Talk Talk (RIP Mark Hollis)

I feel like tagging Talk Talk as a post rock band is like tagging MBV as shoegazers: neither of them had anything to do with those things. Sure, their influence on those genres is felt, but they are light years apart from it.

there are multiple strains of post-rock and multiple ideas of what post-rock is and was, it is much foggier than "shoegaze"

completely ridiculous to suggest mbv had nothing to do with shoegaze btw

post-rock is just a loose, after-the-fact term that was applied to a wide range of bands that in some way or other use rock instrumentation and some element of a "rock ethos" in combination with modern compositional influences (modern classical, jazz, minimalism, musique concrete, etc.) I think it fits Talk Talk just fine.

fits can too

To me, shoegaze bands all came up in the wake of MBV. MBV themselves had nothing to do with it.

Mentioned earlier, but wasn't the term "post-rock" originally devised to describe TT specifically?

I thought it was for Disco Inferno

reynolds used it to describe DI and bark psychosis and moonshake and laika and seefeel and all those bands, but specifically mentioned talk talk and the cocteaus as antecedents

So really DI and Bark and Moonshake/Laika is ... Post-Post-Rock.

MBV looked at their shoes when they played!

MBV looked at their shoes pedals when they played!

i listened to colour of spring while watching yesterday's monochromatic grey sunset and when 'time it's time' finished, i realized i had been weeping most of the time.

i first heard spirit of eden and laughing stock when i was nineteen. i'm thirty eight now. half my life he's been there.

x-post for those pictures of the interior of his home and the "people who have figured out how to live" thread.

i listened to colour of spring while watching yesterday's monochromatic grey sunset and when 'time it's time' finished, i realized i had been weeping most of the time.

― Totally different head. Totally. (Austin), Wednesday, February 27, 2019 1:02 PM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

def been seized by tears listening to this and to The Rainbow over the last couple of days

mbv wore their pedals on their feet!

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2135/9893/products/normal_bloody-love-riding-my-bike-t-shirt_800x.jpg?v=1527547019

I Bloody Valentine

This is a very good discussion everybody otm

yes excellent, just the place for it.

I don’t think volume has been mentioned, but to me the only way to listen to Laughing Stock etc is absolutely cranked. I’ve had a few instances where everyone has left the house and I’ve put it on and turned it up and up and UP until it blooms into a giant space of music. It’s because it was so well recorded of course, but what an experience.

Not to universalise my own experience but I wonder if there's something emblematic in Hollis' 'journey' that satisfies a certain type of music listener. We're all looking for the transcendent and unearthly (holy?) in our listening, and his move from the early decadence through the studied cathedral spaces of Eden/Laughing Stock, into the near-erasure of the solo album feels from this distance like watching an archetype in the making. That he never came back and effectively completed his monkish disappearance is all the more perfect.

one of the few albums directly inspired by spirit of eden that i think absorbs that influence correctly is fumbling towards ecstasy by sarah mclachlan ok i'll show myself out

New Grass I've listened to a lot, but it wasn't until relatively recently that my ears even locked on to the baseline.

Bassline, goddam autocorrect.

At the risk of being fairly obvious, if you compare Hollis's solo record with the contemporary Orang releases it's fairly easy to make the case that they demonstrated in different ways how the members apparently -- emphasis on apparently, the truth is likely more muddled -- showed which members brought which sounds and approach to the fore.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, February 27, 2019 12:19 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes! Also anyone ITT who has never listened to the Orang albums needs to go do so rite now.

Those photos of his house a guy tweeted... it occurred to me this morning how they might have been obtained. the Hollises just moved recently right? These might have been photos used by a realtor to sell the house they were moving out of.

ah shit I bet that’s it!

...cos I really couldnt imagine Hollis inviting hello magazine round

Talking with Neil Sims before Catherine Wheel played Chicago in August 1997, I told him I heard they were using Spirit of Eden as walk-on music slash opening act, and he said something like, "Wait until you hear the Mark Hollis solo album -- it goes even farther 'out' than Laughing Stock! Trouble with Polydor, though." Hear the WHAT?! Hadn't known such a thing was in the works. Maybe THE week of the gig, EMI reissued the first four Talk Talk albums. I was the import buyer at a record store and ordered a set for myself. Don't think I saw anything else about the Hollis album until the Wire profile (in the same issue as Kodwo Eshun on Drexciya). Bought a few copies into the store, played it often, and got some polarized reactions, including one of surprised excitement from a regular who knew exactly what hit him. Sold maybe two or three more prompted by a Metro Times review written by a future friend/co-worker mentioned upthread by Broheems. Asides Besides, Allinson/Brown, Tim Friese-Greene's first Heligoland thing, and the U.S. editions of the .O. Rang albums were also released during or just after this period -- a bizarre happenstance glut of Talk Talk and related product.

