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Taphead

“When do you know you know you know you learn do you die in sin born again”

This is the opening lyric of Taphead.

I had no idea what the words were when I first heard them, I didn’t even recognise them as words. Not words in English anyway. Just sounds, sounds that seemed to come from a place impossibly far away, impossibly lonely, impossibly dark.

I believe the opening to Taphead is when the strange and shadowy heart of Laughing Stock first properly revealed itself to me. It’s when the penny dropped that this album was something much more than Spirit of Eden part 2. Those lyrics that are nothing, and maybe everything, not quite sung, just whispered really – murmured like a prayer, one review said.

Mark Hollis said he was impressed by the way Malcolm Mooney of Can could sing nonsense lyrics and it ‘didn’t sound stupid’. The beginning of Taphead is his Malcom Mooney moment. Voice as instrument.Yes, there are lyrics, not nonsense; no need to enunciate though. Just enunciate the feeling is all.

“In any case, my lyrics are written about a character who is not myself. He is the one who feels the feelings, who expresses them. And curiously, when I sing these lyrics, when I close my eyes, I feel exactly the same things that he does.” – Mark Hollis quoted in Les Inrockuptibles, September 1991

Taphead is also the name of my blog, hosted on a kiwi blog site called Blogtown, and if I should suddenly disappear from Social Media for the transgression of being a human who cares about other humans and dares to say so, that’s where you’ll find me.

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Living In Another World

“On the new album they include the wonderful Steve Winwood (organ) ex Nine Below Zero man Mark Feltham (Harmonica), acoustic bassist Danny Thompson (John Mayall etc) and ex-Random Hold and Peter Gabriel guitarist David Rhodes.

Did you learn much from Winwood?

“Not really” says Mark.”

That job interview Phill Brown had with Mark Hollis, where they met at the pub, talked about football, drove across town, talked about football, and then as Mark leaves to catch his train home he asks Phill what his favourite session at Olympic Studios was and Phill says ‘1am, 1967, Traffic’ which not only guaranteed Phill the job but set the vibe for the recording of Spirit of Eden – mostly feeling like 1 AM, the microphones mostly from 1967 or earlier. So, given the apparent esteem that Steve Winwood was held in, you might find the brief dismissal above curious. I totally get it. Sometimes people – your heroes – mean so much to you that can’t express it, you have so many thoughts that you would rather not even try to talk about it. Coz it’s personal, right? Mark Hollis didn’t really do personal; not in interviews with the English music press anyway.

My favourite live recording of Living In Another World is the one from the London 1986 CD released on Keith Apsden’s Pond Life label years after the gig, in 1999 to be precise, recorded superbly and then perfected with a marvellous mix by our man Phill Brown. It does sound absolutely stonking. And even tho Steve Winwood wasn’t present at the gig to recreate his studio sound, Mark Feltham was right there and he takes a star turn. That’s where the London version has it all over Montreux – the Montreux band are smoking hot but a guitar can’t do what that harmonica does. Mark Feltham was on stage at Salamanca too and although he is amazing, throughout that last ever gig the massive weariness that emanates from the singer can’t be overcome by the harper, no matter how brilliantly he plays.

So, Living In Another World, London 1986: it’s a banger. It’s the best. Have a listen yourself and see if you think there is any chance of changing my mind about that.

Dance if you must, and you must.

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Carolyn

“FIRST RECORD BOUGHT: ‘Everlasting Love’ The Love Affair

FIRST DISAPPOINTMENT: Buying the sheet music to ‘Everlasting Love’ and wondering where the horn arrangement was!”

By his own admission, Mark Hollis’s obsession with the sound of horns started early. The Love Affair’s Everlasting Love was released in 1967. He was 12.

He had to wait until he was, oh, I don’t know, maybe 24 or so before he finally got to record his own tune with a horn section – the cheerful but somehow also desperate Carolyn. Not to be confused with the 1983 electro-rave-up demo Caroline and the completely-different-again Does Caroline Know.

The horns in Carolyn wear their Arthur Lee influence proudly. I’m very fond of this song for all sorts of reasons but mostly I love that it sounds like Love.
Mark Hollis put two Love tracks on that perfect 1980 mixtape of his – the first, Seven and Seven Is, was covered live by the ReAction and the sound of the second, Alone Again Or, is all over the post-ReAction (and pre-Talk Talk, if it needs to be said) Carolyn.

It might have been the first Hollis horn section but it wasn’t the last. The Mark Hollis solo album makes the most obvious use of horns and woodwinds but there seemed to be plenty of room on Talk Talk albums for those instruments that depend on a rush of air to create music. Henry Lowther’s trumpet, Mark Feltham’s harmonica, massed recorders, busted variophons, melodicas, and Mark Hollis’s own voice – so much of the uniqueness of Talk Talk is the sound of talented people breathing.

Mark Hollis’s last publicly discussed musical obsession was the volume of clarinets – he thought they were too loud and, he said, he wanted to design a reed that would make them quieter. Did he succeed? Dunno. But he sure spent a lot of his life thinking about the sound of the most fundamental and essential function of life on earth.

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19 minutes of Mark Hollis talking about Laughing Stock

The Transcript:

 

Mark Hollis:

…Every album we’ve come out and we thought, “oh yeah, this is definitely better than the last.” Because if, if we didn’t think that you see it, we we would still be in there making it. That’s the truth of it.

So, yeah, I mean, you, you do feel that, but it, it’s like with so many things, although you have that, you know, you, you’d like spent so long of every day working on this thing, you’ve had your head done in so much with it that by the time you come out there, it is like, you know, …you can’t, you just feel completely done in, I mean, you know, physically and mentally, you, you’ve absolutely had it. You know?

