Talk Talk Series, #13: Talk Talk- After the Flood / New Grass / Ascension Day (1991) Limited Edition (3 Discs) MP3 & FLAC

"Thirsting, within without, sighted, weeded, how they run, slain in number."

Talk Talk consistently cultivated a strained relationship with the promotional side of the music business; from the early battles they fought with EMI over their increasingly unconventional (and sometimes downright iconoclastic) stance on the legitimacy of music videos  to their retirement as a live band after The Colour of Spring tour  to their initial refusal to release singles for their last two albums (they eventually acquiesced), Mark Hollis was always a believer in allowing the albums to speak for themselves. The band's original intention for the largely improvised masterpiece Spirit of Eden  was to do no promotion whatsoever, but a horrified EMI convinced Hollis (by way of assorted threats) to agree to release two singles, the first of which, "I Believe in You," included the production of a video. Hollis had this to say about the process: "It went okay, but the idea of doing a promo for that song didn't feel right. That song means so much to me that to sit there and mime to it just feels totally stupid. In retrospect, I would rather have not done it at all, but there you go. It just felt like I was being prostituted. Tim [Friese-Greene] felt exactly the same, 'cos he cares about that sort of thing." After bolting EMI to sign a four album deal with a smaller label (Verve/Polydor) that had promised them complete creative autonomy, Talk Talk set about recording their legendary swan-song, Laughing Stock. Ironically, though the album was even less single-friendly than its predecessor, three tracks were chosen by Verve and issued as collectible parts of an elaborately and beautifully designed Talk Talk Picture CD Box Set. Each of the singles, "After the Flood," "New Grass," and "Ascension Day" were issued separately in the UK, though only "After the Flood" was issued with the box. Each release contains an album track paired with an outtake or a previously unreleased track from the Laughing Stock recording sessions, the latter being instrumentals of varying degrees of interest. "5-09" can best be described as a sound collage of various key instrumental threads that occur on the album and "Stump" is an atonal experimental piece. While nowhere near as essential as the album itself, these singles remain an interesting chapter in Talk Talk's post-EMI career, as they offer a telling glimpse into Verve's strategy for promoting a band that was antithetical to the concept of promoting art.

Talk Talk Series, #12: Talk Talk- Laughing Stock (1991) MP3 & FLAC

"Stair by idle stair, faith one path and the second in fear."

Addressing Talk Talk's fearless approach to conceiving and recording their masterful penultimate album, Spirit of Eden, Creation Records founder Alan McGee once said that the band "was given the keys to the kingdom and return[ed] with art." What he was referring to is the unlimited budget and virtually open recording schedule Talk Talk was awarded by EMI on the heels of the commercial success of The Colour of Spring. The record company's expectation was an even more commercially viable follow-up, but what they received instead was a largely improvised piece of Jazz-inflected Art-Rock from a band that now made no pretense to having an interest in commercial success. The fall-out included a legal dispute over Talk Talk's desire to sign with another label, and after the dust had settled, the band signed with Polydor, specifically the small but venerated Jazz-imprint, Verve. In many ways, Verve made sense, not only because this allowed Talk Talk complete artistic control over the recording of Laughing Stock, but also because their recording process employed many of the same techniques that were used in recording some of the great Jazz albums of the fifties and sixties. The band, now minus bassist Paul Webb, spent seven months cloistered in Wessex studios in London in order to filter out all worldly concerns and distractions. As Mark Hollis has recounted about the approach to the sessions, "What we did on this album is what we call rehearsed spontaneity. There are no demos, no plans at all. I go in and put down a basic outline of something using my Country Gent guitar and then we fly other stuff in to build up the dynamics, the space. That's the key- space -it helps to build and resolve the tensions. Silence is the most powerful instrument I have." This emphasis on silence and space is clearly evident throughout Laughing Stock, for example, on "Taphead," a song very reminiscent of experimental Jazz recordings of the sixties, although this is more the case in terms of its arrangement than of its sound. Lushly minimalist (if such a description makes any sense), "Taphead" opens with the repetition of a desolate and slightly bent bass-note guitar melody sounding as if emanating hollowly from the other side of the studio until Hollis' nearly indecipherable vocals puncture the aural detachment with a sense of emotional immediacy. As the song progresses, the bleak mood never lets up, though additional sound textures swirl through the arrangement as if blown in by a cold wind. Following on the heels of this somber beauty is the even more stunning "New Grass," which functions as the closest thing there is to an emotional centerpiece on this insistently (and brilliantly) unstructured album.  In contrast to "Taphead," it favors a more hopeful, almost ethereal, feel with Hollis' vocals pushed down in the mix to the point where they simply share space with the various instruments rather than standing out front. "New Grass" also features some beautifully spacey guitar-work from Hollis and the haunting sound of a church organ, both of which lend the song its almost religious atmosphere. A true masterwork in an album full of masterworks top to bottom. Laughing Stock was fated to be Talk Talk's swan-song and a fitting one at that given that it feels like a sort of culmination of the long trek the band had made from major-label fodder to brilliant musical iconoclasts. However, for Hollis, it was always simply about attaining a purity of approach: "Really, it's just going back to one of a couple of things- either the jazz ethic or y'know, an album like Tago Mago  by Can where the drummer locked-in and off he went and people reacted at certain points along the way. It's arranged spontaneity- that's exactly what it is."

