Day 56. The Spirit of Eden. (25/2/19)

I opened Twitter and I scrolled down. Until I found the tweet from 'The The', one of the greatest bands of the eighties. And the tweet said:

"Very sorry to hear the news that Mark Hollis of TalkTalk has died. He was behind some of the finest albums of the 1980s/early 1990s"

And I gasped. And put my hand to my mouth. I was probably a caricature of shock. That moment that people felt when Kurt Cobain died? When Freddie Mercury died? This is that for me. This is important and vital and horrible.

Because the tweet doesn't begin to scratch the surface.

Mark Hollis is/was responsible for two of the greatest albums that have ever been made. And more that would rank as most artists' best work if not for the two towering works of genius that were his gift to the world.

I first came across Talk Talk supporting Duran Duran in 1981/82ish. At the time it was a good fit. They were a pop band. Except they weren't, they were already more than that. Their debut 'The Party's Over' album showed that they had a darkness to them that their TV appearances as part of the second wave of 'new romantic'/synth-pop bands didn't demonstrate at first glance.

I've always been sorry to say that I didn't recognise the genius of Life's What You Make It on first hearing. The cyclical nature of the piano riff, the slight staggering of the vocal, the fractured propulsion of the track, confused me. I wasn't sure what I was hearing. In the same way I didn't understand Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart first time out. It's up there with that.

But even the growing up that the band did across the early albums couldn't prepare anybody for Spirit  Of Eden or Laughing Stock.

They're hushed creations, dream like states, meditations. Muscular but fragile. Instruments you can't quite place, guitar solos that are simply one minute of a sustained single note, harmonicas that haunt the tracks, strings and keyboards and restrained percussion, noises that happen once and never repeat.

And on top of it all, Mark Hollis's hushed, almost indecipherable vocals.

It's not pop, it's not rock, it's not free jazz though there are influences of all. There's classical in there, there's a fresh take on the notion of psychedelia, I suppose. It's indescribable. And indescribably beautiful. The songs are stunning. But they're not really songs. They're pieces. It's not an album, it's a suite. It's a balm.

After Laughing Stock there was no more Talk Talk. There was a Mark Hollis solo album that followed similar paths and may well be the quietest record ever made.

That was twenty years ago. After that it's nothing but silence. Not even rumours of further work. Though we always hoped.

That hope is gone.

I'm playing Spirit of Eden now. I've played it many times over the last thirty years. I'll continue to play it and each time I do I'll find new depths to the genius in its beauty. But the man at the centre of it is no longer with us.

Devastated.

RIP Mark

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