That is the end. At that point, then you must just sort of try and clear your head and, and you know, I mean, that may, maybe that was part of the reason that there was such a long gap after Spirit of Eden. You know, it, I reckon it took me like pushing a year before I could even come, comes with, with the idea of making another album.

And in some ways, you know, although there are a lot of people that, that might think, you know, the difference from The Colour of Spring to Spirit of Eden was like a big jump. It wasn’t in, in mentally there, there was no big jump at all. It was just like a natural move. The biggest difference maybe was just the amount of time we could actually spend making that album, you know, in, in that we just started working towards this, this thing of, of sort of, you know, always one of the most important things about new music for me is, uh, you know, spontaneity and improvisation. And it, it was just the thing where we were in a position…

…It is just like, take, taking this, this idea that, you know, the, the first time something is played is a, it’s finest. And then the minute you try to recreate that, it becomes an imitation of something that was originally bad now. So it’s all, it is, it’s just working along, along that line, but also saying, “well the, the problem with a lot of improvisation is that it meanders away from the point too much.” So the thing that this time afforded us was to sort of go in with, with people that we wanted to play with purely from an an, you know, foremost from an aptitude point of view, give them absolute freedom in terms of what they play, but then just so that everything that they, they do play is, is free form, but then to construct an arrangement by taking little sections of that and, and building it up from there, you know, but that takes a, a large amount of time because, you know, maybe you’re sort of 10 hours playing back on something, you know, to get a few seconds, 90% of what you play will be rubbish.

There will only be, you know, if you are improvising, if, if you get 10%, which is only good, I think you’re doing really well, I think you’re doing amazingly well. If you get half percent, I think you’re doing really well.

So that’s, that’s why I, I think this thing with, with time limit of Spirit of Eden and, and Laughing Stock lengthens out noise is just because of that. With this one [Laughing Stock], there’s, there’s been a very conscious effort to get away from conventional songwriting things. So if, if you sort of look at, look at the first track up there, “Myrrhman,” there, there is no part of that track which will ever repeat itself. You know, if you move into the second track [“Ascension Day”], each, each verse that you move through cuts by a bar, it is increasingly getting shorter as the bit that’s going on, the back is getting longer and the vocals are shifting their position with reference to, to the bar. You know, it is just to get away from, you know, like this kind of frustration you get of, of, you know, fitting into molds.

*Plays the track, “Myrrhman.”

The reason that movement is up the front of this album is, is because one, one thing we wanted to get away from is, is this thing where there’s a tendency to look at albums in the same way like you would sort of a live concert, you know, and it’s kind of like, you know, you, you just go in there hard on the first track up, you know, I would think the majority of albums, you know, you sort of put on that first track side one, and it’s like, if you like that track, you like the album. If you don’t like that track, you won’t like the album. You know, I don’t like that as a way of thinking about albums. I think albums in order to work properly, you know, they, they should work throughout. You shouldn’t look at one track.

But the, the reason for putting that [Myrrhman] up the front is, is just if, if you are looking in classical terms at things, you know, when, when the thing starts, it doesn’t necessarily have to attack you. What it does is for the first few minutes, it’s there just to create a mood from which it, it then develops from, you know, so it was just thinking of it along those terms. I think that track is the most eclectic track for me. I think it’s sort of as sort of most of the areas that I, I would like or all existed within it. Yeah.

Also like the way, you know, the, with the sort of, uh, drum part on that, I mean it’s, it’s kind of like I, I, I dunno whether you know that that thing, uh, “In A Sentimental Mood,” the John Coltrane thing, but it’s like the kit in the back of that, you know, it sounds like the bloke’s setting his kit up while it’s going on, and that, that’s very much what I like with the drum track on that. Sounds like he’s actually putting his kit together, ready for the second track.

*Plays the track, “Ascension Day.”

…Yeah, we just cut the tape. Yeah, that’s right.

You know, it, it just felt the right way of doing it. It just, you know, it is like, with all these things, I, I, I guess you do a lot of things just to set up things that are about to follow, you know, and that was like the perfect way of setting it up. I mean, I, I’ve heard that done before on, on, uh, you know, not, not with an edit directly into another song, but the thing of cutting something when it, when it was peaking was, was done on, on the Forever Changes album by Love, there were two versions of “A House Is Not A Motel” one, which I, I think was, was hit with a fade and one, which they just let the tape run to its end and then cut it. So, I mean, it’s not, it’s nothing original. You know?

There are days when, you know, certain people are coming into play, but around them it, it would be, you know, just absolutely whatever you, you fancy playing that day, you know, and, and a above everything you are asking him to play in a way that is completely natural to themselves, you know? And I think that’s something which for a lot of people is unusual because I’m, I’m sure with a lot of people, you know, they, they, they sort of say, “well, look, I like his playing.” And, and then they get old of him and say, “well, look, you know, could you play like you played that?” That’s not really what it’s about. You know, you, you play as, as you feel and, and this is the thing you see that the people that, that we work with on these albums, although I think technically they’re very capable people, that is not the most important criteria.

I mean, why we use them is for, for the way they are, you know, and it’s just the attitude of the person that’s, that’s all it’s done, you know, basically whether or not we think they’re decent bloke. I mean, that’s really it.

