„Divorced from sunlight“
Success meant freedom. Hollis resolved to make an ambitious album that had “an absolute calm, but an absolute intensity inside of that”. Work began on Spirit Of Eden on May 11, 1987, in an atmosphere of sensory immersion. Neither the control room nor the live room of Studio 1 had windows. The sessions took place, according to Wessex’s chief engineer Stuart Stawman,
“divorced from sunlight”. The aim was to recreate the mood of a late-night Traffic session in late 1967. Phill Brown – who had actually worked on late-night Traffic sessions in 1967, which was why he got the job – recalls “an endlessly blacked-out studio, an oil projector in the control room, strobe lighting. Twelve hours a day in the dark listening to the same six songs for months. As the months went on, it became pretty intense.”
“There was an oppressive feeling a lot of the time,” says Wessex’s former maintenance engineer, Richard Hill. “When you walked into the control room, you were enveloped. You were ‘in’ something, an atmosphere, which at times was lovely – but it’s wearing when it feels like two in the morning all the time.” (Excerpt)
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In Another World, by Graeme Thomson, explores the full creative lifespan of Talk Talk and Mark Hollis while focusing on four remarkable records: The Colour of Spring, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, alongside Hollis’s eponymous solo album, released in 1998. The book critical analysis of the music, its recurring themes, prevailing moods, unique qualities and ever-growing influence, drawing on scores of in-depth interviews with original band members and many of the core group of musicians, producers and engineers who helped create the music, as well as record label executives, friends and admiring fellow artists
Graeme Thomson is no stranger to excellent music books and is the author Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush; Themes for Great Cities: A New History of Simple Minds; and Behind the Locked Door, the definitive biography of George Harrison.
Graeme Thomson’s In Another World : The Four Seasons of Talk Talk is published on 21st May by New Modern book