Talk Talk Series, #11: .O.Rang- Herd of Instinct (1994) / Spoor EP (1994) MP3 & FLAC

What makes Talk Talk's final two albums, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, so distinctive is their formal experimentation with both organic instrumentation and diverse aural textures as well as an unconventional recording process based on mostly improvised fragments woven into whole cloth through the editing process. To a large extent, this approach is carried over into .O.Rang, Paul Webb and Lee Harris' often brilliant and always enjoyable post-Talk Talk venture that necessitated the construction of its own studio (called "The Slug"). For the largely impromptu sessions comprising both the Spoor EP and Herd of Instinct, a steady and diverse stream of musicians were brought in to record improvisational jam-sessions with the intention of capturing free-form performances that highlight both the individual instruments themselves, but also the way they seamlessly cohere into carefully constructed soundscapes. Despite the similarities in method between O.Rang and Talk Talk's later work, their results are quite distinct, as .O.Rang tends to delve much more deeply into World Beat textures. On Herd of Instinct, this approach pays off with some amazing Dub and Post-Rock-influenced tracks, such as "Orang," which opens the album. Here, Harris' insistent drumming drives the proceedings while a sea of guitar textures buzzing and ringing in the background carry the oblique melody; however, the song is punctuated by some dynamic moments of calm that keep things from lapsing into repetition. Another standout is "Loaded Values," a song that is slightly reminiscent of Dead Can Dance's later work. Comprised of some great guitar work, Afro-Beat vocals, and a host of other instruments all seemingly doing their own thing in the mix but somehow cohering into something larger, it is a truly engaging listening experience. While .O.Rang's second album, Field of Waves, is also an impressive work, Herd of Instinct retains a certain imprecise, improvisational tone that lends the songs a more organic feel than those on the later album. Highly recommended.

Talk Talk Series, #10: Talk Talk- Spirit of Eden (1988) MP3 & FLAC

"Tell me how I fear it, I buy prejudice for my health. Is it worth so much when you taste it?"