When you are working on this, on this improvisation thing, sure, there’s a trust in that, you know, you trust the person for himself and, and you know, you, you know, you, you, you like what he plays. But I mean, you know, it’s with anyone. I mean, there is trust within us because certainly, like say with Tim Friese-Greene, I trust him as a producer. There is no question of that, you know? And my relationship with him is that, is is one that’s built on trust, you know, and were I to work with another producer that would take a long time to, to get that, there’s no way I could have made this album with another producer is, is impossible because, you know, Friese-Greene is so important to what this album is. He is as much a part of it as anyone.

And yeah, sure, there, there is trust within all the people we work with. Yeah, definitely there is, but it cannot be trust, you know, that everything you play is gonna be right. I mean, it cannot be that.

The optimum thing anyone can hope for is, is that music exists outside of the time in which it’s written. For me, the only way you can do that is to make it as, as honest as it can. And hat is true of the sound. If you start stylizing sounds, then it will become, you know, to an actual period. You know, if, if, if you just have the sound as honest as it is, then, then it, it cannot, cannot, you know, suffer that that problem.

That’s one of the reasons you see where we would look to use in a studio like Wessex, which is an extremely large one. So that what what you do is, is you give perspective to the instruments by a physical distance from which you might, you know, not from a board with, with echoes in that, because this, this thing of, of instruments sounding the way they are and having, having their true character I think is really important. I think that’s also true, you see from a vocal point of view. And, and definitely for me, you see the, the most important album that I I was listening to before we went in from a view of Vocal sound would’ve been “New Morning,” the Bob Dylan album of 72. Because there, if you’re talking about Sounds being honest, I mean, you, I don’t think you can get much more honest than than that. It just sounds, you know, like, like the band’s in the front room with you.

*Plays the track, “After The Flood.”

Everything is set up, every instrument will be set up so that any point when, and it would be permanently set up. So at any point when you actually felt like trying something, you can just go out and try it. I mean, it, it is a very fluid thing. It’s everything would be very loose in, in, in the studio. We were just going with a basic framework of, of what the song would be on the ones where drums exist. I mean, Lee Harris would know what he’s about and then, you know, there would, there would just be the, the basic chord shape and the vocal line that that would be it.

And, and then you see, you know, with within that, across these tracks, there would be two different ethics to what Lee would go in drums. One would be looking back to Tago Mago, the Can album that what, what a drummer does is he just locks in. He, he just plays regardless of anything that happens around him. And he never, never, you know, never stops. He has to be faded out. He’s just like his own, you know, his own entity.

But then you see also that’s, that’s what’s so, so true of this album for me as, as opposed to any other that, that, you know, the, the, the people within within that are playing within these tracks all all have a different understanding of what the on beat is, what the offbeat is, what, what signature they’re playing. They all, they all just work within their own little field and at points, you know, they, they meet, meet up again, you know, they meet up with each other. But, but that, that is maybe, you know, the, the most important thing about this album for me is, is that everyone is in their own little time zone, you know? Yeah. “time walk.”

You, you, you know, there, there’s no way at the point when we go in that we know what this album will sound like or, or we ever know. And, and this again would, you know, would, would be true of, of the, the previous album is, is you just go in knowing what, what the aptitude is you want and that, and that’s it. Nothing, nothing else than that. You know, there’s no way I, I think you can ever go wrong on that because there is no right and wrong. The right and wrong is only, only is is an internal thing. If if, if you get on with it, then it’s right. It’s as simple as that.

You know, that’s why there can never be any disappointment at the end of making an album. You see, you know, you can’t go wrong. You’re in a faultless position, I mean, people can hate it, but you personally cannot go wrong with it.

If you take, say, you know, on that first track on Spirit of Eden, [“The Rainbow”] I mean, for me, tho those first two notes on the harmonica summed up what that album was for me. It, it was just not concerned about, you know, that the number of notes, it was just concerned about the way those two notes were played, you know, and, and certainly it’s true that I, I would say, you know, the, the most, the most in important thing for me about any record is, is, you know, the silence is, is above everything. And I would rather hear one note than I would too, and I’d rather In nothing than I would one note, you know, it, it, it definitely works that way.

So yeah, I mean that, that sort of was Spirit of Eden and then on, on this new one, if, if you look at sort of like the instrumental in “After The Flood,” which just plays a minute on one note [the shozygs solo]. I mean, that, that again is is the ethic. You’re just talking about one note, but you, you feel the note. It’s, that’s, that’s what’s important.

For me, and Tim Friese-Greene, I would say that is without question, the best solo that we’ve ever, you know, got together now, just because like I say, one note, that’s it, but you just hit it hard.

Two saxophones played a tone apart. Yeah. For just blowing on the one note. And then, you know, obviously I couldn’t blow for a like a minute, but it’s just, you know, cut across. Because I mean, the, the idea with that you see was just, you know, I’ve just got this, this picture in my head, I don’t even know how true it is, but of Roland Kirk, you see, I used to love those things where you saw him with two instruments in his mouth at the same time, and I just sort of imagine that that would be about where he is at, you know? So always to me that was just like, you know, Roland Kirk, that section as to whether he would ever play that or I, I dunno, but that’s like the image that I would’ve had in my mind about it.

You know, technique has never been an important thing to me feeling is, is above always has been and always will be above technique. So it’s like, you know, a lot of the, the melodies that exist within, within this album are only like one note or two notes. It’s no great hardship to actually play it, but it’s just a question of, of whether, you know, it, it sounded right at the time, it is like quite often, you know, when, when people are, people are in plan that the stuff that we will get on with best is, is the, you know, the, the most simplistic stuff.

*Plays the track, “Taphead.”

