Talk Talk - Appreciation Thread

Fantastic band. Mark Hollis solo album is great as well.

Gwen Stefani should be kicked in the flaps for ruining It's My Life

I think the whole of No Doubt are to blame for that one.

Honestly if it weren't for Gwen Stefani I might not have known about Talk Talk until maybe a couple days ago.

(you can infer that I kinda liked her version)

I thought this was about the UK Broadband provider :(

  On 3/21/2016 at 5:24 PM, Vilwx said:

Honestly if it weren't for Gwen Stefani I might not have known about Talk Talk until maybe a couple days ago.

 

(you can infer that I kinda liked her version)

yeah, I heard the No Doubt cover first and then was blown away when I heard the original and realised it was from the 80s.. such complex, sophisticated pop among the relative trash of the time (I like trash too though :D )

it's actually a pretty faithful version. The bassline in that song is fkn wicked btw!

oh yeah, totally.. but Talk Talk were on a whole other level, even in their pop days imo.

It's My Life really is an incredible album, both in terms of composition and arrangement. You can really hear the beginnings of their freer, jazzier sound coming through (it's really worth checking out the piano version of Caught in the Night Boy on one of the b-sides), and some of my favourite Talk Talk songs on are there. This is so fucking good...

Also this video is hilarious

Many probably already now know that Mark Hollis passed away yesterday. Gone but never forgotten.

Yeah, fkn sucks. I don't usually have the desire to do so, but this time I feel compelled to make a tribute track, considering how much his music has inspired me over the past 15 years.

edit: Mark Hollis tribute comp anyone? Specifically, songs inspired by Hollis/Talk Talk, not covers.

Heartbroken. RIP.

  On 1/7/2015 at 11:00 PM, fumi said:

Yeah, that was another absolutely killer song.

 

I also loved this one - again, Hollis seemed to have a thing about the natural world.

 

This is my favourite track of theirs. Very inspirational. I listen to it often. R.I.P Mark Hollis. :-(

i can safely say that up to this point i never felt genuinely mournful over any celebrity death, no matter how dear their work was to me.

after all culture lives on (which is arguably the point) and i'm generally not particularly interested in artists personalities and try to keep them strictly seperated from their output in my head...

anyway, i can only speculate a wild combination of reasons why it's different this time, the first time:

- most banally the music celebrated in commemoration in this case is ridiculously melancholic by itself
- the intimacy conveyed by laughing stock and especially s/t make for a particularly "close" connection
- the way how the circumstances of discovering this music are intertwined with probably the shittiest time of my life so far (main one probably)
- the usual "part of my youth breaking away" yadda
- the definite silence of a completely singular voice (like srsy who even remotely sounds like mark hollis)
- despite what i wrote earlier the thoroughly inspirational persona... sure, he wasn't even publicly productive anymore anyway, so what's the big difference now with him being gone entirely...
ironically tho imo exactly by his ongoing absence mh shone more and more as a beacon of dignity and integrity from the distance, now to be fading from afar.
all the more with these times when exposition got so easy and omnipresent the act of active disappearance seems ever more heroic.
content as highest act of spite. (<- pure projection, of course.)

anyway although it's hard i'm going through the late discography rn and i'm sincerely glad for the beauty and inspiration this chap gave me without knowing or caring and yeah i know this is

what every other asshole is writing on the webs these days and probably shitloads more profoundly but fu, i guess the least i can do in return is overcome my fear of making an ass of myself for a moment.

spring is coming. rest in peace.

*mark hollis death reaction vid incoming*

NPR has a great article on Hollis and Talk Talk: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/28/698650688/mark-hollis-and-talk-talks-brilliant-nuanced-stubborn-visions

  On 2/28/2019 at 4:57 PM, Joyrex said:

NPR has a great article on Hollis and Talk Talk: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/28/698650688/mark-hollis-and-talk-talks-brilliant-nuanced-stubborn-visions

Thanks for that. What a singular artist.

  On 3/1/2019 at 9:32 PM, Extralife said:

 

  On 2/28/2019 at 4:57 PM, Joyrex said:

NPR has a great article on Hollis and Talk Talk: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/28/698650688/mark-hollis-and-talk-talks-brilliant-nuanced-stubborn-visions

Thanks for that. What a singular artist.

yes. good read, thank you.

________

maybe my fav sequence of tracks (although i actually slightly prefer the missing pieces version of "after the flood").

don't get me started on the s/t. that album makes radiohead sound like dj bobo.

and just for the record: yeah the earlier synth albums are sublime, too.

  On 3/2/2019 at 7:08 PM, jaderpansen said:

 

  On 3/1/2019 at 9:32 PM, Extralife said:

 

  On 2/28/2019 at 4:57 PM, Joyrex said:

NPR has a great article on Hollis and Talk Talk: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/28/698650688/mark-hollis-and-talk-talks-brilliant-nuanced-stubborn-visions

Thanks for that. What a singular artist.

yes. good read, thank you.

 

________

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBezMTz6KJw

 

maybe my fav sequence of tracks (although i actually slightly prefer the missing pieces version of "after the flood").

 

don't get me started on the s/t. that album makes radiohead sound like dj bobo.

 

and just for the record: yeah the earlier synth albums are sublime, too.

Agreed. And I never understood why Colour of Spring rarely gets mentioned with the last two. To me, it was almost as big of a leap from the first two as the last two were to it. Sublime album.

Yeah, best of both worlds really, The Colour of Spring is the one I've always especially cherished. Those people who seem to start their Hollis discography with Spirit of Eden and ignore what preceded are rather astounding folk.

  On 3/3/2019 at 2:31 AM, Roo said:

Those people who seem to start their Hollis discography with Spirit of Eden and ignore what preceded are rather astounding folk.

yep. I love every single thing Talk Talk released (and .O.rang, Heligoland/Tim Friese-Greene, Rustin Man etc etc).. and don't really understand why others don't, lol.

.O.Rang’s first album is incredible.

I'm more a fan of the second one, but both are amazing.