The Colour of Spring  and it's resulting world tour provided Talk Talk with their first significant taste of international success, and as a result, EMI, assuming the band was poised for an even more lucrative step into the mainstream, awarded them with an enormous budget and a generous deadline for the recording of their next album, Spirit of Eden. However, there were indications early on that Talk Talk were chasing a vastly different muse. During The Colour of Spring tour, Mark Hollis had become increasingly disillusioned and withdrawn (partly due to heroin addiction); then, following the tour, he moved to rural Suffolk, taking up a hermetic lifestyle that was to greatly influence the direction the band would take on their final two albums. For the recording of Spirit of Eden, the band reportedly occupied a former Church for eleven months, thus avoiding all contact with outsiders, a practice which included Hollis' refusal to provide any advanced tapes for their handlers at EMI. According to Producer Phil Brown, recording often took place in the dark and was comprised entirely of improvised overdubs (there were no band takes recorded). Hollis and Tim Friese-Greene then meticulously edited down the massive amount of recorded material into the suite of six songs comprising the finished album. The music itself is nothing less than an incandescent mix of Jazz, Blues, Classical, Ambient, and deconstructed pop, and from the opening measures of "The Rainbow" with its Miles meets DeBussy feel, it's hard not to imagine the reaction at EMI when they finally received the advanced tape of the completed album. While the arc of Talk Talk's artistic evolution had often been quite dramatic from album to album, it is clear, as the ambient prelude of "The Rainbow" is pierced-through with bluesy guitar and an over-amped harmonica and Hollis' meditative vocals glimmer-forth, that Spirit of Eden is both unprecedented and musically important. EMI's response was predictable: the album wasn't commercial enough, so Hollis was asked to re-record and replace some material, something he steadfastly refused to do, and while he was at it, he also notified EMI that there would be no single, video or tour to promote the album. Eventually, Hollis relented on the first two, and "I Believe in You" was chosen to be edited down for release as a single complete with promotional video. The fact that this song is Hollis' paean to losing himself while in the throes of heroin addiction adds just one more ironic layer to EMI's handling of the album. The song itself is a Jazz-inflected slow burner that grows darker by the measure, and contains an absolutely gorgeous and unforgettable vocal turn by Hollis. Simply put, Spirit of Eden inhabits the same visionary, transcendent, and artistically uncompromising sphere as Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. Albums like these are the rarest of gems because they are untethered from convention and expectation and unmediated by the interests of the marketplace. Hear this.

Talk Talk- "I Believe in You" (1988) Live on Countdown, Dutch TV

Reportedly Talk Talk's last TV appearance. At this point in their career, I'm amazed anyone could even get them to lip-sync

Talk Talk Series, #9: Talk Talk- Asides and Besides (1998) MP3 & FLAC

"How can I accept I've given everything that I had and still you left."

Talk Talk's (specifically Mark Hollis') struggles with EMI both before and after the band left to sign with Polydor, offers a unique and often candid glimpse into the dysfunction that can result from the age-old conflict between artistic integrity and commercial interests. Talk Talk's recording contract with EMI expired after the band released the artistically brilliant though drastically less mainstream Spirit of Eden, and though many at the time referred to the album as "career suicide" given its uncompromising, noncommercial  nature (e.g. it all but eschews traditional song structure), EMI reportedly still had plans for Talk Talk, but their foiled attempts at intervening in the recording of the album and their insistence on traditional forms of promotion (singles, videos, etc.) ultimately put an end to the often stormy relationship between band and label. Despite losing the band (whom they never really new what to do with anyway), EMI set about repackaging and re-issuing Talk Talk's older material, ostensibly to recoup their losses on Spirit of Eden. The first of these re-issues was Nautral History, a commercially successful "best of" compilation that was soon followed by the travesty known as History Revisited, a cynical attempt to cash in on Talk Talk's then-latest release, Laughing Stock, by throwing together a group of sub-par remixes of the band's best known songs. On the surface, the cleverly titled Asides and Besides appears to be just another one on EMI's commercially-calculated releases, as it appeared around the same time as Mark Hollis' eponymous solo album. Nevertheless, as such compilations go, Asides and Besides does a credible job of gathering all the loose ends of Talk Talk's EMI years into one place. Comprised of b-sides, demos, and extended 12" mixes ranging from The Party's Over  to Spirit of Eden, continuity (or even logical sequencing) is not the strong-suit of this collection; however, it contains more than its share of rarefied gems. For example, The Colour of Spring-era b-side "It's Getting Late in the Evening" is a gorgeous ballad, which just barely hangs on to a trace of song structure and "John Cope," another b-side, this time from the Spirit of Eden sessions, ranks with Talk Talk's best work. Yes, it was born out of crass commercial interests, but Asides and Besides collects the harder-to-find tracks of one of the most innovative bands of the eighties and nineties, which, if you think about it, makes it pretty damn essential.