We just sort of go, go in and, and write all, and then I’d just sort of work for the next few months, you know, doing, doing the lyrics to it. Yeah. And, and just, you know, I, I mean, because always, I mean, I’ve, I’ve always written lyrics from a phone point of view. I mean, it’s, it’s always bothered, bothered us, you know, things, things where vocals are set too loud in a mix anyway, so that it, it’s as though, you know, this vocal, I still assume a dominant role and, and, and no matter what works been put into the back and it just becomes subservient. I mean, I’ve never been keen on that anyway, because I think the energy’s within the track. There’s no reason for one thing to outbalance here, but hopefully the way in which these actual vocal lines work now is, is working even more so towards that kind of, uh, you know, in instrumental endpoint, I hope so.

*Plays the track, “New Grass.”

“After The Flood” and “New Grass” were both nightmare mixes, you know, trying to get everything to actually have its own position. I mean, you know, I would hope it would take a real lot, lot of plays before you start noticing everything that exists within this album.

Yeah, I would hope that, you know, I I, I don’t wanna write off other areas of music because, you know, they, they, they all have their place and everything and I mean, there are so many records that I grew up with, which were like instant records with me. So I don’t in any way want to, you know, write off that side of things. But yeah, certainly from the point of view of, of sort of where we are working, I, I, I, I think there’s like an amount of work you have to do to, to actually realize what’s, what’s within those albums.

Maybe “work” is wrong. I maybe that’s, that’s not the right word. I, I mean no, all, all, all I mean is I, I just think you need to actually listen to it. That’s all it is. That, that you don’t do it while you’re doing other things because I, I just think you, you’re not gonna pick up on it. That’s, that’s all it is, that you just sit there and do listen to it. Yeah, yeah. It doesn’t require any kind of intellect, anything like that. No, just gotta listen.

*Plays the track, “Runeii.”

To me, this album is more jazz orientated than any other album we’ve made, but I mean, wear it to be thought of as a jazz album, I’d be well disappointed because, you know, for two things, firstly, it depends on how you actually define jazz. I mean, you know, you’ve, you’ve got sort of like all Nick Coleman on, on one end with his free jazz, and then you’ve got the other end, you know, like Kenny Ball. I mean, it’s, it’s pretty wide old term. I don’t, I don’t think it’s, it’s a very good time jazz.

And then you’ve also got other, you know, other sort of impressions of jazz where it’s sort of like the, the minute you say “jazz” and you say, okay, well there’s like “rock” and you look at jazz rock and then it’s like this frightening idea of like this sort of rock band with a saxophone. I mean, I, I really don’t like the thought of any of those things.

It is sort of like, you know, if you go back to let’s say can with Tago Mago, you, I mean, you could say, well, yeah, there’s definitely jazz within that album, but you’d never call it a jazz album. Or, or I wouldn’t, I’d never call it a rock album. You see, I, I would hope that that, you know, the albums we make are far more diverse than be put in any one area because, you know, at, at the end of the day, you know, if, if what you do want to be is, is original, then, then your best chance of any form of originality is, is diversity and to take as little as you can from, from each area, but, but just trying to combine ’em in a sympathetic way.

So that’s, that’s sort of, you know, hopefully what, what I, I would think we do.

You know, I, I think with without question, it, it would be nice, you know, to, to think, “well look, you know, maybe someone might hear this album in 10 years time and think it is a good album.” Well, sure, I think that’s great. But, you know, that’s, that’s sort of nothing that I would spend time worrying about. I mean, I, I would only think about that while I was making the album thinking, you know, does, does this have, you know what, well, yeah, but even then, I dunno that I would think about it like that, because you just work within the present and then at the point the album’s mixed it, it becomes the past, you know, and then now you see for me, I would rather just have a break and then look to the next album at some point.

…

END.

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PAUL WEBB, FROM TALK TALK TO… RUSTIN MAN: “NO, MY DAUGHTERS DON’T CONSIDER ME AS A LEGEND…”

The band’s former bassist left Talk Talk in 1988 after the release of the masterpiece Spirit Of Eden, and has since recorded or produced several albums including the monumental Out of Season with Beth Gibbon (Portishead) in 2002. A bit mad scientist, isolated and confined with his wife and daughters in the English countryside, he has just published the twilight Clockdust (Domino Recordings), an album of rare delicacy which owes as much to Jacques Brel as to Joy Division, even to Cab Calloway. How is it possible ? Explanations with the person concerned, as caustic as English can be.

So, like that, according to your Instagram account, you DJ for your daughters during confinement and you play them electro with Speedway by The Prodigy to challenge them. And you don’t last until the end of the piece! After being part of Talk Talk and recording an album with Beth Gibbons, do your daughters know that you are considered a music legend?

Paul Webb (bursts out laughing): No, and you could say they don’t have much respect for the old man that I am! They know that I have made music and that I still do since I have a studio at home, in a barn, but I have never forced them to listen to the records that I recorded with Talk Talk or Beth.

I looked everywhere and couldn’t find why you chose this pseudonym Rustin Man. What is he hiding?

Paul Webb: I didn’t want to make music under my own name. When I was in Talk Talk, I could play a role, hide behind the image of the group. It’s the same approach for what I do solo, I hide behind a character. I am just an illusion, a kind of mark. So it’s both me and someone other than me that you hear on this record. The name Rustin Man came to me while playing on “rusting man”, the rusty man that I am gradually becoming (Paul turned 58 at the start of the year). I am decomposing, I am gradually falling apart.

You know that in French, the word “patch” makes you think of a bandage that you put on a wheel that has just punctured…

Paul Webb: I didn’t know but I like that idea too.

Two albums in a row, one in 2019, the other in 2020, while the first with Beth Gibbons dates back to 2002. What’s happening to you? You’re in a rush ?

