• Classic Album: Talk Talk – Spirit Of Eden

    Mark Hollis sits alone in his front room. He is tall, shaggy haired and slightly stooped. Frameless glasses are perched on the tip of his long nose as he flicks through a library hardback on the workings of the inner ear. In the corner of the room is a piano draped in grey oil cloth. It resembles a stunted pygmy elephant with unnaturally dainty feet. The piano is covered with books and the books are covered with dust. Hollis hasn’t played it in years, in decades. Not since he perfected music, in fact. Not since he finished it. Mark Hollis…

  • The Horrors – Luminous

    It’s safe to say most of us are probably glad The Horrors have, over time, evolved towards the more psychedelic end of the spectrum of nonchalance. Looking back to their 2007 album Strange House, it’s as though they are a completely different band. What we see now is a fully developed group without the trappings of their earlier (one would hope) record-label-enforced Goth gimmickry. Their career is almost a reflection of the transition from one’s adolescence to one’s mid-twenties (or am I projecting?). Strange House was full of blatant attitude, angst, hair-dye and eyeliner; and if you listen carefully, amid…