In 1998 Talk Talk's Mark Hollis released the wonderful self-titled album that was apparently a contractual obligation, and if that was the case the lawyers got the best of the bargain (but not the accountants as it didn't sell). It's a piece of work that has been described as “quite possibly the most quiet and intimate record ever made” which might be doing ECM an injustice, but is nonetheless broadly true.

It is unique and beautiful and a must listen. The music is so fragile it seems to be losing shape as you listen – sort of like a William Basinski Disintegration Loop made from someone’s song. It is at once nostalgic and pastoral, but oddly fractured and pleading and will be a special pleasure if you love the trio of albums by Talk Talk that include Colour of Spring, Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock all of which are truly 3 of popular music’s most beautiful but challenging records. Albums that are often said to have invented “post rock” and show a band living up to with Radiohead’s challenge “How to Disappear Completely”.

We are digging this album out of the archive this week because it includes the remarkably frail song - A life (1895-1915)

which is a tribute to this guy, war poet Charles Sorley

who wrote these words (which to be fair could apply to Hollis’ album)


“Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat:
Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean,
A merciful putting away of what has been.

And this we know: Death is not Life, effete,
Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen
So marvellous things know well the end not yet.

Victor and vanquished are a-one in death:
Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say,
"Come, what was your record when you drew breath?"
But a big blot has hid each yesterday
So poor, so manifestly incomplete.
And your bright Promise, withered long and sped,
Is touched, stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet
And blossoms and is you, when you are dead.”


Which is oddly topical in the week we celebrate 100 years since the waste of life that was the Somme.

-TH