Paul Webb: It took me a while because I built my own studio and I wanted to take the time to experiment, to learn to play certain instruments that I didn’t master. I also wanted to find my voice, my singing voice (Paul did some backing vocals in Talk Talk but mainly played bass). And then I wanted to give time to time. I use it as an instrument, a filter to sift things. I recorded the songs for Drift Code (released in 2019) and Clockdust at the same time, then I spent two to three weeks deciding which track I kept for which record. I first published Drift Code, and so I gave myself time before listening to the Clockdust tracks again to refine them as I saw fit.

You said that Clockdust was designed under the assumed influence of Jacques Brel. But how did you discover it? Via English covers by Scott Walker or Marc Almond, or in the original French version?

Paul Webb: I really like listening to music sung in a language I don’t know. It creates a strange feeling, you can fantasize about the meaning of the song much more easily. On the French side, I was very interested in Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Brel (Belgian, obviously, editor’s note). One day, my brother brought me back from Paris a box set dedicated to Brel which I wore out from listening to it on my turntable. I also knew the fabulous English cover of Jackie by Scott Walker which left a lasting impression on me.

Did you already have in mind the emotions you wanted to convey with Clockdust’s songs?

Paul Webb: Yes, and no. I wanted the songs to come from the heart, to have soul with an atmosphere that was both “claustrophobic” and naive. As if they were shy songs. I also wanted them to be sung as if by an actor in these old films from the 40s and 50s. A sort of narrator. For the title Old Flamingo, I am the voice in the head of a little girl. His father is one of those old school gangsters. He knows he is reaching the end of his road. He wants to protect her and tell her that he loves her. I wanted the singing voice to be soft, quiet. Even gangsters have children…

When you were a teenager and you met Lee Harris (future Talk Talk drummer) in Southend-by-the-Sea, were you listening to this very cabaret type of music, or the Cab Calloway-style jazz that Clockdust sometimes refers to?

Paul Webb: No, I was really into reggae and electronic music of the time (Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League, etc.). But when I was younger, when I was 5/6 years old, I remember that we listened to Frank Sinatra or the fabulous Mills Brothers at home. The microphones used had, and still have, incredible sound. Some are worth fortunes, up to 20,000 Euros. I have a sort of nostalgia for that era, which was not at all rock’n’roll. No, not nostalgia… Let’s say that the voices of this era give me sensations, emotions. I can’t say that I’m nostalgic for that era since when I was with Talk Talk, I wasn’t thinking about that music at all and I’m someone very anchored in the present. For example, I have a lot of trouble remembering specific things with Talk Talk… For me, it’s a thing of the past.

Do you still remember playing in front of 75,000 people in a stadium in Greece in the early 80s as the opening act for The Clash?

Paul Webb: Yes, vaguely. But I don’t think it was The Clash, more like The Cure. You know, when I was on stage, I was really into the music. I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on around me.

You mentioned microphones from the 1940s, but you use a lot of them yourself. Up to six to record in your studio…

Paul Webb: Yes, I use it creatively to multiply sound recordings with an instrument, a guitar, a bass. Then I work a bit like a painter by choosing which take I’m going to use in a piece. Each microphone gives a different color, a different nuance. It’s a process that I find very organic. That’s how I worked on Drift Code and also on Clockdust.

If you went back in time and met the kid you were at 13, what would you say to him? What advice would you give him?

Paul Webb: Not much. Maybe make more music, record more songs, write more songs. But youth is first meant to be wasted, right?

How did you start making music? With Lee joining a reggae group called Eskalator?

Paul Webb: I started by taking piano lessons, then I joined a marching band like a lot of kids. Then, I started playing bass because in all the bands I went through, there was a guitarist, a drummer but there was always a bassist missing. With Lee, we started doing concerts very young. To tell you the truth, we were even too young to be allowed to drink alcohol. Then, I went to an art school. And I met Mark (Hollis, editor’s note). I always wanted to be a musician. But before Talk Talk, I was pretty obsessed with a band like Joy Division, the Doors too. I was very attracted to a certain darkness in the music.

Many British critics compare Rustin Man’s music to that of Robert Wyatt or to pieces by David Bowie. Is this a good or bad interpretation?

Paul Webb: I like both. I must say that if I compare myself on the vocal side with these two singers, it is something that completely escapes me. I would rather say that I am very influenced by a certain atmosphere, that of Berlin in the 30s or 40s, cabaret music. I’m a very visual person, and I remember a lot of old black and white films, and a certain lost innocence that showed through in the images of the time.

You say that you are not nostalgic, but you still seem very anchored in the past. Do you have any regrets about Talk Talk? A detail, but is it true that the group was first called 300 Cubs?

Paul Webb: How do you know that? Yes, it’s true, we were first called 300 Cubs but we only had to keep that name for one, two, maybe three weeks, before renaming ourselves Talk Talk. On regrets… how could I have any? Talk Talk remained honest until the end. The group stopped right when it needed to stop. A perfect trajectory that I accept and which I like.

With time, and the sudden disappearance of Mark Hollis at the beginning of last year, speculation has been rife among fans of the group. So I just ask: do you know if there are any unreleased Talk Talk tracks somewhere, perhaps buried in a trunk, under a tree in the English countryside?

Paul Webb (amused): No. I’m sure that it’s not the case. There is no treasure to be found. If there is one, it’s on the records we recorded. Nowhere else.

Regarding Rustin Man, what directions do you plan to take for the rest of this project? You mentioned your taste for electronic music…

Paul Webb: I just know the next record should take less time. I’ve already started working on a few pieces. What I want, what I’m looking for, is to be surprised.

