I've read the phils book as well, what happened was Mark just wanted the 2 M49 mics used in the recording but the engineer had used spot mic or close mics in the mix, so they had to remix and record certain things... Interesting re LS, I have a original pressing, and a reissue and the CD, The reissues do not sound very good, but the CD sounds great
Tim has always been the great unanswered question for me. I don't think the band had a radical departure on his arrival, which (I think!) fits with what you're saying here, that the album writing was reasonably advanced when Tim came on board. What with My Foolish Friend, Such A Shame, the abandoned Chameleon Hour idea etc... I see CofS as being more of a evolution of It's My Life too, which suggests further consistency in the songwriting compared to It's My Life. If you then move onwards to the Heligoland stuff and Mark's own album, Mark still sounds like TT whereas Heligoland sounds nothing whatsoever like TT in terms of sound or song-structure. Mark's album sounds pretty much what you'd expect as the next step following Laughing Stock. It doesn't really help that there are minimal interviews with Tim discussing TT, but I do wonder was the bulk of the songwriting during the Mark/Tim partnership done by Mark. We don't know the royalty split either of course, Tim may be on bare bones. Again referencing Phill's book, if you believe Phill he was in for some songwriting royalties from the first .orang album for contributing ideas but claims Paul and Lee changed their mind at the last moment and didn't, he said the Dido album happened the exact same way. All that stuff seems to happen on a whim. Maybe Tim really did act primarily as a producer, Phill was the engineer of course, and perhaps Mark was too human and too generous and gave Tim credit where others would have said it was part of his producer role. Speaking of Mark, TT, and who did what... I'm thinking of adding a fretless bass to the guitar collection, so have been reading a bit about Paul's set-up. I'd actually forgotten that Paul doesn't play on The Last Time on It's My Life, because a fretted bass was called for and Paul plays fretless (although there are certainly photos of Paul playing fretted). I find stuff like that happening in TT quite strange. I can't imagine Paul would have any problem in playing that bassline on a fretted bass, yet he was pushed aside it seems. The same as on Happiness Is Easy on CofS, and so on where Paul doesn't play, as someone who can play I find it 'interesting' how many times he was asked to step aside. Especially given how talented he is as a multi-instrumentalist. The world of TT in the studio was indeed a strange one, so back to Tim who knows what he really did.
Tim is on Twitter, although not the most interactive fellow. Here he is saying something interesting about "It's Getting Late in the Evening": https://twitter.com/curonianspit2/status/1311925295872700416 "Hitherto unrevealed pop triv; TT Bside IGLITE is based on a deconstruction of what a fool believes by the doobie bros, which I heard in the taxi en route to studio that morning." It does suggest he was quite involved with the writing of some of the music. But his main input was probably expanding the sonic palette, as exemplified by the elephant and seagull sounds.
Go to a collector that will digitize it Or really someone that will regardless if they like Talk Talk, it's worth nothing other than ego stroking if not.
"This has not been tested, but was presumably working when last played in 1991, otherwise it would have been chucked." The word "presumably" doing a lot of work there! Even if it was working in '91, will it still work now? Fascinating item, either way.
sadly Dat tapes are known to have issues long term and finding a DAT player they will work on can be even harder, but it's not really about that.... if it was the pre master, I'd be bidding....
The track times don’t seem to match up to either the Europe or US CDs. I wonder how it differs in fade outs on particular tracks from either of the unique digital releases.
It could be a lot of things, honestly. Also look at the track titles - the names for After The Flood and New Grass seem like last minute decisions based on the single word titles on the master As far as, will this play at all? If it seriously has been sitting this long in one place, there's a decent chance it can be read out. Working players are difficult to get, but in the ideal scenario, the person that ends up with it can get it to a lover of DAT tapes to have the highest chance we'll get to hear it
Working titles Dogna, real world place not far from many countires Serge - this one sounds the most likely Mauhler seems to be a name found commonly near Slovenia- which borders Italy, maybe a person... Really interesting...
It's a 44.1 DAT, just has to be dubbed to CDR or even better, a computer. I have DAT tapes from around this time that play fine, but they have been played at least once every few years. If this truly has not been played since 1991 or was poorly stored, it could be worthless, except as an artifact. Or it could simply be a clone of the album master with incorrect timings(it does say "digital copy"). If it were dozens of rough mixes, I'd jump on it. Dan
Didn't Mark once say that the album was a big joke or something? The title "Myrrhman" sounding like "Mirror Man" and "Runeii" like "Renée" makes me think whether they have disfigured any other words to get to those titles. When I saw "Mauhler" I thought it was a play on Gustav Mahler.
I think I'd be asking for firm evidence of where this came from and why the seller has it, given what I've understood for some time....that the masters were destroyed. There was something else TT related on ebay recently in Abbey Road packaging. Did they even ever master their stuff there?
Thank you for finding and linking this, I didn't know any music like this was available for anyone to hear. I have yet to join Soundcloud but I may finally have to start. And I agree if Tim has any more material like this he should release it. That 1 song there in no way diminishes the impact of the finished version, at least to me and hopefully not to Mark's estate either.
Both the UK Verve and the US Polydor sound very nice. In the US where I am, the Verve is quite scarce - in fact, even many non-US sellers on Discogs and eBay have the Polydor version. I finally hunted down the Verve and am glad to have it, but IMHO the Polydor sounds better - slightly warmer with a bit more bass. However, the larger difference is that tracks 3 and 4 are crossfaded on the UK Verve and separate on the US Polydor. The Polydor replicates the vinyl (and the cassette) in this regard, and gives you very slightly more music as a result. On the other hand, the Verve is clearly what the band intended for the CD, where there was no need to break up the material for Side A and Side B. This intention is further evidenced by the 1999 Pond Life reissue, overseen by Hollis I believe, which replicates the crossfade of the original Verve CD. In fact, the Pond Life reissue is just a repress of the Verve mastering, except the volume/level on the Pond Life is turned up by just over 0.5dB. But when you digitally even up the levels, the Verve and Pond Life null out completely - bit-for-bit identical. The Verve does have that beautiful black-face disc design though. And unlike with some reissues, the Pond Life is not cheaper on the used market than the Verve. So for sonics and absolute maximum amount of the recording, I'd suggest the Polydor. For maximum fidelity to the band's intention for the CD and for coolness of label design and collectibility, I'd recommend the Verve. And for hardcore fans I would of course recommend both.
Great info as always tmtomh, makes one wonder if the US pressing was a mistake, or maybe just a Polydor employee assuming the CD was to be done in the same way as the other two formats.