Mark Hollis: A Perfect Silence

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Everything begins with Hollis’ older brother, Ed Hollis – a Dj, producer, manager, and manic inspirator. Talk Talk would push their methods to radical heights to achieve this sonic and spiritual ascension. Yet over the years, Hollis, working in intense and rewarding collaboration with Friese-Greene, confounded his critics – as well as EMI, with whom he was often mired in bitter legal disputes – by going entirely his own way.

Outside of Britain they had more success, notably in Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands following the release of their second album in 1984. For the first time A Perfect Silence explains the realities and explodes the myths surrounding Hollis and Talk Talk's career, and in doing so reveals the working patterns, sense of humour and desire for privacy of the man himself. Mark Hollis was always something of an enigmatic, reclusive figure right up to his untimely passing in 2019, but boy did he produce some great music once he hit his stride. The fact that Talk Talk started as a New Wave band and opened for Duran Duran on tour was more a case of mismarketing than an expression of intent by the band. He takes his subject as far as it can possibly go with all the resources available and the result is well balanced He debunks the myths and disproves old falsehoods, but all this only seems to add to Hollis’ complexity and heighten his allure.Silence was always the end journey for Mark Hollis and Talk Talk: silence was the final step on their evolutionary ladder. The book begins, predictably, at the beginning, with the parents, the Essex childhood, the year spent studying child psychology at Sussex University where Hollis met Flick, and so on. I’m tempted, but hesitent because I’m too flighty and would probably lose interest (or forget) before I got to the end. Talk Talk may be the visionary sound of one extraordinary mind, but it came about through collective effort – the sounds didn’t come from Hollis, and Hollis couldn’t create it alone.

We learn Mark was into golf and motorcycles, but never strayed from that fiercely independent streak. The transformation of this band over a relative few albums is unrivalled in terms of how much the sound and direction changed.At the base of it all, he had a really gentle, kind, sweet character, but was capable of great cruelty and ignorance at the same time,” one long-time collaborator said. He has written several books, and contributed features to publications including The Guardian, and The Word. For the first time A Perfect Silence explains the realities and explodes the myths surrounding Hollis and Talk Talk's career, and in doing so reveals the working patterns, sense of humour and desire for privacy of the man himself. Today, beyond the records, beyond the music, the rest is silence – or at least that is how Mark Hollis would have wished it, and his wife and sons seem determined to honour his legacy by saying nothing and keeping the door to the walled garden firmly locked. Indeed, Phill Brown likened Hollis’s unforgiving standards to attempting to “bottle the spirit of improvised magic”.