When the confinement is over, will you tour with a group in Europe? Possibly with Lee on drums (he participated in Rustin Man albums)?

Paul Webb: With Lee, I don’t think so. He is busy on his own project. I plan to do some shows with Rustin Man. For now, we have three dates in November this year but none in France. It is planned that I will go on stage with a band in which there will be the bassist of the group Dez Mona (Nicolas Rombouts), a Belgian group whose album Hilfe Kommt I produced in 2009. I can’t wait to play the pieces of Rustin Man on stage and see how they evolve.

Comments collected by Frédérick RAPILLY (April 2020)

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The Hard Report, 14 October 1988 (radio station tip-sheet from the U.S.)

 

Talk Talk “Spirit Of Eden” (EMI)
This group’s beautiful attention to detail has certainly made them a rare pop entity, one that moves at its own speed and always attains the highest sound quality for every masterpiece they create. “It’s My Life” certainly proved to be one such gem, and “The Colour Of Spring” album poured out beautiful, visual songs like “Life’s What You Make It”. But Mark Hollis and members tip-toed past commercial expectations this time and bestow their sound trademark upon us in a different setting. As they explore new areas of expertise, “Spirit Of Eden” finds them in a realm of crystallized ‘new age’ that creates an effect on your mind and spirit. It’s interesting to consider whether or not many of us would be taken by an album of this type if it wasn’t the product of a “pop” group, but the result is positive all the way around. By expanding our consciousness with fragile serenity and moments of sheer drama you [will] might find this one to be more than you bargained for, and it’s worth it.

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Heartbeats Nov 23 (Sweden) Thomas Balslev

With the album ‘Spirit of Eden’, the popular 80s band Talk Talk flopped for the first time in their career. No one understood the mesterværk, de selv mente, de havde lavet. Today, 35 years after the record’s release, it is considered to be one of the world’s best and most significant albums.

Rumor has it that the man at EMI started crying when he heard the finished version of Talk Talk’s album ‘Spirit of Eden’ for the first time. Not because of its immense beauty, but because he knew right away that it wouldn’t sell very well.

Possibly also because he and the rest of the record company had posted a considerable sum of English pounds in just that record. At the end of the 80’s, Talk Talk was a good stock on the way up: They were a popular band, and their new wave-inspired pop music had attracted a solid group of fans on the three previous albums. They weren’t like the other bands, but had hits, and the reviewers were happy.

When Talk Talk’s third record ‘The Color of Spring’ came out, they toured so fiercely that it nearly killed them. Still, in 1987 they found the energy to make perhaps their best album of them all, ‘Spirit of Eden’. An album that is a classic example of being ahead of its time.

The man inside the record company was scolded. The record sold almost nothing. There were six songs on, but not one was suitable as a single. Rolling Stone Magazine gave the record one out of five stars, and in general the reception was lukewarm among reviewers, who among other things criticized Talk Talk for becoming too self-congratulatory.

“Instead of getting better or worse, this band just got more pretentious every year,” as one wrote. Today, we only want to give him partial credit, because ‘Spirit of Eden’ is admittedly pretentious, but it’s also really good. In many eyes it is considered to be the first post-rock album ever and to be defining for a wave of alternative rock bands such as Radiohead, Mogwai and Low (here, a newer band like Lowly could be mentioned).

In terms of genre, ‘Spirit of Eden’ is most of all an experimental hybrid, which mixes pop, rock and jazz in a rare way, which ultimately emerges as ambient avant-garde. When you say something like that, there are probably many people who will be scared, but the truth is that both your mother and your skeptical friend will like this album.

There aren’t really any choruses, not any ordinary song structures, but mood-saturated progressions that move merrily forward and around like shoals of fish enveloped in an ocean of reverb, piano and muted trumpet. Much of the time there is no, or almost no, sound – and if you want to intellectualize about it, you would probably say that it is an artistic study of the interaction between the phenomena of silence and sound.

An illusion with 16 guests

The songwriter and lead singer of Talk Talk, Mark Hollis, is heroically famous for once saying that it is better to play one note well than to play two notes badly. He had the attitude that if you’re going to break the silence, you have to have a reason for it, and ‘Spirit of Eden’ is a full-fledged reflection of that – only surpassed by Mark Hollis’ self-titled solo album from 1998, which was so minimalist that one reviewer called it “possibly the most quiet and intimate album ever made.”

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CMJ 1998

First Person
Laughing Stock (Polydor)

I remember joking once that Talk Talk was “the poor man’s Simple Minds.” 1991’s Laughing Stock, however, blew away my prejudices about the band and became a resident of my list of favorite albums. Mark Hollis (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Tim Friese-Greene (keyboards, production) and Lee Harris (drums) labored on Laughing Stock for seven months with a cast of violinists, cellists, horn players and one harmonica player. Their work produced a masterful album of improvisation, spontaneity and subtle artistry. Its spacious sound and rich feel doesn’t come from digital or studio effects, but from natural echo and reverb nurtured by judicious mic placement in London’s mammoth Wessex Studios. The jazz-influenced drumming of Harris (who later formed O’rang with ex-Talk Talk bassist Paul Webb) provides ample freedom for the fluttering keyboard, guitar and strings to wander and create atmosphere. The drumming also wanders to make its own magic, as on the opener “Myrrhman” where the sounds of sticks and skins scatter about. Hollis said he wanted it to feel like Coltrane’s “In A Sentimental Mood” in which he thought it sounded like ‘Trane drummer Elvin Jones was setting up his kit. The ambling, open-ended feel of “Myrrhman” prepares you for “Ascension Day” in which Hollis spills out elegant, phonetic phrasings (“Double deal a season wrapt too lax to laps so soon”), his voice barely rising above the instruments. The lyrics may make little sense, but the words are paramount, as Hollis shapes consonants and vowels into art. The album bubbles to a peak on “After The Flood” where Hollis and Friese-Greene bleat for a minute on saxes a half note apart. That brash, unnerving solo reveals the free-jazz aesthetic that Talk Talk must’ve had in mind for those seven months. I’d be surprised if the spontaneous aesthetic of Laughing Stock wasn’t behind some work by Portishead, Spacemen 3, Laika and others in this decade. I’d be even more surprised if the album didn’t continue to inspire innovators in the next 10 years. — Steve Ciabattoni
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First Person is a weekly column in which individual CMJ editors sound off about music and artists, both new and old, that are near and dear to their hearts.

