Talk Talk (RIP Mark Hollis)

nick's piece is a case in point: i often suspect that when people invoke "god" in relation to music (not talking here about explicitly religious music) it's just a way of trying to transcend the superlatives that have become worn down through overuse. "god" is like the ultimate superlative in this case. but as always i think that rather than upping the ante on superlatives we should try to convey distinct impressions of the music itself. any narrative should probably be built up from that.

SoE
CoS
Hex
LS
MH

In that order. Which is, with the exception of MH being last (should be third, between CoS and Hex), the order I heard them in. And I've only come across all of them in the last 18 months.

Jess is remarkably OTM with his observations about Hollis' voice. I love how contrived/controlled/mannered Hollis sounds, how he refuses to follow normal patterns of vocalisation in his delivery, and how he subsumes his own presence within the music. It's definitely an acquired taste though - Emma can't stand listening to TT because of the vocals although she likes the music, whereas half the time I don't even notice they're there, as if the acquisition of the appreciation of Hollis' vocals only comes to exist when you can lose sight of them in the greater picture, and that comes through familiarity.

NB. Still waiting on Independancy...

NB2. Strange thing; I don't actually like the Talk Talk piece I did for Stylus all that much (either of them; there's another composed entirely of adjectives). I think it's far too mannered and prissy, and verges on being up its own ass at times (up my ass?- yes). Much as, yes, SoE (and LS) make me want to believe in God when I don't (can't - and believe me I've tried, faith and divinity and religion has been something I've been obsessed with for years), the pure fact is that I really fuckin' enjoy listening to SoE (more than the others listed of its type) for the visceral thrill of it (especially at volume!), the drums, the bass, the movement of the dynamics, I love the way it twists my guts and shakes my shoulders, and as such it does that better than LS, which, while incredibly beautiful, never reaches the level of fluid, physical POWER that SoE does. When I'm listening to LS I often feel as if I'm just waiting for those opening bars of New Grass as, like mr Arundel said, I'd wait for the dawn after a really frantic sleepless night (for whatever reason) which is not always pleasurable but becomes worthwhile in that one moment of sublime birth (and really, man, it is like the sun coming up, so, so much, after a storm, and not even a spectacular that you can observe from the picture-window, a dull, headache storm that crushes pressure onto your head...)...

Interesting how few women have contributed to this thread; apart from Mel it's very much been 'the sensitive boys club'. Apart from Jess, obv. Who ist not sensyteev!

Sorry!

Anyway, keep talking, this is interesting...

that is much better than the studio version I've heard.

I like spirit of eden (all the reasons for that are here) but just want to say that Hollis voice is meant to be listened to as part of a texture like james says. The lyric sheet in my copy has hollis' writing, which is a scribble, and that makes sense when you listen to the vocals.

oh jess is sensitive. oh yes he is.

Would I like Talk Talk? Some people whose opinions I value highly rate them, but then again, their name gets bandied about in the same context as some I loathe. The only thing I've heard is "It's My Life" which I always get mixed up with another 80s song, as I've not heard it in a decade.

yeah! get yr 'with the programme' and get in touch with yr 'sensitive side' NOW!

Someone answer the question... Would I like Sounds of Eden? Maybe I should add it to my list of stupidly obvious records to buy.

Hollis insistently referring to his music as ?art? to the NME, the wilful disconnection of image and music (illustrations, not photographs), the combo originality (within pop) of jazz prog folk pop (as pointed out above).

Boring story so far stuff: high sales of The Colour of Spring -> high budget for the making of Spirit of Eden -> disappeared for a coupla years -> came back with SoE (EMI erupting into fury: released a scurrilously edited ?I Believe in You? as a single at the behest of the band)! Also, an album so intricate, complex, arranged couldn?t be toured -> further discontent, rebellion!

Do Make Say Think, surely.

Ominous: intense: ghost: swells: pulses: whales: ebb, flow, overlap: lap: wax: wane: the Moon as unidentified unintended unifying image? No.

Hollis? voice: always had a non-specific urgency for me (?muted trumpet? muted) (I get a similar feeling from Johnny Marr?s guitar playing, a sense of felt regret and anticipated sorrow driving the playing, forward forward go on get there, but that?s perhaps a too idiosyncratic, personal-syncretic connection to be useful here)?

