Tune of the Week: Talk Talk

Talk Talk is a very rare specimen of a band, in that they got progressively better as they went along. Orginally something of a new wave twin to Duran Duran, they quickly broke away into more and more experimental material. By their fourth LP, “Spirit of Eden”, they proposed zero singles from it to their record label. A compromise was made in making a song about heroin addiction available, but there isn’t a lot of room in the charts for such material. “Ascension Day” is from their final LP, “Laughing Stock”. By this point they were not really recording songs anymore, but bringing in studio musicians to record them jamming with certain perimeters in place (tempo, key, etc.). They would then build songs out of hundreds of hours of music recorded this way. The results are astounding. While “Laughing Stock” was a flop at the time, it has since been heralded by critics and musician alike. It is considered one of the cornerstones of the “post-rock” genre. Singer-songwriter Mark Hollis retired from music after recording one solo album after the demise of Talk Talk and died in 2019. Let the ethereal vibes on this one be a tribute to his musical legacy.