, the sounds (especially the drums) are all really natural in a way that sets them apart from their predecessors

I don't feel late period Talk Talk as "cold" either, nor do I consider those albums to be background/"ambient" music... these are records that are designed for immersing oneself in and they work best when they're given ones full attention. It helps that those records are consistently engaging and everything on those records has a point to it - including the silences. There's nothing unnecessary there. Even on tracks with a lot of quiet passages, it feels like a lot is happening, which is a vibe I have never got from any Blue Nile record.

I would never describe those records as cold either. Often I'll play "New Grass" as a way to comedown at the end of nights partying with friends, and it's always a grounding moment - the warmth is sobering

What's up with the Montreaux thing? I've never heard of it before. Is it markedly different from the London 1986 and Talking Colours recordings?

I know there was an official live at Montreaux video.

The videos for the "It's My Life" album are pretty great, too.

montreux video is great! hollis is a surprisingly emotive performer despite pretty much just standing there looking downward. seek: "does caroline know" into "it's you"

in that friese greene interview posted yesterday (which was GREAT, thanks for it) he said montreux was the only live show he performed with TT.

there's nothing wrong with half-listening to any music, you wont go to hell or anything...

Of course you won't, but some albums undoubtedly work better if you don't.

well most good albums, probably. or they work different. maybe it's more accurate to say laughing stock works worse as background

accurate is not the word i mean

meaningful, maybe. whatever, it's just the dumb bullshit in my head, anyway

Ambient definition via Eno is that it can work as both foreground and background, which is my standard.

was "at the same time" implied in that definition? i can't remember any of the eno stuff i've read over the years, i've sometimes viewed it in the context of volume and environment, like certain music becomes ambient in different contexts... i guess maybe that's more of a david toop thing?

Eno: "Ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting."

This might only hold true for "Laughing Stock," if it does at all.

In the United States, a recording of an interview with Mark Hollis entitled Mark Hollis Talks About Laughing Stock was distributed on cassette.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rARC2TU7VjI

RateYourMusic.com claims that the cassette release of "Mark Hollis Talks About Laughing Stock" features almost an hour's worth of the genius talk-talking. After scrounging the internet, I have ended up with a third of that. I want to hear the other two-thirds as badly as you do.

One could put Laughing Stock on and then "ignore" it, but if you're going to do that, you may as well listen to something else.