Background:
Talk Talk were formed in 1981 and ‘hit the charts’ in 1981 and 1982. Lazily lumped into the New Romantic movement by virtue of them releasing singles, featuring synths, and being dragged by EMI’s AR man Keith Aspden into being the next Duran Duran. In fact Aspden teamed them with Colin Thurston who’s production roster at that time included Human League, Bowie and Duran Duran.

You may remember the press photos of the time, white box jackets and skinny ties. Mark Hollis hated it all, hated dominating synths (to me, they were at the Japan end of the New Romantic spectrum - there by a quirk of timing, and the odd wedge).

Mark was heavily influenced by his brother Ed Hollis, who managed Canvey Island’s Eddie and The Hot Rods - forming firstly the band The Reaction in ’77, writing a song called Talk Talk Talk Talk, rewritten again and reworked as Talk Talk on their 1982 debut album The Party’s Over. He was a punk, who later became avant garde.

Album Context (pre 1986 and up to):
In 1983 when their keyboard player Simon Brenner left, Hollis made no effort to replace him, they took the opportunity to take a year out, plot a new direction and with drummer Lee Harris, and bassist Paul Webb, he released the 1984 album It’s My Life (big singles were Such a Shame and It’s My Life). Donkey jackets, woolly hats, jeans, longer hair and ‘awkward videos’ helped to distance themselves from their past. Most importantly at this time they recruited Producer/Artist Tim Friese-Green and a host of session musicians such as Robbie McIntosh (McCartney and The Pretenders) and Morris Pert (Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel). The sound was markedly different, and it charted well across Europe, leading to their famous Montreux gig in 1986, featuring songs spanning that album and the next one.

The Colour of Spring:
What can I say about this album… Firstly it demands you to sit and listen to it, don’t have it on in the background, (though that does help when you can’t get past the more difficult songs/sounscapes on the first couple of spins). When the album has hooked you, then that’s when I urge you to sit and listen to it. Time well spent, I promise you.

It’s an album that bridges you from the earlier Talk Talk to the later revered albums titled Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock (plus the Solo Mark Hollis album). It educates you, and musicians were intrigued, and markedly so on Spirit of Eden.

It was started in 1984 and finished in January 1985 (pre-Spring). Spring, rebirth, love and spirituality are the main themes to me, and and via the inclusion of a song called April the 5th (titled in tribute to his wife’s birth date), this was the song that buried the old Talk Talk and set the direction of the albums that followed this one.

The players on this album include some of the former mentioned studio musicians, plus Steve Winwood, Alan Gorrie (Average White Band), Danny Thompson (Richard Thompson, John Martyn), with none of them doing the obvious stuff they are best known for. Hollis is famous for saying “Why play two notes when you can play one”.

This album is alive but spacious, and it is the spaces, the single note/drones, the way he uses his voice as an instrument that I have learnt to love. It is rewarding in that aspect. It sounds different on different plays, pastoral like Drake, mournfully driven like The Blue Nile.

Happy listening.