Last updated September 14, 1998
From International Musician and Recording World, November 1988
The Spirit of Eden LP is both a logical step and a radical departure for TALK TALK. Andrew Smith thinks it may prove controversial...
"Given the choice, I wouldn't be doing this interview. Promoting records is not something I enjoy." Mark Hollis shifts uncomfortably, making me feel like a remedial schoolteacher interviewing a child who's been sent to me for misbehaving. At no point during our interview does he actually throw a paper airplane or affix his bubble gum to his desk: Mark just doesn't want to be here. No-one ever interrogated Mozart about the brand name of piano, did they?
The new Talk Talk album is bound to prove controversial and must have caused more than the odd raised eyebrow at EMI, not a label best known for it's patience with artists who won't play the commercial game. I find myself thinking of the contents of The Spirit of Eden in terms of 'pieces', rather than songs. Mark agrees:
"Yeah, sure, there's a heavy depth of arrangement. I'm sure it's not what the record company would have hoped for, but I'm happy with it. I never knew what is was going to sound like, although I knew what the vibe of the album would be. Before we started, everything was there as a basic structure, but the tracks themselves were all put down in a live format and then the overdubs were done at ridiculous length. Because you see, the most important thing with this album was just for it to have the right feel, for it to have an absolute calm, but for it to have an absolute intensity inside of that."
Although a good description, this is something that only becomes apparent after several listens. Quiet, gently shifting passages collide with huge, almost manic, chorus's, driven by some fierce guitar and Hammond C3 organ: Sounds achieved by simply "setting every control at 10". The dynamic range has more in common with Classical music than most pop.
"Yeah, I think dynamics are very important. The only way you can possibly lay a foundation for that is to put your track down live and just go with the one that has the right vibe. That would be just three or four of us, percussion, kit, guitar and keyboards. Then we'd give the other musicians - 17 in all - mostly people we'd worked with before - absolute freedom to play on the track so that it has a spontaneity and looseness. Eighty or 90% of what they played was improvised."
But the songs (pieces?) still sound arranged. Aren't they?
"This is one place were technology has become important to us. Working on a digital
setup, you can just take things off then put them in other places and contruct your
framework without loosing generation and end up with this carefully contructed,
multi-layered format, but at the same time all of the parts in it are improvised and
loose. Without digital technology, you couldn't do that."
The digital technology in question was at Wessex, their favourite studio, and (contrary to current trends), the only one they use for recording and Mixing. Mark wouldn't tell me what desk and machine they used there, because he doesn't think it's 'relevant', but churlishness never stopped me: it was in fact a Mitsubishi X-850 with a 48 channel SSL desk. I wondered if this discovery of the usefulness of digital technology had changed any of Mark's oft-expressed hostile attituted to synthesizers and samplers?
"Absolutely not. They wouldn't even be allowed anywhere near the studio. Everything is real, everything is played by people. The only thing we've used digital for is to take something from one place and move it to another. The biggest problem I have with what's happening is that it isn't aiding music. I think the most important thing in music is the way it's played. Unless it has feel, it's not there as far as I'm concerned, and the way so much of the musical equipment has gone to put the emphasis on the machine rather than the player. Unless things are played with that feeling and that heart, they're not worth anything."
So don't expect any house mixes from Talk Talk. But before you start accusing Hollis of being an old traditionalist hippy, it's worth remembering that he is another one who started playing around the time of the Punk explosion, and it's this that colours his attitude, as he explains;
"The one way I would quantify my attitude is to say that you don't have to be a good player, a technically capable player, to play with feel. I don't believe in technique in any way. I think all you need is the right attitude in your head to play. Especially when you go back to the stuff that Booker T used to do. Although that I'm sure they were technically inept, what flows out of them is really forceful. The intention with which you play is the important thing. You see, when I think of a sound, I think of a composite of two things; the way something's played and the sound itself. Where a lot of people have gone wrong is that they think the sound is just the sound, and what they're playing is a secondary thing. Generally we've gone for sounds that, in technical terms, you would say are rubbish, but when you couple that with the way it's played, then it becomes a good sound."
Can you think of a specific example?
"Yeah... I would say the entire album."
Back to the beginning, the day before our interview, Talk Talk made a video for the first single to be taken from the album, I Believe In You. The fact that the record company managed to find a single on the album at all is something short of a miracle, and Mark isn't comfortable with it.
"They've basically just cut the beginning and end off the song, I think it's a shame. They've taken something which stood up on it's own in the context of the album and pulled it out of context. It doesn't make sense to me."
Most pop stars - a term Mark would surely hate to have applied to him - love the chance to get in front of a camera but, depsite the presence of Tim Pope as director, it was a painful experience making the video.
"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 felt exactly the same, 'cos he cares about that sort of thing."
This isn't new though, is it? - a lot of your work seems personal and introspective.
"Yeah, but it's getting more personal as it goes along. It's definately harder, harder to promote things in any way. I would rather just have the album say what it is itself and not do anything for it, just to let it exist."
So sales figures aren't important?
"The only reason I'm interested in sales figures is that, if it wasn't for the
records we've sold in the past, we'd never have been able to make this album. What it can
do is ensure us our autonomy, give us enough money to make the next record. Although, if
it doesn't, we'll still make one, but with a smaller budget."
According to the metaphorical Book of Punk, which Mark quotes from several times during the course of the interview - perhaps this could have it's advantages?
"Yeah, it can be better sometimes, I don't know, maybe we will..."
Andrew Smith
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Last updated September 14, 1998