Seven years after Talk Talk's final record, Laughing Stock, Mark Hollis completed this self-titled solo album. Where his previous band's music started as hard synth pop and disintegrated into abstraction, Mark Hollis begins with silence, a full 20 seconds of room ambience. that breaks into compositions sprinkled with woodwinds and acoustic guitars, spread delicate and cerebral like Ulysses written on parchment paper. The album is relentless in its tranquility, nestling through contemplative moments without hurry before moving on. Hollis pushed his desire for an open record that nonetheless sounded utterly real and natural, and he achieved something that could just as easily pass like a wisp and endlessly be marveled at for its artistic splendor. No other record so beautifully captures the nothing of everything.