Sure, it's "tasteful" music, but it's far, far more sparse than a lot of AOR fodder of a similar mood, not to mention less repetitive. Still, who cares if it resembles AOR fodder? I'm with Jess here; it could very well be a one-off for me. So what? I'm not worried about "missing out" on a whole world of goodness -- that kind of worrying will kill you. It's like with _Gaucho_ by the Dan -- I bow at its shiny feet, but I'm not about to go surfing through piles of late 70s/early 80s smooth jazz wibble just to make sure I'm not unknowingly avoiding something life-changing. Like SoE/LS, I'll just assume it achieves its particular mood through an interesting synthesis of things many of which on their own would not appeal to me.

actually lee harris was involved in the making of hex in some way, although it's not exactly clear to me how (at the moment). i believe he and graham sutton have known each other since about 1991 (though don't quote me on that one).

as much as i love SoE and LS, i like Hex better. you never hear mark hollis and his kru breaking down into the philip glass/steve reich style video-you-were-shown-in-science-class music.

let me put forth a "nex-gen" of the SoE/LS/Hex continuum ... hood's cold house is a post-IDM take on the whole "muted" sound. hood publicly make clear their love of Bark Psychosis, and I believe Graham Sutton was initially asked to produce the record. while i don't think it's quite as aw-shit! as talk talk or BP, hood did good on that one.

steely dan : lite jazz :: talk talk : ???

Re Harris/BP connection: Harris is credited with "assistance" on Hex. Sutton also sampled his drums for the Boymerang tracks.

One thing I find significant in Hex's credits is Henry Binns' presence (another assistant). His other involvements? Tilt and Kid A. Since Kid A came out, I always heard a connection between the three records -- so discovering that tiny fact somehow made it seem all the more valid to me.

but I'm SHOCKED there's so little discussion of Talk Talk by
Talk Talk off of Talk Talk. That song is fucking genius.

ANTHONY & ALEX IN NYC IN UTTERLY VEHEMENT AGREEMENT SHOCKAH!

Ironically, this thread has way too much talk talk in it.

One thing that I think distinguishes Bark Psychosis (from both Talk Talk and Slint) and particularly BP on Hex is that they were on the verge of taking the sound somewhere else *again* - on "The Loom" and "Big Shot", there's a real sense of them making good on the bandied-about "lost generation" membership (eg. Disco Inferno, Insides). "Big Shot" in particular is a revelation, something between "Soon" and Spirit of Eden and Aphex Twin and microhouse, and it mixtures up all of those conflicting values really effectively, almost like a piece of sample collage rather a performed song.

If there's a potential limitation to Talk Talk it's that their increasing focus on organicism and looseness can seem like an affirmation of the pre-eminence of those values; BP sound much less tied to a specific aesthetic, and as such had the potential to go further - the percussive section in "The Loom" for example sounds like a tribute to Talk Talk's "Desire" framed through a familiarity of everything *else* that was happening in music.

It's a shame Sutton wasn't able to follow up Hex more speedily than it's evidently taken - a lot of potential contextual "disruptions" might have been possible over the past nine years.

Stripey to thread!

As usual, I'm being contentious but out of all of TT's records, it's LS that I listen to the most, certainly more than the other albums combined. One of the few albums that I can think of where the band's playing is completely together, but also sounding like it's just on the edge of splitting apart.

Brown's resume is utterly massive, but check out what other band he worked with...

Yup.. Bark Psychosis.

Spurred on by all this discussion, I dug out SoE, LS and MH and had a good long ironing session listening to all three. I didn't need to listen to Hex as I've learnt it note for note in my head over the years. Opinions? SoE is superb from end to end, and sounds natural, and lovely. LS is the least of the three, being too artificial, airless, and too much of its time, and the songs aren't as good as on the surrounding LPs, MH is nearly up there with SoE, only more natural (apart from those French voices on "A life" - why?). What I'd not done before was read the lyric sheets with all three - which made quite a difference actually. I'd not noticed the religious connotations before. Take the music away and some of the words would not be out of place in a church service.

Incidentally Nick, do you want a second CD of other BP stuff, the two Circa EPs and tracks from "Game Over"?