Music Heroes series – Tom Rose chooses Mark Hollis / Talk Talk

Tom Rose is Lau’s manager, record company boss and general mover and shaker in the world of noise. More importantly though, he has worked in record shops his whole life and has a music trivia database inside his mind that rarely fails to amaze us Lau. We asked him to do a wee guest spot on a musical hero.

FROM TOM:

I was eighteen and working in an independent record shop in 1991 and remember feverish anticipation about the release of “Laughing Stock” from certain customers which got me interested to hear more. We played the album a lot in the record shop, mostly in the early mornings and toward the end of the day and I continued to recommend it to staff and customers for the next fifteen years, importing CD’s from America and Europe whenever it was out of print here in the UK .

The legend of “Laughing Stock” grew more with each year and it’s influence (and that of its predecessor “Spirit of Eden”) hung heavy over the emergence of the mid nineties ‘post rock’ scene and much of the more abstract underground music of the time.

In 2006 (having just started a record label) I remember Guy Garvey from Elbow picking out “Laughing Stock” and Joan As Police Woman’s “Real Life” (my first album release on the Reveal Records) in a magazine, as two of the records he liked the most. I was so thrilled he’d highlighted them together in this way and I knew Joan shared my passion for “Laughing Stock” too.

I still listen to “Laughing Stock” a lot and each play continues to unfold subtle detail within the incredible layers of rich sounds the band created, the mood of the album filling quieter times perfectly, just as it did back in 1991. I often think of these recordings when I hear the slowly developing drama and melancholic instrumentation within Lau’s music, I don’t think they are an influence on Lau or anything but I did once play them to Aidan at about 7am having been up all night and his response was…… ‘ don’t like his voice’.. think that says everything !

“After The Flood” from the final Talk Talk studio album “Laughing Stock”