TALK TALK

Rip It Up, Issue 69, 1 April 1983, Page 6

TALK TALK

George Kay

A London four piece formed around singersongwriter Mark Hollis (younger brother of producer Ed check out those Eddie and the Hot Rods records), Talk Talk

have, it seems, emerged clutching the coat-tails of the Duran Duran-Human League synth dance movement. Their breaks, as Hollis explains from London have come easy:

"I've never been in any bands before. I went into Island Music, who's our publishing company, with the sole purpose of recording a few songs and during that week I assembled a band to play the songs. I concluded a publishing deal and we used that money to subsidise us for the six months during which we arranged the songs before we went out and played. We were very methodical and luckily for us after three gigs we did a Radio One session and because of that two gigs later we signed our record deal." Easy, no truckin' no dues paying, but what's this about the band having no guitarist? "The idea of that was to enable us to work along the same lines as a small jazz unit so that the rhy-

thm section could be rhythmic and melodic and the keyboards would backdrop the sound and the vocal could, to some extent, assume the same role as saxophone could in terms of Coltrane. So the lyrics would have to be phonetically important as well as lyrical." Ambitious stuff for a band who have been compared to no lesser mortals than Duran Duran. Are those comparisons fair? There is a tendency to categorise everything. I can't see the comparisons as we're very different lyrically and in mood. The only similarities are that we're both contemporary English bands and a reasonable amount of material evolves around dance music rhythms.' Does he like Duran Duran?

"Yeah, I think they're a really good band in terms of what they; do." '•' Talk Talk have also been accused of being soporific and superficial in their approach. Response? "I just think that's totally ab- : surd. The amount of care and time * I put into writing lyrics and the amount of involvement I put into the band you've no idea. I've no opinion about that whatsoever except that they're wrong." The Party's Over is no great shakes but it does have its moments of melodic appeal, the title ' track and 'Hate' in particular. Hollis is happy with the album: "It showed us at that stage. Musically I admire people like Bowie because of his progression

and change and so in terms of our second album which we're in the midst of recording now, I feel we're achieving that. Half of our new material is geared from a piano basis and then we add synths and other things. I certainly don't want to make a carbon copy of the first album and that's why we have Rhett Davies producing and also because I've admired his work with Roxy Music, 852 s and Dire Straits." Any immediately available new material? "We have a new single, 'My Foolish Friend', produced by Rhett Davies which is in the charts at 58 this week. It's on the way up hopefully."