A new song inspired by Talk Talk / original music
I came across Talk Talk a long time ago. I was working as a DJ at a local club and I would do 'theme parties'. It's fun to do theme parties because people like them so it's always crowded and everybody has a great time. I would do the 60's, the 70's and mostly the 80's because the 80's continue to be extremely popular today. People just seem to love the 80's sound and it kind of feels the 80's are back in the mainstream music done today. Anyway, for every theme party, I would have to find hours worth of music from a certain decade so I would browse countless lists of ''bands from the XY'' to make a fun selection. When I was reviewing the 80's, I came across Talk Talk. I checked them out and they sounded like every other 80's band. Their first album ''The Party's Over'' had a few smash hits. The single ''Today'' was in the TOP20 in the UK. The next album ''It's My Life'' was also in the charts with hits like ''Such a Shame'' and the album ''Colours of Spring'' (1986.) went on to becoming their best selling album. I was sort of familiar with that album because of the single ''Life's What You Make It'', later covered by one of my favorites, Rowland S. Howard on the album ''Pop Crimes''.
(first album)
(Life's What You Make It by Talk Talk)
(a cover by Rowland S. Howard)
After I stopped being a DJ, I forgot about Talk Talk. I just kind of moved on to listening to different kinds of music and it never even crossed my mind that Talk Talk had two more albums, ''Spirit of Eden'' (1988) and ''Laughing Stock'' (1991). A few months ago, my bandmate came by the house to pick up some stuff. At some point, we started to talk about what we listen to at the moment and he mentioned Talk Talk. I was unimpresed to say the least, but then he played ''The Spirit of Eden''. My mind was blown away. The music coming out of the speakers was so perfect, it was hard to imagine it was Talk Talk. What I didn't know was that Talk Talk decided to go experimental in 1987. resulting in the album in 1988. They were tired of the 80's pop sound and wanted to do something different. The band set up a session and recorded a few hours of impro music which was later assembled into songs. The album wasn't a commercial hit but it was praised by the critics. They went on to do another one, as good as the first, and then they stopped playing.
(this blew my mind)
(and this is their last album)
The atmosphere of those two albums is amazing. It's so dark and resigned, and yet it has this ''everything will be OK in the end'' feeling to it. I just couldn't get enough of the production - the guitars, the drums, the samples.. It was all beautifully done. The vocals are so fragile it feels as if the singer sings thru tears. The dynamic of the playing is also otherwordly. What I liked the most was the overall ''cool'' of the music. Whatever they do - they sound cool. The songs are long and experimental with minimal groove and structurebut they are just cool all the time. Since I was listening to the album on a daily bases, I wanted to try and make something equaly cool. I wanted to make a song that felt groovy but smooth. It was important to me to make the vocals fragile and the lyrics harsh but keep the music cool at all times. Of course, the idea was not to copy Talk Talk, the idea was simply to try and use their principals in compositions and production for something of my own. I made this simple MIDI drum loop and recorded some atmospheric acoustic guitars. Then I picked up my SG and played this really dirty, sexy blues kind of thing on top of it all. I added some jazz drums to the MIDI beat (it was a crazy idea, but it worked) and wrote the lyrics. The meaning of the lyrics doesn't really fit the way they are sang but that's the beauty of it. For some reason, the first thing that came to my mind when I played the song was the sentence Welcome to the days of destruction so I worked around that. The production of the vocals is also in a disonance with the rest of the song. I wanted the vocals to feel like they were sung by an alternative version of Chet Baker. Chet always feels like he's whispering to your ear, the vocals are really quite but way up frnt. So I tried to mimic that but also put tons of distortion on them to make them an ''alternative Chet Baker from the future''. Here's the result:
P.S. - HELP NEEDED: I'm trying to log into Dsound with my Steemit username and my private posting key, but I keep getting this error CANNOT RED PROPERTY 'POSTING' OF UNDEFINED. I tried to google the problem but all I could find was something to do with Java or HTML or things I don't really understand. If any of you know how to fix it, please, leave a comment.
This post has been voted on from MSP3K courtesy of @isaria from the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ).
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Interesting approach in your creation. You know, you write about maybe my most favourite bands, and Spirit of Eden is by far their best work, ok ok, their other works is also very good, but I like the lesser standard styles and their approach to experimental, simple fantastic.
So how can you not love 80' music :-). I had a similar problem logging in at Dsound at first, then I used the wrong key, and the key that is displayed in your wallet is encrypted, you need to hit the SHOW KEY button (and then it changes) and that is the key to paste into the password field. Good Luck!
I never said I don't like the 8'0's ;)
Yeah, I tried that, still doesn't work :(
As usual, really great background, and a fun song, as well. I really like how you took the aesthetic from Talk Talk and added some--menace, I guess? There's a grungy world-weariness to your song that sounds more like you than them, and that's a welcome touch. I think it might be the vocal production that does it for me--sort of the feeling of the man who's seen it all, sipping his beer in the corner, while the band plays on, and there's a fight at the bar.
Excellent post, as always.
Hahahaha, I think you guessed it! Thank you! :D
Awesome! Good luck with your dsound issue.
Thanks to @randomwanderings, this post was resteemed and highlighted in today's edition of The Daily Sneak.
Thank you for your efforts to create quality content!
Thank you!