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The Tamed Beauty of Slowdive’s Pygmalion

February 15, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Slowdive - Pygmalion

The Quietus pointed out that Slowdive’s album Pygmalion is 25 years old. Pygmalion is one of those ignored-at-the-time albums that creeps up, virus-like, many years later in influence and reputation. If you know what Slowdive sounds like, but you haven’t heard Pygmalion, then you don’t know what Pygmalion sounds like. As Joe Banks expressively says in The Quietus piece, “If Slowdive had previously sculpted a Gaudí-esque edifice from their pedal boards, Pygmalion puts us inside its walls.”

For all of its beauty and tameness (and I don’t mean that as a dis), it’s wild that Pygmalion was considered ‘difficult’ in 1995. I have to admit — I’m not even sure if I ‘got it’ when it was released (I remember buying an expensive import of the CD because their US label passed on it). I mean, where are the drums?

Banks points out a direct line of influence from Talk Talk’s last two albums and Pygmalion. They’re treading similar soundscapes. Talk Talk had a bitter battle with EMI over the likewise ‘difficult’ The Spirit of Eden, eventually getting dropped from the label. Good thing this didn’t dissuade Slowdive as Pygmalion is a gorgeous statement that wouldn’t be out of place as a new release on a post-rock label’s 2020 release schedule. Oh, hurried world — this is the sound we need now.

As for not heeding Talk Talk’s downfall, Slowdive was dropped from Creation Records a week after Pygmalion‘s year-delayed release date. Let’s show Alan McGee who knows best — listen to Pygmalion here.

This post was adapted from the debut episode of my email newsletter Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care. Click here to check out the full issue and subscribe.

Filed Under: Musical Moments Tagged With: Album Reviews, Creation Records, EMI, Post-Rock, Slowdive, Talk Talk, The Quietus

Mark Hollis vs. The Universe

February 28, 2019 · Leave a Comment

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I’ve been slowly gathering some thoughts about Mark Hollis. His passing hit hard for many in my circle. Maybe it’s because it seems like we abandoned him, like an old friend we haven’t kept in touch with and then we hear he’s departed. The distant and enigmatic Hollis was like an old friend if only in that his music was so personal, the most personal music. And that we’ve been secretly rooting for him — Mark vs. the record companies, Mark vs. the accepted rules of music, Mark vs. notoriety, Mark vs. everything we’ve come to expect really.

Mark Hollis was the frontman for Talk Talk; a band initially positioned as a groovy new wave thing, akin to that other repetitiously named act, Duran Duran. But even in the early days, Hollis spoke about weightier things when interviewed — philosophy, Krautrock, Erik Satie, and other like-minded interests — betraying a more profound ambition. With each album release, the music got artsier but not without some hits, allowing the band to request and receive creative control for the 4th long-player, Spirit of Eden.

You may know how this plays out. A sparse, emotionally raw, and obtuse record, Spirit of Eden mystified its label (EMI) to the point of a lawsuit. As happened to Neil Young a few years earlier, the label sued Talk Talk for being intentionally uncommercial. Hollis and the band soldiered on, parting ways with EMI and recording the equally beguiling Laughing Stock for the newly relaunched Verve Records. The group broke up, Hollis went silent — for the first time — and reappeared for an even sparser, even rawer, even more obtuse eponymous solo album.

Then Hollis quietly disappeared. He hinted that he preferred to be a dad than a musician in the public eye. And soon these albums — including EMI’s problem child — were hailed as masterpieces, intensely beloved by their listeners.

I think the first Talk Talk album I ever heard was Spirit of Eden. Of course, as a teenager, I loved “It’s My Life” — and its brilliant Tim Pope-directed video, which EMI also reportedly hated — and “Life Is What You Make It,” but Spirit of Eden was my first Talk Talk full-length experience. It haunts immediately at first listen and, at the time of its release, like nothing heard before. I’m somewhat disappointed that I didn’t listen to Talk Talk starting with their very first albums, to get to know them as one thing and then experience them stubbornly transforming into another.

I want to believe Mark Hollis didn’t disappear because he was frustrated or let down by a lack of success. All evidence points to success not mattering to him. I feel he put everything out there and there was nothing left. Not in a sad, spent way. But that he made his statements, provided the inspiration for others to carry, and silently stepped aside. Finished and satisfied rather than sad and frustrated.

It’s curious that fellow Mark Hollis fans seemed to pick up on this. No one I’ve spoken to feels deprived of new music, that he owed us a surprise album over these past two decades (compare that to our demands on the similarly hidden My Bloody Valentine). But it makes sense, especially now that I re-listen to Hollis’s solo album. How could music this intimate be accepted now that everyone’s yelling and busy, in a constant state of rebuke? Mark Hollis’s music is endemic of a different century.

