Saddened to hear this news. Talk Talk remain a favourite band.
So sad. I waited years for him to release another solo album which I guess has been in vain. Not so keen on the early poppy stuff but the last three TT albums plus his eponymous debut are simply sublime. What a voice and stunning composition.
Stu
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I listened to his solo album for the first time earlier today (on Spotify) and loved it. The CD should be here shortly.
The Colour of Spring is one of my all time favourites; that kicked off my Talk Talk marathon this morning.
RIP Mark, a huge talent, greatly missed.
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Sonically The Colour of Spring is fantastic one of my reference LPs.
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Hi Gianluigi, I couldn’t have said it any better.
Just played The Colour of Spring, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock to commemorate Mark Hollis’ passing away.
All of them are superb albums and Spirit of Eden is one of my all time favourites.
Brown_Owl, I almost agree with the Radiohead comparison. I don’t think they could have made their albums from Kid A onwards without hearing Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock first. I don’t know about Elbow as I don’t have any of their music, but according to Mark Hollis’ obituary on the BBC website, Spirit of Eden is Guy Garvey’s favourite album.
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A case where less is more, a real shame and sad news
Very sad news, was only listening to his latest solo album the other day, and love Talk Talks work.
I am a member of a Classic Car Club and was chatting to another member who was talking about music and said something along the lines of “I ride in a motorbike club often around Europe and one of the chaps I ride with reckons that in music, less is more”. I agreed citing Mark Hollis and Talk Talk.
The other chaps eyes opened wide and said “it was Mark Hollis who told me!”
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Saddest passing of recent years. Extraordinary legacy. Time to replay some legendary albums and give thanks.
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There’s a rather lovely in memorandum piece over on Pitchfork, also collected social media tributes too - the moving Instagram post by Robin Pecknold especially caught my attention…
What I find just incredible about Mark Hollis is that he was able to evaporate after his solo album apart from some minor involvement on a Petra Haden album and 90 seconds of incidental music for a Kelsey Grammar project.
All reports of his death from people who knew him well were all hearsay, even Paul Webb hadn’t seen him for 10 years.
You got to hand it to the guy to just completely walk away from it all takes some determination. Phill Brown’s (Engineer on latter Talk Talk albums) book gives a good insight in Mark Hollis and well worth a read.
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An absolutely fascinating insight into the mind of a genius.
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Very sad news about Mark Hollis.
Colour Of Spring is one of my favourite all time albums with the added bonus that it sounds so absolutely wonderful it is used as one of my of my system testers.
I must confess that although I own Spirit Of Eden I’ve never really listened to it. I remember anticipating it’s arrival and buying it on the day of release but I think I dismissed it because it was just so different to Colour Of Spring. I probably wanted Colour Of Spring 2 and at the time I just didn’t get it.
Such a shame that it’s taken his passing to make me revisit such a stunning piece of work.
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Have a listen to Laughing Stock too Steve.
Stu
I will Stu.
I ordered Laughing Stock last week, the only gap in my Talk Talk collection. Sadly not on vinyl though.
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