I've just moved house and while I'm unboxing my records and CDs I'm discovering quite a few things I'd forgotten about. Here's two I've been playing a lot of over the last week that seem to suit the drab, fag-end of the year.
Mark Hollis – Mark Hollis / Polydor / 1998 /
Reissued
Solo swansong of now retired Talk Talk man Mark Hollis. Where
Spirit Of Eden and
Laughing Stock were cut from hours of improvisation and tape manipulation, this is almost the opposite being scored beforehand and a really straightforward recording using two Neumann M49 microphones that remained untouched throughout the sessions. Entirely acoustic and at times barely there, it has an intimate, ageless sound that I think stands up well and is in many ways close to the EA ethic, the deadened snares sound particularly good and every squeak captured as a musician shifts in his seat is made to seem like an integral part of the song. It wanders a little into abstraction at times and sometimes sounds a little like the Morton Feldman Jazz Quintet but it's a superb and beautifully quiet album. I'd recommend anyone to have a listen.
Luciano Cilio - Dell'Universo Assente / Die Schachtel / 2004 /
In print
Treading a similar path in sparse, Feldman-ish forms this collection from 2004 heralded the rediscovery of Luciano Cilio who sadly committed suicide in 1983. His small output consists of very personal, exquisitely arranged pieces and some experiments into long, sustained sounds that wouldn't sound out of place next to some of the more mournful, introspective tracks on the first This Heat LP.
"these recordings sound as they feel self contained, introspective, and determined, you can feel in the music a sort of necessity that can be rarely found, as in bill fay's "time of the last persecution", or in nick drake's "pink moon": this enormous weight that is bearing on it's creators, the absolute need to exorcize it from their lives, a moment in time where you are invited to hear artists truly in contact with their existence. luciano cilio holds that moment in time, an authentic emotional testament, something to be cherished" - Jim O'Rourke
