Mark Hollis: A Perfect Silence

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In a mere eight years and five albums, Talk Talk undertook a transformation unprecedented in popular music history. The Green Transition Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. Wardle has interviewed Keith Aspden, Talk Talk’s former manager; Mark Feltham, the harmonica player and one of Hollis’ most trusted session musicians; and Phill Brown, the audio engineer who worked on the great albums. In the first complete, in-depth biography of the Talk Talk leader, author and music industry insider Ben Wardle has interviewed scores of Mark Hollis' friends, musicians, collaborators and record company executives to complete this important and substantial biography.

Sofia Coppola got him started on an attempt to compose music that would more or less fit the period depicted in "Marie-Antoinette", then she had a complete change of mind and decided instead to use modern pop music, and Hollis was out at this point, so it never went any further. This genuine ‘lost classic’ is now available again on heavyweight vinyl, with original artwork – printed inner sleeve with lyrics and credits. Today, beyond the records, beyond the music, the rest is silence – or at least that is how Mark Hollis would have wished it, and his wife and sons seem determined to honour his legacy by saying nothing and keeping the door to the walled garden firmly locked. Wardle’s biography addresses and clarifies all these sources, but the book’s aim is not so much on who Hollis was. After retirement Hollis lived quietly with his wife Felicity Costello (“Flick”) and their two sons in Wimbledon, declining all interviews, releasing no more records.As the critic Richard Williams wrote of Hollis at the time of his death, “he was one of the great originals of English music. Seven years later, Talk Talk founder Mark Hollis resurfaced with his debut solo album Mark Hollis (1998), only to disappear entirely and never release new music again. The transformation of this band over a relative few albums is unrivalled in terms of how much the sound and direction changed.

By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. It is diligent, sceptical when it needs to be, well reported, authoritative and written from the heart.After that, a seven year gap before his last work, a self titled solo effort originally intended to be a Talk Talk album titled Mountains of the Moon, and that was that – twenty years of silence was its only follow up.

The Lo-Fi recording quality, the rattle, and the distortion made it sound bruised as if it was a vessel in the process of shedding all excess weight – its protective shields burning up – until it finally escaped gravity and achieved weightlessness.He's written a brand new book detailing the life of the late great, and intensely private, Mark Hollis of Talk Talk.

It’s the expectation that must have been in existence at the turn of the century, the patriotism that must’ve existed at the start of the war and the disillusionment that must’ve come immediately afterwards. A Perfect Silence includes interviews with many people who worked closely with Mark and helps us get as close as possible to understanding the man who walked away from music (and public life) almost 25 years ago and never resurfaced. There are bass tracks that are made up of five different instruments with five or six different players…the genius is that it works at all. If there’s anyone here who hasn’t really done Talk Talk yet their 5 albums would be a great project.

Tracing Mark Hollis's life from earliest beginnings through his formative years, author Ben Wardle offers genuine insight into the creative forces which helped shape the sound and songs recorded by Talk Talk. Talk Talk would push their methods to radical heights to achieve this sonic and spiritual ascension. NME were particularly venomous, once describing him at an early gig as looking like a “nervous accountant who had stumbled onstage”. He achieved commercial success in the 1980s as the lead singer of Talk Talk, a synth pop/post-rock band.