All was proceding well, there was a bit of glen hansard and marketa irglova playing away, then there was the joyful bing of an e-mail to tell me that i had a fax at reception. I wondered whether to not reply, as this would have entailed them calling me about the e-mail about the fax, but decided that the exercise would be beneficial... I came back and on ITunes Mark Hollis was playing the track "Inside looking out"from his one and only album, Mark Hollis.

I am not a Mark Hollis expert, but here goes. He used to be in Talk Talk, his brother is the Eddie of Eddie and the hot rods! erm thats about as far as i go... Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden, Colour of Spring and Laughing Stock contain some of my favourite pieces of music. He released his solo album a couple of years after the demise of talk talk.  I bought it and immediately the sparse stretched melodies and instrumentation just caught something magical and unique.

I and iTunes shuffle had forgotten about this for some time and then this afternoon it came on... It is such a stunning vivid piece of work.. It shouldn't lift your spirits the way it does...Sadly i just checked up on Amazon and it is going new for £2.98!!! methinks an early christmas shop might need to be done, this album needs inflicting on others.

Anyway back to the Nokia manual ho hum.

Next week i shall talk about John Martyn's Inside out.

So some scattered links and observations for now:

• Edward Lengel's remarkable Washington Post piece about America's World War I veterans -- and how that war experience generally has been erased or reduced in terms of the public consciousness about veterans in general -- is well worth a read on this day. To quote briefly from it:
  

  The war's last and greatest battle involving U.S. soldiers, fought in the Meuse-Argonne region of eastern France during the autumn of 1918, sucked in more than 1 million U.S. troops and hundreds of airplanes and tanks. Artillery batteries commanded by men such as the young Harry S. Truman fired more than 4 million shells -- more than the Union Army fired during the entire Civil War. More than 26,000 doughboys were killed and almost 100,000 wounded, making the clash probably the bloodiest single battle in U.S. history. But as far as the American public was concerned, it might as well never have taken place. "Veterans said to me in their speeches and in private that the American people did not know anything about the Meuse-Argonne battle," Brig. Gen. Dennis Nolan wrote years later. "I have never understood why."

• Randomly thinking about this piece led me to dig up a four part series of posts on World War I as considered in various examples of the popular imagination I did for Freaky Trigger back in 2004, "Anthems." Enjoyable enough still, I suppose, and they might be of interest on the day:

  Part 1 (on the book Tommy by Richard Holmes)
  Part 2 (on the original movie adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front)
  Part 3 (on World War I-themed songs by the Durutti Column, Mark Hollis and Piano Magic)
  Part 4 (concluding thoughts)

• And speaking of old movie thoughts of mine, two more here, on The Rules of the Game and The Silence of the Lambs. Maybe interesting, maybe not!

Hope your day's good.

Mark Hollis - Mark Hollis (1998 )
Албум, за чието съществуване знаех от много време, но така и не бях слушал допреди няколко дни. Първият и засега единствен соло албум на Марк Холис, бившият вокалист на Talk Talk, следва пост-рок насоката на последните два албума на групата, но този път сякаш джаз елементите са по-осезаеми. Препоръчвам го на всички, които харесват Talk Talk и особено по-меланхоличните им моменти.

Matt Elliott - "Drinking Songs" (2005) и "Failing Songs" (2006)
Научих за Мат Елиът, след като ми го препоръчаха в last.fm Изтеглих тези два албума, изпълнени с много тъмнина, скрит гняв към случващото се по света, композиции, които спират дъха ти точно преди да разгърнат цялата си красота. Мат е от хората, с чиято музика ще се опитам да се запозная повече през следващите седмици.

David Sylvian - "Blemish" (2003)
"Blemish" е третият албум на Дейвид Силвиан, който слушам. Предишните бяха "Brilliant Trees" (1984) и "Secrets Of The Beehive" (1987), и двата изключително силни, мелодични, внушителни, дълбоки. Но хармонията и мелодията не са добре дошли в "Blemish", който се съсредоточава върху развода на Силвиан и може би за да отрази хаотичността на чувствата, е на първо слушане пълна бъркотия.
Както и да го погледнем, това е албум, в който думите, а не музиката, са на преден план. Бившият вокалист на Japan (и човекът-от-който-Ник-Роудс-открадна-идеята-за-имиджа-си) е все така поетичен, но по-открит и директен. И това с времето започва все повече и повече да ми харесва.

Spirit was recorded over a twelve month period in the studio funded by EMI who handed the band a blank cheque to record the new album and who agreed not to intefere in the process which saw the band record solo jams in the dark and later take it all and turn it into six songs in the mixing studio.

I think EMI puked when they were handed the tapes however the album stands as an absolute classic (twenty) years ahead of it's time.

Artwork was by James Marsh.