Bark Psychosis- ///Codename: Dustsucker (2004) / Game Over (1997) MP3 & FLAC -For Carlos-

"Blood disappears where deeds begin."

Saddled with one of the oddest album titles in recent memory, Bark Psychosis' ///Codename: Dustsucker, Graham Sutton's first non-comp release under the Bark Psychosis moniker in ten years, stands as a sometimes-worthy successor to the band's groundbreaking debut Hex, an album credited with creating the Post-Rock genre in name if not in style. Sutton began working on this follow-up after spending most of the post-Hex nineties focused on his Drum 'n' Bass project, Boymerang, and truth be told, //Codename: Dustsucker is a Bark Psychosis album in name only, as Sutton is the only connection to the band's earlier work, save for some "found drumming" contributed by the band's original drummer Mark Simnett. Despite the decade of silence, Sutton offers no radical deviations from the beautifully sculpted, dynamic sound of the earlier album, although it could be argued that ///Codename Dustsucker is slightly more conventional in approach, as it tends to rely far more on vocals and percussion than is generally the case within the Post-Rock genre.  On "The Black Meat," one of the more Hex-like tracks, Sutton offers layer upon layer of sonic detail, creating a lovely sense of aural space while using trumpet and harmonica to undermine its own Ambient undertow. Perhaps the best track, and one that seems to effectively build on Bark Psychosis' past, is lead track "From What Is Said to When It's Read"; with its hypnotic groove, whispered vocals, and strange electronic effects, it rides in on a wave of calm before descending into a well of eerie guitar hum. While the album is by no means as groundbreaking as the band's peerless early nineties work, Sutton is by no means simply paraphrasing his past, as he manages to explore some new and intriguing vistas within the genre he helped give birth to.

Talk Talk Series, #8: Bark Psychosis- Hex (1994) / Independency (1994) MP3 & FLAC

 "Incision carved out, no traces of doubt, I can't extract the truth."

While Talk Talk drummer Lee Harris worked with Bark Psychosis on both their 2004 comeback LP, Codename: Dustsucker and their brilliant and innovative debut, Hex, the true nature of the connection between Talk Talk and Bark Psychosis was one of influence, namely the influence of Talk Talk's masterpiece and swan-song Laughing Stock on the conception of and approach to recording Hex. As such, Bark Psychosis was one of the first bands (and perhaps the best) to integrate Talk Talk's later experimental work into their own aesthetic. However, Hex manages to incorporate this influence (among others) by pushing it into new contexts, and in doing so, accomplishes a rare feat among albums: it gives birth to its own genre, what critic Simon Reynolds dubbed "Post-Rock." Perhaps the defining elements of this approach are a move away from traditional pop song structure and an emphasis on texture and space over repetition and resolution. Genres and catch phrases aside, Hex is simply a singular and timeless album that is ultimately indefinable because it never coalesces into something solid or stable. A highlight among highlights is "A Street Scene"; with its seemingly looped bass part, moody guitar, horns and hushed vocals, the song, at first glance, seems to progress according to some kind of recognizable structure, but the melody is always slightly out of focus and the song ultimately refuses the confines of pop song convention. Moving even further outside the pretense of song structure is "Fingerspit," which simultaneously manages to touch on experimental Jazz and Noise-Rock. While it is a difficult track, it is also beautifully lush and intricate. Hex is something of an enigma: too experimental to be considered a pop album, but too melodic and song-oriented to be considered Ambient. Whatever it is, Bark Psychosis' debut is truly one of the essential albums of the nineties.

