Wonderful words by Balearic Mike.

This incredible record entered the world 35 years ago, in September 1988. 

Talk Talk – Spirit Of Eden – Parlophone 1988

September 1988 was a pretty seismic month in my life. I turned 18. A few days later I went on holiday to Paris with the person / artist now known as ‘Balearic Wife’ – my first ever holiday with a girlfriend! Upon our return we were both about to box up our young lives and move to the other end of the country to start our respective degrees at Brighton Poly and Winchester School of Art. 

I’d loved Talk Talk’s fabulous and completely Balearic-before-I’d-ever-heard-of-Balearic, The Colour Of Spring, but the follow-up, Spirt Of Eden almost certainly snuck out while I was in Paris having the time of my life, so it didn’t even register with me. I came across it sometime in the autumn or winter of 88 / 89 in one of the second hand record shops in Brighton’s North Laine. James Marsh cover art caused the album to jump out at me. It was cheap, and since I loved their previous record, as well as lots of their earlier singles, bought it. I was in for a bit of a surprise when I got it home though. 

I initially thought “What the fuck is this?” It certainly wasn’t The Colour Of Spring, although a few of that album’s tracks did nod toward this album’s direction. I hadn’t anything like it. Now I can see the connections, between jazz, classical, ambient, the more experimental end of progressive rock, and `70s German “kosmische”, but at that point in my life I was mainly unaware of those musical delights. The only music I had that inhabited a similar space was probably that of David Sylvian, but even he hadn’t gone quite this far yet. So, Spirit Of Eden got filed away in my record collection (already being organised alphabetically at this early stage – eternally the librarian), where it remained un-listened to for several years.

Talk Talk have, I think, one of the most interesting developmental arcs in pop music. Signed to EMI at around the same time as Duran Duran (EMI were obviously just signing bands whose names were repeated words at this point), their early albums were pretty good synth-pop / new-wave, and they found some success in the UK charts with both singles and albums. This success allowed a bigger budget for their third album, the aforementioned The Colour Of Spring, which meant that the synths were out, and a small army of guest musicians were invited to play on the record, creating a very different sound, and allowing band-leader Mark Hollis to incorporate some of the jazz and impressionist artists he cited as influences, such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Béla Bartók and Claude Debussy. A total of 16 musicians appeared on the album around the core of Hollis and Tim Friese-Greene, with hours of improvisation creating a much more live, more organic sound, and while still highly rhythmic, minimalist songs like April 5th, Chameleon Day, and the B-side It’s Getting Late In The Evening pointed toward the band’s future direction. 

The Colour of Spring became Talk Talk’s most successful album, selling over 2 million copies and prompting a major world tour. Some of the live footage from this, such as the set from the Montreux Jazz Festival, shows a band at the height of their powers.

Following this success, EMI gave Talk Talk an open budget for the recording of their next album. BIG MISTAKE GUYS! The band were given complete control over the recording process, with their manager and EMI executives being barred from the sessions, which began in 1987 at Wessex Studios, London and took about a year to complete. The sessions at Wessex could be described as ‘gruelling’, but not because of any cliched rock ‘n’ roll style excess; simply because of the band’s meticulous and intense level of commitment. Wessex was a converted church, and Talk Talk recorded for 9 months in almost total darkness, illuminated only by sound-triggered lighting around the drums, and an oil-wheel projector installed in the control room, creating a decidedly ‘psychedelic’ atmosphere in the studio. The band improvised, and recorded, and deleted, and improvised, and deleted, and recorded, over and over again, the same 6 songs. 

They were joined in the studio by The Chelmsford Cathedral Choir and what amounted to a floating 13-piece “chamber-rock ensemble” comprising of musicians like Danny Thompson on bass and Nigel Kennedy on violin. These guest musicians were given little direction, they were simply led to a studio, in darkness, and a track would be played down the headphones. Their contributions then may, or may not, be deleted. Despite my own bafflement upon hearing The Spirit Of Eden for the first time, its challenging nature didn’t prevent the album from garnering mostly positive reviews, although journalist Mark Cooper famously wrote “Talk Talk’s fourth LP is the kind of record which encourages marketing men to commit suicide.”  It also wasn’t a total commercial failure, reaching a respectable #19 in the UK album charts, but it signalled that the days of Talk Talk having hit singles and massive record sales was over.

I dug the LP out again sometime after starting work in Vinyl Exchange, encouraged by staff members, James and Matt’s enthusiasm. I was now in a place musically where I got it. I can’t really think of words that do it justice, so I’m just going to suggest that you listen to it, loud, alone, without distractions. Suffice to say that it pretty much invents the coming post-rock genre, and without it, Radiohead would probably have sounded very different.

What a beautiful, spellbinding, original, astonishing record.

For more from Balearic Mike you can find him on both Facebook and Instagram – @balearicmike. 

Mike has a Mixcloud page packed with magnificent, magical, music, and you can catch him live on 1BTN, from 12 noon until 2 (UK time) every 1st and 3rd Friday.

You can also check out the super silk screen prints of “Balearic Wife” over at @jo_lambert_print