Talk Talk (RIP Mark Hollis)

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).