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Rustin Man: The origins resonate in the present – 2020

The story of a musician who once conquered the world with Talk Talk. Paul Webb aka Rustin Man then took a lot of time for his solo career. Now he inspires as a singer-songwriter.

A xylophone is not just a xylophone. At least not in a Paul Webb recording. With a blissful look, the perfectionist tells how he tried out ten different microphones in different positions until he found the right timbre.

Paul Webb lives with his family in a secluded country house in Essex. He also records his music there. “The whole house is often laid out with cables and blocked with instruments,” he grins. «But every evening when a session is over, I pack everything up nicely. And even this work makes me happy.”

The Times of Talk Talk

Meticulousness and passion take time. Seventeen years elapsed between the album Webb aka Rustin Man released with Portishead singer Beth Gibbons in 2002 and his debut solo album, Drift Code, which was released last year. Now comes the next beat with «Clockdust». Webb says he knew early on that his song ideas would last for two albums. He worked on all of them at the same time in order to bring them into a coherent sequence at the end.

Paul Webb’s career began in distant times. And it’s also an example of how badly artistic integrity and originality align with the market analysis of record majors. Webb and his pal Lee Harris are from Southend. Webb initially played bass, Harris drums. The guidance counselor said Webb had “zero talent for anything.” But he ended up at art school, where he met Depeche Mode singers Dave Gahan and Alison Moyet in the same class.

In the summer of 1980, Webb, now eighteen, drove to London with Harris to audition for singer-songwriter Mark Hollis. Hollis was a few years older and needed a band to make his ideas sonically palatable to the record companies. He liked the enthusiasm of the two younger musicians so much that he formed the Talk Talk trio with them.

“I left home with a promise to be back for dinner. But I never came back.” Soon Talk Talk was under contract with EMI and celebrated their first hits. “It was incredible,” Webb is still amazed. Then, of all people, the career counselor in question got in touch to hire Talk Talk for a benefit concert. But the band was already commuting between London and New York by Concorde. “With the best will in the world, we didn’t have time for the careers adviser. I hung up the phone and yelled, ‘Hallelujah! Life is sweet!’»

In 1988 Talk Talk had produced their fourth album: «Spirit of Eden». The recordings lasted a year. The sound should sound like “a night in 1967”, wrote producer Phill Brown in his memoirs. Only instruments and equipment that had existed in 1967 were used, the lighting in the studio was psychedelic, the atmosphere euphoric. In the end, everyone involved was convinced that they had created a masterpiece.

With their sound, to which the Chelmsford Cathedral Choir contributed in addition to oboe, violin and harmonium, the six songs of “Spirit of Eden” tended towards contemporary orchestral music. On the other hand, they are reminiscent of the romantic-melancholic tradition of John Martyn or Nick Drake.

The list of musicians who cite the album as a source of inspiration today ranges from Radiohead to Placebo and Steven Wilson to Divine Comedy and Ghostpoet. “But when we played the album to our manager,” Webb recalls, “he shook his head and complained: What have you done! He knew that the music would hardly please the EMI bosses.” In fact, EMI even took the band to court for not delivering “a commercially satisfactory product” with the album. After all, the verdict was in favor of Talk Talk.

The death of Mark Hollis in February 2019 brought back old memories. Webb, who was no longer in contact with Hollis, didn’t bother too long: “I’m not a nostalgic person. What counts for me is the now and the future.” After Talk Talk, Webb, Harris and Phill Brown formed the trio O’Rang. Brown soon got out again, the work process was too tedious for him. Webb, on the other hand, remembers spontaneous improvisations “and a lot of fun”.

Your own voice

For the last few years, Webb has apparently been working on his own music without any financial pressure. At eight o’clock he took the children to school, then they played music, at 12 o’clock the late riser Lee Harris showed up in the studio, they worked until four o’clock when the children were picked up from school. During this time he not only developed his own style, but also his voice. Today, Paul Webb’s singing is remarkably similar to that of Mark Hollis, although his voice is reminiscent of Robert Wyatt here and there. As with Talk Talk, the instrumental arrangements range from autumnal brass parts to swinging jazz rhythms and shimmering guitars to spooky marimbas.

Thirty years after “Spirit of Eden”, Paul Webb has emerged from the shadow of that epochal work, but at the same time created an album that sounds a bit like a somewhat sunnier counterpart to it. “My record company never gave me any rules,” says Webb. “I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Mark Hollis had been allowed to work under similar circumstances.”

