Talk Talk - Laughing Stock
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.09 You Save: $7.85 (66%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Laughing Stock
Free Music Review: After the Flood, before the Apocolypse.
Hit: 5 Stars
This is not early 80's style synth pop.This is not Saturday night party music.
This also is a collaberative effort, not just a Mark Hollis credit.
Appearantly the studio scenario was of darkness, covered windows, no clocks, only burning candles and twisting lights.
What is this music?
It is organic as well as electric with both growling and shimmering moments.
16 seconds of tape hiss and airy tremelo amp wave open this album of depth, introspection, spirit, death and birth.
The instruments are played, recorded and arranged with care and detail, yet still sounds completly improvised.
Acoustic bass, violas, harmonica, horns, reeds, guitars that are sometimes gentle other times slashing, odd-meter drum/cymbal rhythms, electric organs that beep, burp, churn, growl, sink and soar.
Oh yes, the voice/lyrics of Mark Hollis: gentle, aggessive, fragile, desolate, damning and healing. Hauntingly beautiful.
You may very well be moved by this masterwork, your (girl)friend may find it interesting but don't expect them to understand and relate to the depth and timeless aura that exists on this recording as well as in yourself.
If you really enjoy this then the next step is the self titled Mark Hollis album which is unguarded, acoustic, sparse, pure and
perhaps the most timeless recording I've ever heard.
Free Music Review: Part two of Spirit of Eden
Hit: 5 Stars
The only complaint i could really aim at this swansong epic from Talk Talk is that it really breaks no new ground from Spirit of Eden- i find no real difference in tones sound etc. But ofcourse it is more a continuation or another part of that album. Most of the same guest musicians show up for this dark downtempo album- and the recording sounds nearly identical production wise and trackwise to Spirit of Eden. Still the fact remains these are two of the best minimal postrock art jazz whatever you want to call it recordings from the last 30 years. This was a band miles ahead of the pack that helped influence Portishead and Radioheads better moments. Its part ambient acoustic- very spacey and minimal before erupting into slowchurning bursts of almost triphop styled jazz. Some of the material foreshadows U2s achtung baby's darker slower tunes - the drums no doubt you will notice sound like that albums drums. I mention this only in sound - not to say TAlk Talk sounds like u2 or vice versa. The songs on L-Stock are long- far from pop verse chorus stylings and are completely uncommercial. This is music for musics sake and makes the new wave of Talk Talks' early career seem a bad distant memory. No band ever redeemed themselves so late in their career as well as TAlk TAlk. Not having both these albums is almost unforgivable for a music lover.Free Music Review: You haven't heard MUSIC until you've heard this album !
Hit: 5 Stars
It's a big statement I know, but Talk Talk's last three albums are landmarks in modern music. From their new romantic beginnings ( and they were very good at it ) this album see's a band charting their own course with no room for passengers.
Certain songs on " It's My Life " from 1984 pointed towards a change in direct ( especially with the track " Renee " ), but it wasn't until the 1986 album " The Colour of Spring " that we really saw the band spreading it's wings. Following with " Spirit of Eden " ( close to the greatest album of the 80's ), the band were really in full voice. The final album " Laughing Stock " leaves where Spirit left off, but the great thing about all three albums, is that there is still a faint thread of a pop song in them all. These albums need and deserve repeated listenings, as there is so much depth and colour to the music. There are few bands in the 80's that pushed the envelope as hard as this !
Mark Hollis sounds like a wounded man, Lee Harris's drumming is hypnotic and Paul Webb's melodic textural bass playing was exactly that......a web that spins and spirals around you. Webb had departed after Spirit of Eden, and was admirally replaced by the amazing Danny Thompson. I implore you to discover this album, and go back to the previous two....you won't be disappointed !
Free Music Review: Dignified closure
Hit: 5 Stars
It's not easy, not to say contradictory in terms to write a review of this album. Beeing alongside its predecessor one of the eight, ten albums that definitely have had the most influence on me, since i've listened to them probably close to, if not more than a thousand times each.
On Party's over you might find some similarities with contemprary bands such as the human league or duran duran, but in my opinion they took off already at It's my life. We all know the story of how Mark Hollis just kept expanding the orchestra as his records made big hits, and i heard him say in an interview that on Spirit of Eden, he finally arrived where was heading on the preious three albums, so the choice was to disband, or experiment. He chose the latter, and Laughing stock are the fruits of that decision. If you count, the "verses" on Asecension day are cut by one bar each (10-9-8...), a trick Hollis only informed some of the musicians about, cauising other to be on a backbeat on some of the verses. The record is full of it, the "solo" on After the flood is TIm Firese Greene walking along the studio floor, stumling upon an electric guitar wired-up at ten on a Marshall amp, causing a wall of feedback.
So, yes, it's not a complete and ultimately subtle record as Spirit of Eden, but it offers years and years of delightful musical safari.
Free Music Review: A melancholy angel, yearning for a loved one back on Earth..
Hit: 5 Stars
would listen to this album in heaven. Talk Talk's Laughing Stock is a completely unclassifiable bit of sonic brilliance. Biased? Perhaps, but only due to the fact that I've listened to the album. The songs are tied together by Mark Hollis's wonderfully fragile voice. Silence plays a major roles in songs such as Runeii, while Ascension Day ends with a loud wall of sound only to collapse into the hushed intro of After the Flood. Even with noisy shots of distortion injected into songs, there is a content, Zen-like calm feel to the album. While oftentimes Laughing Stock could be classified as ambient, the music is liquid, twisting and changing constantly. It is by no means accessible, expect no instant gratification, but a focused listener will find that once you hear this album, your life is changed. With an album like this, you won't need to buy anything else for months. This is the sort of album to play at night, staring into the dark, with nothing in mind but the music. A major touchstone for the 90's post rock bands, anyone that considers themselves fans of experimental music owes it to themselves to listen to this album.