As far as I know, I’m the only musician in the world who can’t stand music documentaries. It’s nothing personal; I just think they tend to be painfully predictable.

A typical music doc starts with an outline of the band’s edgier, pub-rat origins. Then they their TOTP moment, at which point egos begin to flare. Once they inevitably exhaust their creative juices, someone leaves the band (it’s always the drummer), and things quickly fall apart. Quick recap of the singer’s ill-fated solo career. A few testimonials from the former members, now gray-haired, out of touch, and highly irritable. End with a clip from their reunion: a disappointing midday slot at Coachella, performed to an audience of confused millennials.

In the end, I think that part of what makes certain artists so iconic is their ability to preserve their mythology - that essential air of mystery. Ever noticed how Bowie was the epitome of cool until he went through that “relatable” phase in the early naughts? It was like somebody brainwashed Ziggy Stardust into becoming a respectable, upstanding citizen, one of non-intergalactic origin. A Clockwork Orange comes to mind.

Anyways, I just finished watching In a Silent Way, the story of Talk Talk’s avant-garde masterpiece Spirit of Eden, which I loved, because it really just added to the album’s mystique, rather than be exploitative in any way. If you think you aren’t familiar with Talk Talk, you definitely are. This track will jog your memory, it’s a new wave staple:

It’s fun, but not exactly my cup of tea. But, in the span of four years, they went from sounding like that to sounding like this:

After being given complete creative control by their label following the commercial success of their earlier work, the band was ready to go full Pet Sounds. Chief songwriter Mark Hollis’ gradual metamorphosis into a Brian Wilson-level auteur was nearly complete; he just needed his wrecking crew.

Sixteen players were hired for the band album’s six tracks, each with a different musical background, some wielding instruments with names almost as strange as their timbre (see: shozgyz, cor anglais, mexican bassoon). The sessions were strictly improvisational, with the band urged to place extra emphasis on silence. Such is the philosophy of Mark Hollis:

"The last thing I would ever want to do is intellectualize music because that's never been what it's about for me. Nothing has changed from the ethic of the last album and I would never want that to change because I can't see any way of improving upon that process. As before, silence is the most important thing you have, one note is better than two, spirit is everything, and technique, although it has a degree of importance, is always secondary."

For an album rumored to have been recorded in complete darkness, the light inherent in Spirit of Eden is almost blinding at times. That being said, some of the album’s most hushed moments are also its loudest. Each track weaves seamlessly into the next, as if conceived of as one long, amorphous jam. Certain motifs might reappear from time to time, but overall, the sonic landscape is always changing, the sands always shifting. Even listening back to it now, I’m hearing new sounds and textures that I could swear weren’t there before; it’s a little bit voodoo in that regard. —Jackson Todd