Anyway, can't recall being more anxious to hear an album.

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.

― Andy, Tuesday, June 5, 2001 8:00 PM (seventeen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Offer retracted, ingrates!

You terrible person.

Jon not Jon you were 100% right:

https://www.zoopla.co.uk/property-history/19-lingfield-road/london/sw19-4qd/34611646

feels kind of wrong looking at that tbh

i justed wanted a close up of the records, didn't rly need to see the toilet thanks

that's a nice 4 bedroom house but 3.25 mn quid? that's nuts.

london prices m8

square toilet looks like it might be uncomfortable tbh

ha! good catch. I have detective instinct.

There's no zooming in on those CDs is there. I can make out the Miles Davis Quintet box and I think another Miles next to it. That's it.

An ok appreciation by Richard Williams: https://thebluemoment.com/2019/02/26/mark-hollis-1955-2019/

I think this touches on several aspects being discussed here. Like its that much better than the post-rock because Talk Talk/Hollis can't be divorced from its pop beginnings. That's where Hollis' voice comes from, it and the hits they made allowed for the record company to indulge them with studio time and cash to burn in the musicianship that was bought in to make those last two records. Its interesting that MBV comes up because Loveless had as fraught a birth in a more indie environment but Creation was nearly made bankrupt by the monster it had created. Plenty of cash and studio time (~20 engineers/producers). Its an indulgence that totally comes off into something beautiful; Talent that needs time and money to nurture, which has its roots in The Beatles and Beach Boys and their strange trips.

There's no zooming in on those CDs is there. I can make out the Miles Davis Quintet box and I think another Miles next to it. That's it.

Yeah I figured there had to be a couple of those.

I think the argument re their pop roots being necessary as the start is very well observed, and not something I've seen argued much, at least not in a sense of seriousness. It tends to be more 'but then they got beyond that,' certainly encouraged by Hollis himself in his own way.

In A Silent Way certainly didn't take as long to edit as Laughing Stock, but if your point was to pick an example of a spontaneous creation then you definitely picked something that nearly illustrates the opposite -- the real revolution of IASW is in Teo's edit, not the live take. it's a complete foreshadowing of how Hollis used cutting and pasting of improvisations to compose; he cut away 95% of the pre-composed piece and left only the one chord vamp & the solos.

― Milton Parker, Wednesday, February 27, 2019 2:40 AM (nineteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xpost and off topic but is there any recommended reading about this?

Given the price tag on that house I guess having a few hits in the eighties was a helluva lot more lucrative than I imagined!

bought in 1995 for £500k [/dailymail]

again, his wife might be a lawyer or doctor or something

i heard it's my life on the radio today (no doubt versh but still)

alfred i enjoyed your piece and i'm sorry that you have such whiny commenters under your articles

>recommended reading about this?

liner notes or AVClub or Dominique's review for the In A Silent Way box set are good. best thing is just to listen to the original take & final version back to back (though even the 'original take' on the box was already pruned a bit too). IASW thread here ok as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnI17nFA-GQ

thanks! i think i first started listening to that via the boxset so have come at it backwards, didn't realise that the editing had played such a large role in it at all.

You know, I don't think I knew Steve Winwood was on "Colour of Spring," but I swear "Give It Up" always reminded me of '80s Steve Winwood, esp. the organ and sub-chorus or post-chorus part. Ironic, since it's a track I don't think he plays on, but even Hollis' vox sort of resemble Winwood's vox.

Was listening to 'Living In Another World' earlier - that bit where all the instruments drop out and then there's that one chord that basically sounds like someone lobbing half a housebrick into the piano

I was out to dinner with a friend last night, and heard what I could have sworn was "Ascension Day" piping out the PA (which had otherwise been playing Wire and Talking Heads). Anyway, I mentioned that Mark Hollis had just died to my friend, and he had heard, but - and this is where it'll be fun - he actually is one of those people who knew of the band and liked a lot of the music but *didn't know the last two or three records!*. Needless to say, I'm excited to introduce them to someone to hear what they think.

Yeah, "Give It Up" has a sound that is powerfully evocative of 80s radio for me to, Josh... although instead of Winwood, it makes the think of Robert Plant's "Big Log". And Tears for Fears!