Talk Talk Series, #7: .O.Rang- Fields and Waves (1996) MP3 & FLAC

One of the most unsung aspects of Talk Talk's groundbreaking later work was the band's rhythm section comprised of bassist Paul Webb and drummer Lee Harris. While earlier albums such as It's My Life  and The Colour of Spring  were far more traditional in their use of bass and percussion, on the final two albums, Webb and Harris regularly traversed into Jazz territory with an emphasis on texture and space rather than beat. On the heels of Talk Talk's demise after recording Laughing Stock, Webb and Harris built their own studio and formed .O.Rang. While .O.Rang's sound bears little outward resemblance to Talk Talk, Webb and Harris do retain the experimental ethos of their previous band's best work. For example, before putting together their brilliant debut, Herd of Instinct, .O.Rang brought in a diverse range of musicians to improvise in the studio with acoustic-based instruments, thus providing the raw materials from which they built the tracks comprising the finished album. Fields and Waves, .O.Rang's second album, is a more formally produced affair and introduces a Techno vibe to the the Ethno-Ambient sound forged on the first album. On "Barren," the album's beautiful lead track, Web and Harris create an expansive and multi-layered soundscape that is punctuated by bursts of notes from a santoor, making the song sound reminiscent of Dead Can Dance. Another distinctive track is "Moratorium," which features Webb taking a turn on vocals in amidst a melange of tribal rhythms and distorted guitars, resulting in the closest thing to a traditional pop-song .O. Rang has recorded. While Herd of Instinct was distinctive due to its Jazz-like free-form approach, Field of Waves tightens up the song structures a bit to make the proceedings a bit more danceable, but still manages to retain the eclectic, experimental feel that defines .O.Rang's sound.

Talk Talk Series, #6: Talk Talk- The Colour of Spring (1986) MP3 & FLAC

"Yesterday's faded, nothing can change it."

The Colour of Spring is often described as Talk Talk's "transitional" album; however, such a description is meaningless in the context of a discography comprised of nothing but transitional albums. More so than virtually any other band I can think of, Talk Talk traveled along a creative arc that never paused long enough to solidify into something to be transitioned from; rather, their sound and approach was in constant flux, seemingly evolving in a certain direction, but one quite unprecedented in pop music and one whose inevitable conclusion, for a host of reasons, was silence. After the relative commercial success of their previous album It's My Life, Talk Talk was awarded with a bigger budget and extended time to record The Colour of Spring, resources that they would take full advantage of in crafting more of a song-cycle than a mere collection of songs with a few singles mixed in. Mark Hollis has described the approach to recording the album as "arranged free-form," in which contributions from a number of musicians, including Steve Winwood (Hammond organ) and Danny Thompson (stand-up bass), were recorded and either integrated into the final arrangement or discarded depending on the synergy or lack thereof between the various elements within the song. In addition to this approach, which is more common to Jazz recordings, Talk Talk also began an exploration of more organic forms of instrumentation and the manipulation of aural space that would characterize their ground-breaking work later on. A perfect example of this new sonic approach is "Living in Another World." Gone are the synth-based textures that characterized previous albums; instead, the song opens with a crashing piano chord giving way to acoustic guitar, strings, and eventually Hammond organ. What's instantly recognizable as the song progresses is the care taken not only in integrating the various musical elements but also in sculpting the silences and sense of space surrounding the notes. The Colour of Spring marks the juncture in Talk Talk's artistic development where they began to move into what retrospectively would be termed "Post-Rock," meaning a move away from traditional song structure and towards a more organic, open-ended, perhaps even improvisational approach to song arrangement. Talk Talk would take this approach even further and to brilliant effect on their final two albums.

Talk Talk Series, #4: Talk Talk- It's My Life (1984) MP3 & FLAC

"If I could buy my reasoning, I'd pay to lose."

