Friday, July 15, 2011


Talk Talk Series, #14: Allinson / Brown- A V I (1998) MP3 & FLAC


Before his legendary work on Talk Talk's two enduring masterpieces, Spirit of Eden  and Laughing Stock, as well as Mark Hollis' eponymous solo album, Phill Brown had enjoyed a long and storied career as a studio engineer and producer, working with the likes of The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Traffic, Bob Marley, and Roxy Music, to name but a few. While Brown's background suggested a fine rock-music pedigree, the nature of his work with Hollis was quite different. By the time of their first collaboration on Spirit of Eden, Talk Talk had relinquished any interest in traditional song structure, and Hollis' focus in particular had evolved from complex yet conventional sound layering methods to attempting a free association technique, which he described as "sound collage," where organically recorded sound fragments are woven, during the editing process, into a sonic whole-cloth.  This approach would eventually inform Paul Webb and Lee Harris' .O.Rang project as well as Phill Brown's post-Talk Talk collaboration with visual artist Dave Allinson on a brilliant piece of ambient minimalism called A V I. Half of this album's four tracks are devoted to a two-part composition bearing the album's title that was originally conceived as an accompaniment to a video installation . "A V I- Pt. I" is a nearly twenty-minute sound scape, which bears no trace of song structure or any recognizable pop elements and manages to capture much of the same ambiance that made Brown's work with Talk Talk so distinctive. Combining eerie atmospherics with a diversity of organic ambient sounds, the piece is a stunningly elegant journey into the beauty of sounds untethered to formal structure yet somehow still suggesting movement through a composed space. Quite jarringly at first, "A V I- Pt. II" is built around a sumptuously bass-driven rhythmic pattern that, while offering a more structured feel than Pt. I, is just as evocative of the beauty inherent in individual sounds themselves. Another memorable contribution is "Piano" written and performed by Mark Hollis (credited here as John Cope). The best way to describe this lovely, elegiac composition for solo piano is to quote the man himself: "Before you play two notes, learn how to play one note- and don't play one note unless you've got a reason to play it." While many discuss A V I  in terms of the fine line it walks between musicality and fragmented atonality, part of what makes the album so singular and worth revisiting regularly is the way it does manage to be consistently engaging in a musical sense. Fragile, a tad ephemeral, but never less than profound, A V I  is an obscure gem to be sure.

A V I   
(Resurgence ~ 1998)

Tracklist-
1. A V I- Pt. I  (19:25)
2. A V I- Pt. II  (10:09)
3. Piano  (14:31)
4. Steel  (7:26)


21 comments:

  1. Voix, I'm surprised that no-one has seen fit to post gratitude or appreciation for this exceedingly rare masterpiece. Perhaps they just don't get it, or maybe its just one step too far.
    True, it's one of those works that takes a concerted effort to successfully immerse oneself, but that does bring rewards.
    As a missing piece(no pun) of Talk Talk this is simply a must have. Phil Brown worked on the last 2 TT albums and Hollis's solo album; could there ever be a greater reason to d/l anything?

    Funny thing with art, anyone can appreciate the influence of negative space to an image, its so easy! The contribution of silence to a musical work; now that is something quite, quite different.

    Michael2

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  2. Michael, I was a little disappointed at the lack of comments too, but overall commenting seems to be a little less frequent these days for some reason. Maybe it's because everyone is on summer holiday or something. This is such a beautiful album; I only wish they had released a part two, which, from what I read, was the original plan. Good to hear from you :)

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  3. utterly fantastic. thank you so much!

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  4. Anon. my pleasure. This one's a hidden gem for sure!

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  5. Been downloading the FLAC file for about 4hrs now.

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  6. Worked 2nd time of asking. Sorry, I should've tried again before commenting.

    Cheers.

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  7. Anon., very glad it worked for you. enjoy!

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  8. thankyou so much for this

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  9. First of all, THANK YOU for posting this, been looking forward to hearing it for ages. But strangely, the download seems to freeze at 6.2mB every time... I've tried it a dozen times now from several different computers. No problem downloading any of the other files. Any chance of re-upping this one? I have a feeling there's something amiss with the MU's copy of the file.

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  10. Stump, yes, of course. Give me a day or so and check again

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  11. Stump, I've added a new FLAC link, which should work for you

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  12. Got it! Thanks so much! Now to give it a good listen...

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  13. stump, I'm very glad it worked. Enjoy, it is wonderful music

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  14. The green youth, try the link later or again tomorrow. Megaupload does this on occasion. It will come back

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  15. brilliant, thank you. I am also listening to Julianna Barwick as I write this note. I see you mention Destroyer. Any chance of flacs? ... but John Cope / Mark Hollis - sensational.

    best for 2012,

    sww

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  16. Can you put it up somewhere other than Megaupload (may they rest in peace) on account of their demise?

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  17. Wow, I had no idea this existed. I would love to see this re-upped elsewhere.

    Thanks for a well put together series!

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  19. The link doesn't work anymore. The link is dead. Would you repost the album?

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