The beauty of Mark Hollis – the album

Set the Scene – it is a Wednesday afternoon, Itunes/headphones/office/Nokia manual to write.. bliss hmm

All was proceding well, there was a bit of glen hansard and marketa irglova playing away, then there was the joyful bing of an e-mail to tell me that i had a fax at reception. I wondered whether to not reply, as this would have entailed them calling me about the e-mail about the fax, but decided that the exercise would be beneficial… I came back and on ITunes Mark Hollis was playing the track “Inside looking out”from his one and only album, Mark Hollis.

I am not a Mark Hollis expert, but here goes. He used to be in Talk Talk, his brother is the Eddie of Eddie and the hot rods! erm thats about as far as i go… Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden, Colour of Spring and Laughing Stock contain some of my favourite pieces of music. He released his solo album a couple of years after the demise of talk talk.  I bought it and immediately the sparse stretched melodies and instrumentation just caught something magical and unique.

I and iTunes shuffle had forgotten about this for some time and then this afternoon it came on… It is such a stunning vivid piece of work.. It shouldn’t lift your spirits the way it does…Sadly i just checked up on Amazon and it is going new for £2.98!!! methinks an early christmas shop might need to be done, this album needs inflicting on others.

Anyway back to the Nokia manual ho hum.

Next week i shall talk about John Martyn’s Inside out.