Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). Uneasy with his fame and fiercely private, the post-rock pioneer left behind a musical legacy of extraordinary beauty.

Wardle’s biography addresses and clarifies all these sources, but the book’s aim is not so much on who Hollis was.After that, a seven year gap before his last work, a self titled solo effort originally intended to be a Talk Talk album titled Mountains of the Moon, and that was that – twenty years of silence was its only follow up. Hollis was close to his brother, who became addicted to heroin and died in his thirties, and in those early interviews he cited the influence of John Coltrane and Miles Davis as well as the classical composers Béla Bartók and Claude Debussy and experimental rock and blues bands. The biography also confirms how Hollis was deeply influenced by his brother Ed, and includes key recollections from producer/musician Tim Friese-Greene and manager Keith Aspden. Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications. He was never spectacularly rich, but he evidently did not need to work and royalties from Talk Talk songs eased and enabled his retreat.

In 1998 he’d released his first, and what turned out to be his last, solo album, Mark Hollis, after which he retired. Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages. Tracing Mark Hollis's life from earliest beginnings through his formative years, author Ben Wardle offers genuine insight into the creative forces which helped shape the sound and songs recorded by Talk Talk. All the while, take after take, Hollis relentlessly listened after that elusive feel and didn’t stop before it was there.There is nothing bombastic or overstated about this music in which the silences and long pauses are as important as the sound. NME were particularly venomous, once describing him at an early gig as looking like a “nervous accountant who had stumbled onstage”. Mark Hollis was so much more than the hits ‘It’s My Life’ or ‘Life’s What You Make It’, and A Perfect Silence enjoyably and meticulously gives us that insight. The progression from the naïve charm of the New Wave debut The Party’s Over (1982), the sophistication in the songwriting craft of the sophomore It’s My Life (1984), to the rhythmic exploration that found its way on their third album, The Color of Spring (1986), each album was a natural evolutionary step – a refinement of vision – not a revolutionary leap.