Episode Ep 904 May 4, 2026 45 min 14s

Talk Talk, a deep-dive tale of mystery and imagination

From Word In Your Ear Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold

Talk Talk made just five albums, all written and recorded unconventionally and no-one’s entirely sure how they did it. And in the last two decades of his life Mark Hollis released only 92 seconds of music. Lifelong admirer Graeme Thomson explores the band’s endless mysteries in his memoir ‘In Another World: the Four Seasons of Talk Talk’, and looks back here at the last hurrah of the days of studio extravagance, which includes …

… why Traffic in 1967 was the Mark Hollis Holy Grail

… “25 per cent of him never appeared above the surface”

… the Talk Talk ‘human sampling’ method – eg a few seconds of Danny Thompson, Steve Gadd or Larry Klein woven into the mix

… “music made with the blindfold on”

… the ‘80s press reaction to Mark’s eulogies about Miles Davis, Stockhausen and Shostakovich

… where you can hear Talk Talk in the music of Kate Bush

… making records the way Kubrick made films

… head music: how Spirit of Eden suits the rebirth of headphones

… band lynchpin Tim Friese-Greene, producer of the Lion Sleeps Tonight!

… what unlimited time and choice does to a studio bill

… and the 92 seconds of music he made for the Kelsey Grammer TV series Boss.

Order ‘In Another World: the Four Seasons of Talk Talk’ here: https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/In-Another-World/Graeme-Thomson/9781917923613