I have enjoyed — in a reminiscent, melancholy way — all the beautiful tributes and classic articles I’ve been reading about Hollis. I’ll close with a selection of excerpts from some of those.

Andrew Kirell in The Daily Beast:

The crass commercialism of the music industry has long beaten down artists by placing emphasis on the superficial—in the ’80s, this meant heavily curated fashion-centric personae; and today, it’s an unbearable pressure to polish your social-media persona before your own artistry. … Hollis rejected any such norms, uncompromisingly pursued his own vision, and thus inspired countless fledgling artists to stay true to their craft in the face of commercial pressures. {…}

His music served as the holy grail for music lovers—people who love music not just for the stimuli but for the craft itself and how it serves as a portal into the artist’s mind and into worlds they cannot explore on their own—as Hollis, himself a music obsessive, rewarded listeners who are in constant pursuit of answers on how music works.

Alan McGee (Creation Records) in The Guardian, from 2008:

Spirit of Eden has not dated; it’s remarkable how contemporary it sounds, anticipating post-rock … it’s the sound of an artist being given the keys to the kingdom and returning with art. {…}

I find the whole story of one man against the system in a bid to maintain creative control incredibly heartening.

Jess Harvell in Pitchfork, from 2011:

Unlike many reclusive musicians, though, you won’t feel that Hollis absented himself before his overall project was completed. These albums still stand a good chance of alienating you, but if you find yourself vibrating sympathetically to them, there’s enough mystery and beauty in them to sustain a lifetime’s listening, whether Hollis or Talk Talk ever record another note.

Simon Reynolds for NPR:

The fanatical care that went into the recording of Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock — the limpid production, the teeming of tiny details, the leaps from hushed softness to squalling harshness — have turned these albums into fetishes for a generation of soundheads. But although their audiophile allure is a factor, these albums conquered hearts through their emotional power — the naked ache of Hollis’s vocals, the oblique bleakness of his lyrics. On Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, two kinds of beautiful emptiness confront each other — the stark grandeur of the soundscape, the desolate neediness of the man alone within it.

Filed Under: Musical Moments Tagged With: Classic Albums, EMI, Mark Hollis, Neil Young, Simon Reynolds, Talk Talk

Hitting the Links: Talk Talk, a Package from Felix Laband, and Hippie Architecture

May 28, 2017 · Leave a Comment

Talk Talk – 10 of the Best:

Engineer Phill Brown, speaking to the Guardian in 2012, recalled “an endlessly blacked-out studio, an oil projector in the control room, strobe lighting and five 24-track tape-machines synced together. Twelve hours a day in the dark listening to the same six songs for eight months became pretty intense.”



Felix Laband – A Life In Collage:

Hailing from Johannesburg South Africa, Felix hasn’t exactly become a household name here in the States. His obscurity made legitimate purchases of his music difficult, so like any rabid fan I resorted in the early 00s to piracy and felt the pain of having shorted an artist that has contributed so much to our well being. But now more than a decade later it’s easier than ever to patronize the artists we love. And so we did, with the largest music-related purchase we’ve ever made.



Psychedelic Supersonic Silicon Space Age: Photos Of The Radical Hippie Design Sense:

In the 1910s, the horrors of the First World War had pushed disillusioned creatives to invent new ‘modernist’ modes of expression. Fifty years later, Vietnam, civil rights, and their political backlash had radical thinkers again refusing to get in line. We all know well the profound musical heritage of this period. But the influence of countercultural aesthetics on the graphic design and architecture of the era is far less recognized, even as its impact continues to ripple some half a century on.



Why Time Seems To Speed Up As We Get Older:

If our memories can trick us into thinking time is moving quickly, then maybe there are ways to trick our brains into thinking that time is slowing down — such as committing to breaking routines and learning new things. You’re more likely to remember learning how to skydive than watching another hour of mindless television.



There’s a Replica of the Otherworldly Bedroom from 2001: A Space Odyssey in a DTLA Warehouse:

{Simon} Birch, a Hong Kong-based British artist, has transformed the space into a series of micro-exhibitions meant to take viewers on a “hero’s journey,” a reference to Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth. The various large-scale immersions feature projections, paintings, sculptures, and, in one instance, a lush patch of real grass. But the most Instagram-worthy is a bedroom—one that happens to be an exact replica of the one in Stanley Kubrick’s Oscar-winning film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Filed Under: Items of Note Tagged With: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Architecture, Art, Design, Felix Laband, Hippies, Music History, Psychedelia, Science, South Africa, Stanley Kubrick, Talk Talk, Time

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8sided.blog is a digital zine about sound, culture, and what Andrew Weatherall once referred to as 'the punk rock dream'.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a slightly jaded but surprisingly optimistic fellow who's haunted the music industry for longer than he cares to admit. A former Q-Burns Abstract Message.

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