I’m sure many of you are aware of Held By Trees who openly wear their Talk Talk influences (if you are not – go and listen – they are fabulous).
Anyway in their Bandcamp Friday update yesterday, there was the following comment….
“Some other news, but from the camp of one of our ‘parent’ influences. Charlie Hollis confirmed on the phone that he and Lee Harris have remastered Talk Talk’s seminal 1988 masterpiece, Spirit of Eden as a half-speed master at Metropolis mastering a few months ago. According to Charlie, the new master of the album is ‘the best thing’ he’s ‘ever heard’. At the moment, the record label, Warner, are banking the remaster for release at an undetermined time, but presumably around it’s 40th anniversary in 2028, like their half-speed remaster of It’s My Life which was done last year.”
Sounds promising
Can we start a petition or something..? It’s surely going to sell however many copies they press. The album gets better with every year that passes, and becomes more influential…
Also, Held By Trees = a very good thing.
I saw that on the socials and my first thought was “what about The Colour of Spring?”
It came out in Feb 1986, so I s’pose we’ll have to wait until the new year for a 40th party.
Good point! I’m not sure why, but I do forget about that one, even though it’s brilliant from start to finish.
Whenever a Talk Talk thread hoves into view, I bore myself by saying the same thing.
The Colour of Spring is their absolute meisterwerk, the perfect melding of their melody and otherworldliness. I’ve tried and tried with their last two albums but blimey, I find them hard work. And….i prefer the debut and follow up to them too.
I’ll shut up now.
I completely agree. The first three albums are great, but I can’t get into the last two at all.
Yes, I know everybody raves about the final pair, and about Hollis and chums bravely pursuing their artistic vision no matter what, but I find them a real disappointment after the tunes and lyrics of the likes of It’s You (a genuinely thrilling track), Such A Shame, and the title track of The Party’s Over.
Yes, I know people talk about the post-rock, neo-jazz, sonic cathedrals, yada yada yada, but I wish the band had given us two more albums in a similar vein to The Colour of Spring rather than wandering off into the room labelled Ambient Noodling.
I love you Captain!
It’s in my all time list, so I’ll be getting this. On CD of course, I’m not a savage.
I don’t think half speed masters make any sense on CD
Good point. Ref. a recent discussion you should ideally have a completely different master for CD.
So is it a remaster or not? Or do they just do everything at half the speed? Does it bring out sounds that were previously inaudible?
They’ve created a new physical master with which to stamp vinyl by cutting it at half speed which supposedly gives a better final vinyl album. This cutting business is of course irrelevant to the CD which is burned from a data file though they may have created a new digital master too.
Fenton Steve to correct my understanding…
Yeah the new digital master is what I was on about.
I do everything at half the speed now: in future, I shall describe myself as remastered…
Not sure why they would wait until 2028 for this. If I were a record company wanting another harvest from a legacy act I’d get product to the market ASAP. Every year they wait the market contracts further.