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Stuart Stawman Part Three

 

OK, so I’ll paste the SOE instalment below. I would have sent it sooner but I was trying to write something about the ‘edgy’ humour that infused the sessions and I failed, it’s too tricky and loaded to try and describe so I’ll leave it out. I can do a very short follow up on Laughing Stock if you like, but I’d actually left Wessex when that was recorded so I don’t imagine I’ll get much past a paragraph, maybe two; ‘the view from the outside’. Please correct any typos if you spot any. Thanks!

Spirit of Eden

The first tell-tale sign that planet Talk Talk was now installed in Studio 1 was the sight of the two ‘4-wheel drives’ parked next to each other outside the reception of Wessex Studios, one being Tim’s, the other Mark’s. Joyce the studio manager had previously told me of Tim’s adventures driving a complete circuit of Africa in his Toyota Land Cruiser. Unfortunately, I can’t remember with confidence which species of animal it was that had surrounded his vehicle one night while he slept on the roof. But I do remember Tim telling me about how Toyota had provided him with a brand-new engine at the halfway mark of his trip.

I didn’t work consistently on Spirit of Eden as I was chief engineer at Wessex and was generally working on other projects but every now and then I was called on to stand in for a few days. There wasn’t a great deal for me to do, the core team that comprised the band, Tim Friese-Green and Phill Brown was a well-oiled machine so, as mentioned previously, I was left to enjoy a fly-on-the-wall view of the album unfolding over time. It soon became very clear that this was going to be a VERY different album to Colours of Spring

The control room and recording room of Studio 1 did not have any windows so the entire recording process took place divorced from sunlight. Apart from Phill making trips to the maintenance room upstairs none of my memories of the others are in daylight! Sometimes all the lights were on full and the place was as indeed as bright as day, while at other times the place was thrown into darkness save for a few coloured spotlights and the infamous oil wheel. But these shifting atmospheres had no relationship to the actual time of day outside. As has been well-documented, they spent the best part of a year living in this ‘altered reality’.

The studio’s Bösendorfer grand piano and Hammond Organ with Leslie cabinet had been joined by two harmoniums for the sessions. I became fascinated by the fluid way in which Mark and Tim would take it in turns at the keyboards trying to work out what a particular part should be. There was no possessiveness at all over who would eventually record the part, everything was done in the service of the song. In fact, I think there were probably some parts that combined both of their playing. It was the same with guitar parts, either one might try out ideas and record a part.

Alla asked me for any memories of the recording process. Phill Brown, who is the star witness for all things Talk Talk, captures the nuts and bolts of their process brilliantly in his book ‘Are We Still Rolling?’ For example, the way they would record several takes of a guest musician and cherry-pick the choice sound bytes, which might be one note or the sound of someone tripping over a guitar lead, and erase the rest. Sometimes they erased it all.

If it hasn’t already been covered elsewhere I think the bit that I can bring to the conversation is my recall of what I think we can refer to as their ‘Give It Back’ principle.

If something they were recording started to remind them of another artist, Tim would adopt a shrill, high-pitched voice (think Monty Python doing the Piston Engine sketch) and yell out that they should ‘give it back’ to whoever the artist was.

“Give it back to Miles Davis!!”

“Give it back to Aretha Franklin!!”

“Give it back to The Andrews Sisters!!”

The list was long.

Sometimes the references were made tongue-in-cheek, and at other times they were entirely literal. Mark and Tim shared a dogged insistence on not being reminded of other people’s work. It’s a fine line to walk, if the principle is applied to its extreme there is a danger of ending up with silence. But, applied as a general attitude, it beautifully encapsulates their insistence on breaking new ground and defining their own sound. Creating something genuinely ‘new’.

In Phill’s book he recalls the time they first recorded a choir on the track ‘I Believe In You’. I wasn’t working with them that day, but I happened to be upstairs near the large red wooden door that lead to the recording room of Studio 1. I could hear the choir and was transfixed. I very carefully opened the door a few millimetres so that I could hear them better. Because I was upstairs I couldn’t hear the backing track that was being played in the control room and through the headphones of the choir. I was just hearing an ‘a Cappella performance of a choir singing ‘How long, spirit of illusion?’ in an old church hall. The hair was standing up on my arms. It was beautiful.

I was down to work with Talk Talk the next day and Phill and I were in the control room discussing how wonderful the choir had been when Mark and Tim arrived and directed Phill to erase it! Phill remembers Mark saying “It sounds too good – like The Cliff Adams Singers.”

My memory from that day is of Tim shrieking “Give it back to the King Singers!!”

This incident really consolidated something for me around ‘strength of conviction’. It doesn’t matter how long it takes to record a particular part, or even a whole section of a song. In many respects, it’s also best (though not always possible!) if it doesn’t matter how much it cost It doesn’t even matter how great it is! If it doesn’t fit the overall project, you have to get rid of it. I often think of that time as I hit delete . .

And the second choir they recorded for that track was even better.

It would have been around that time that Kate Bush released her first single since her epic album ‘Hounds of Love’. I can remember that we’d somehow got hold of a pre-release copy and played it for the first time through the main monitors in the control room. I can still remember the bated breath of a room full of respect for Kate Bush as the church bells that open the track ’Sensual World’ started playing.

Speaking of female musical icons, there are two in my world; Kate and Joni. So I was extremely pleased to be parked in fly-on-the-wall mode on the couch toward the back of the control room the day they had Larry Klein (Joni Mitchell’s husband) come in to do bass overdubs. The conversation was polite, I remember him likening his current home in California to a French vineyard, and then they got down to the business of working out some bass parts. The session was wrapped up and he left. I think his parts were deleted before he’d been gone an hour. He was clearly an excellent musician, but his parts didn’t fit what they were looking for.

They gave him back to Joni Mitchell.