Talk Talk (RIP Mark Hollis)

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.

That's silly.

To ignore a record that depends on close listening to get the best out of it? Undoubtedly.

The Colour of Spring might work as background music, but Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock less so.

Who said anything about getting the best out of it? Obviously to get the "best" out of it you have to listen to it, you just basically said "why bother putting it on as background, might as well listen to something else." To which I say, well, that holds true for any piece of music. I have yet to hear more or less anything that doesn't benefit from a close, careful listen. That doesn't mean you can't listen to it without donning headphones and surgical gloves.

I actually think "The Colour of Spring" works least as background, since it's the most conventionally song-based/sounding/recorded. But yeah, I do agree it is also hurt least by being background.

(Tbf, whenever I've listened to something like, say, "Laughing Stock" in the background, I usually forget it's on, and then when I notice I missed the whole thing I go back and start the album over again.)

I associate late period Talk Talk with my older brother, and specifically Not Getting It. I first heard Spirit of Eden one evening at his house in Chester, when he was out, played quietly on vinyl - something like Dec 1988. Even in that year of discovering things like Sylvian solo, Daydream Nation, AR Kane, Miss America, Cocteaus... it made no sense to me. Seemed formless and awkward. Fast forward 2.5 years and my brother is driving me and all my stuff back to Merseyside at the end of my (semi-disastrous) postgrad year in the East Midlands. By now I love Spirit. A college friend has taped a CD of Laughing Stock for me (I think Yrself Is Steam was on the other side). We listen to it in the car. Over the roar of A-road tarmac, it's barely audible and, again, seems to have nothing to hold on to. I can recall After The Flood's feedback solo fizzing through somewhere near Uttoxeter. Uncomfortable fidgeting in the driver's seat. I think Runeii is some kind of pinnacle of something. Or maybe it's the only example of that something.

great post, Michael. for someone not getting it, you remember quite a lot of detail of listening to "laughing stock" in the car. i think listening to late talk talk in the car is like mutilating a mona lisa or something.

I should say that I *now* think that about Runeii... I'm sure it barely made an impression as we merged onto the M6 that Monday morning in Oct '91 ;)

Who said anything about getting the best out of it? Obviously to get the "best" out of it you have to listen to it, you just basically said "why bother putting it on as background, might as well listen to something else." To which I say, well, that holds true for any piece of music.

Mmhm...

Tbf, whenever I've listened to something like, say, "Laughing Stock" in the background, I usually forget it's on.

Well, yeah.

The Colour of Spring works best as a "background" album precisely because of it's more conventional nature. It's an easy album to latch onto without having to pay as much attention to it.

Like hotel California

banger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noy2vThCkOI

uh oh there's a talk talk tribute act on the loose:

https://www.komedia.co.uk/brighton/music/talk-talk-tribute-laughing-stock/

Just had the 'big three' on one after the other. Loud. Perfect music for the big thaw. Solo album next.

I can't decide if Hollis' silence is an absence or a gift: he'd clearly accessed some interior/anterior sacred space (I don't know if I even mean sacred- the word is terrifying and way too loaded. Maybe I mean numinous.) and it's not knowing whether to interpret the silence as positive or negative. Or at all.

spirit of eden a gray day driving to work made me cry today

good crosspost for unexpected emotion thread I guess

I think the chance of laughing stock making me cry must be a million times higher. Spirit of eden is more universal and less emotional in comparison, i find.

i don't listen to these records enough, every time i do i am floored tbh

You are right. You shouldn't. Do not kill them by over-exposure!

Where the fuck is Mark Hollis. Did he write music used in a commercial or something? Is he living off royalties on these Talk Talk albums? I want him back. I want his solo LP properly reissued. Satisfy my personal needs, Mark. Please.

colour of spring is the likeliest to make me cry, SoE and LS put me into a state of terrible epiphany where chills are more likely than tears

mark is done, i trust he is happy

Where the fuck is Mark Hollis. Did he write music used in a commercial or something? Is he living off royalties on these Talk Talk albums? I want him back. I want his solo LP properly reissued. Satisfy my personal needs, Mark. Please.

Article from a couple of months ago but not much (if any) new information:

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/j5be53/mark-hollis-talk-talk-retire-disappear-reunions

I want the reunion tour, the LP in order, the t-shirt & slipmat.

I'm sure he makes ok money from royalties, that No Doubt cover of Its My Life is on the radio every five minutes still (or was the last time I listened to 'modern rock radio') and he doesn't strike me as someone who needs to live in luxury.