The sleeve art above gives an idea of what to expect, 2 mirroring the fragments and strange sounds pealing from the tune in every direction like the cry of a thousand distant birds. given that the title track of their sophomore record was no stranger to the proto-house dancefloors of the Muzic Box and the Paradise Garage, expanding the mood of the debut's floor-fillers into ever more surreal terrain. Which in retrospect, is hardly surprising at all. Strangely enough, it fit in there perfectly. These songs were on a tape I used to play endlessly in college - early days - alongside the steady stream of techno and trip hop that one would've expected of me at that time. Opening with curious sequences that unfurl across a mid-tempo pulse for the verse before dropping into a slow-motion chorus that could only be described as epic, with crashing drums, mile-high synths and Hollis' vocal towering above it all. If there's one song I'd single out for praise, it's the title track. His voice is deep in every sense of the word: low in register, encompassing vast emotion, and cloaking cryptic meaning beneath a blurred painting in sound. Chart-troubling tunes like Today and Talk Talk bear this out on the dancefloor, with booming rhythms and oceanic synths soaring across painted skies as Hollis' vocals drive through it all like a low-frequency vision blurred in waves of confused emotion. Everything here is imbued with a widescreen, cinematic quality, as if it were the soundtrack to a film happening in your mind. which marks Talk Talk's debut out as pioneering from the start.įrom day one, there was a gravity to Talk Talk's music, a natural force to be reckoned with. Kane were still half a decade away from their first record. However, this being only 1982, Depeche Mode was still recording chipper synth pop ditties, The Hurting wouldn't come out for another year and A.R.
I'd often hear them lumped in with new romantics like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, 1 but there was a darkness and depth to their music from the very beginning that placed them more alongside groups like Depeche Mode, Tears For Fears circa The Hurting and A.R. I say sort of because from the beginning there was nothing conventional about them. Talk Talk started life as a sort of synth-inflected pop group.
By way of tribute, here's a short walk through the records he made. The truth seems to have dovetailed with the legend somewhat, as it appears that he retired from music to be with his family and out of the industry's media glare? At any rate, peace to the man and unyielding thanks for the music he left behind. My understanding was that Hollis had gradually receded from view as the band ventured further toward abstraction, reticent, and ultimately dropping out completely after a solo album and a couple guest appearances in the late-nineties.
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It was a sound that got me through some rough times growing up, wide-open as it was to complex experiences and emotions that the world throws at all lonely souls, buffeted back and forth by the tides of time and accompanying tribulations free of charge. As the frontman of Talk Talk, his voice was the extraordinary foundation upon which his group's sound was built, a boundlessly expressive well of understated emotion, passion and burning blue soul. I was quite saddened to hear of Mark Hollis' passing.
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