Customer Reviews

Missing Pieces

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The songs on this CD were obviously collecting the dust in the secret archives of Polydor, after they released "Laughing stock" and discovered that Mark Hollis and the crew can not be categorised as "pop music", and certainly not as high potential marketing product. Obviously some smart people decided to earn some money by adding three "new" tracks (they are not new, it's clear that they are all recorded during LS sessions, and in my humble opinion, the are not as good as already released songs from those sessions) and try to earn some money anyway. Real fans (including myself) will probably buy it anyway, so at the end of the day we can say that this complete marketing swindle worked well(at least in my case), because "Missing Pieces" is not the real enrichment in my music collection. Four songs can be found on LS, and the missing pieces we can certainly affort to miss (it doesn't suprise me they were "undiscovered" for almost ten years), so this CD should be better called LS revisited.

It's quite interesting to hear the edited versions and alternative takes of the LAUGHING STOCK selections. Even in their shorter and variously edited versions, they still sound quite amazing. Mark Hollis's songwriting is tremendous and Lee Harris's drumming is quite effective. The instrumental B-Sides are nice cut-and-pastings of various selections. The odd piece is "Piano," recorded by Mark Hollis for the Allison/Brown's AVI release. It's quite long, and save for moments that resemble the works of Erik Satie and Arvo Part, it goes mostly nowhere. (How's that for a veiled compliment?) Still, it's quite a worthwhile collection of their later work (and hopefully the last one I'll have to buy for a while).

I am a long time fan of the band, and just got this CD to be complete with Talk Talk in the music library. (Thanks to the previous reviewer here of this item). Initially this is a let-down because there's not much new at all. The instrumental B-side 'Stump' is interesting, and if not totally then just less than .... original. The B-side "5:09' is a composite of instrumental parts from 'Taphead' and 'New Grass' with part of the long dual-sax solo from Laughing Stock's 'After the Flood' spliced-in with dubiously successful mix-editing. Three tracks here are virtually just as they are on Laughing Stock. The rest display a rougher sense for composition. Well, listening to this may grow on me. But besides the concept of this being an assembly - I suppose due to lack of any liner notes on this CD issue - of the (3) Polydor singles as they originally appeared a decade before, this CD barely holds itself together.

I love TALK TALK,but i must say this cd is lame.I can't believe the asking price for a throw some songs out there cd.The cd should stay missing.

Talk Talk's final three albums, The Colour of Spring, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, show a band moving from the worst kind of 1980s pop totally unsuited to the voice of Mark Hollis to a dark, but deeply passionate sound that was completely different from anything around in the 1980s but was later to influence the whole underground musical scene from the staccato hard rock of Don Caballero to the austere mystical folk-rock of Spires That in the Sunset Rise.

However, any effort to track down more material than Talk Talk recorded for Laughing Stock is shown by "Missing Pieces" to be the most futile exercise in promotion. Five of the seven tracks here are the same as songs on "Laughing Stock". There are no re-mixes or alternate takes or demo versions that would have been very interesting if Hollis, Friese-Greene and Harris would accept their release. The other two songs are a strange and unimpressive collage of songs form the album and an instrumental titled "Piano" that shows where Mark Hollis would go on his overrated solo album.

Despite is pointlessness, "Missing Pieces" can still be given three stars for having one of very best songs of the nineties in "Ascension Day", whose wonder does not dim with age and less frequent hearing. "Myrrhman", the B-side of that single, is also impressive, but what might be a masterful recording by itself is rendered both disappointing (by its "bonus" tracks) and pointless.