After touring their debut album, The Party's Over, Talk Talk fell silent for more than a year except for the stand-alone single, "My Foolish Friend." During this time, Mark Hollis was busy laying the groundwork for the band's unprecedented journey into artistic iconoclasm, which would yield some of the most progressive music of the rock era and lead the band, ineluctably, toward its commercial demise. Hollis' first step was to dismiss keyboard player Simon Brenner (ostensibly to move away from synth-based pop of the first album) and bring in Tim Friese-Greene, who had an impressive engineering and production pedigree. Friese-Greene and Hollis quickly developed a writing partnership that would produce some of the best songs on It's My Life, including the title track and "Dum Dum Girl." Just as important, however, was Friese-Greene's influence on the band's studio sound; while ample use of synthesizers is made on It's My Life, acoustic instruments begin to play a much larger role, something that would only increase with each successive album. In addition, it is clear that Hollis learned a thing or two from Roxy Music's Avalon in the intervening time between albums, as his vocals have taken on a laconic Bryan Ferry-inspired croon in places. Perhaps Talk Talk's most distinctive sonic innovation during the It's My Life sessions is the subtle use of World Beat elements to give some of the songs a unique hybrid feel that makes them quite memorable. An obvious example of this is the title track, which, on the surface, is about a love affair gone bad, but the various synth-based sound-effects and Hollis' remarkable vocal performance give the song a far more universal connotation. While It's My Life is a transitional album through and through, it represents a significant step away from the thin new-romantic veneer that hampered the debut album and also sets the stage for an even bigger artistic leap forward on their next album, The Colour of Spring.

Talk Talk Series, #2: Talk Talk- The Party's Over (1982) MP3 & FLAC

"And I hope that I've kept you amused, to wipe that spit right off my shoes."

While The Party's Over is easily the most conventional of Talk Talk's five studio albums, it is, nevertheless, far more than a mere footnote to the band's small but legendary discography. In actuality, Talk Talk's debut bears many subtle signs of the greatness that was soon to follow on its heels. Primary among these is Mark Hollis' distinctive vocal-style; his uniquely emotional (and somewhat nasal) phrasings were heads and tails beyond what other vocalists in the New Wave/New Romantic genre were doing both in terms of originality and musicality. This allows a song such as the single "Talk Talk," which, on the surface, sounds a bit like a rehash of Duran Duran's "Planet Earth," to transcend its derivative origins. In addition, The Party's Over occasionally shows flashes of the band's unconventional melodic sense that would blossom to great affect on later albums. For example, on "Today," straightforward synth-pop elements are combined with Japan-esque bass and percussion to create a sonic landscape for Hollis to work his melancholy magic, but the haunting chorus, with its chants of "Today" takes the song in an unexpected and striking melodic direction.  Talk Talk's debut, while certainly not as groundbreaking as future albums, it well worth a listen, as it both prefigures the band's greater works and contains some pleasures all its own.

Talk Talk Series, #1: Talk Talk- London 1986 (1999) / Live at Montreux 1986 (2008) MP3 & FLAC

"Better parted, I see people hiding. Speech gets harder, there's no sense in writing."

While the number of bands who have succumbed to the rock cliché of trading artistic integrity for a glimpse of commercial success is countless, only a few have traveled down the opposite path, and fewer still have attempted the kind of dramatic career reversal achieved by Talk Talk. Originally considered little more than derivative purveyors of New-Romantic dance-pop, with each succeeding album, Mark Hollis and co. moved further and further away from both the expectations of the marketplace and from the trappings of traditional pop-oriented song-craft. There were, of course, hints of this impending transformation on their early records, most notably, Mark Hollis' singularly expressive vocals, but it wasn't until Talk Talk's third album, The Colour of Spring, that their artistic restlessness began to explicitly assert itself. London 1986 and Live at Montreux 1986 document the resulting tour, which was to be the last the band would undertake. While The Colour of Spring is a transitional masterpiece, Talk Talk's flawless live performances during this period were simply sublime. Gone were the painfully exaggerated efforts to appear relaxed yet animated that were evident on earlier tours; now they carried themselves like a band who knew they were special. For those who have only heard Talk Talk's studio recordings, or those who may feel inclined to ignore the band's pre-1986 output, these live performances will be nothing less than a revelation.