Talk Talk — Wessex Sound Studios, London (Spirit of Eden)

In 1987 and 1988, Talk Talk recorded Spirit of Eden at Wessex Sound Studios at 106a Highbury New Park in north London — a process so radical and prolonged it effectively ended their conventional commercial career while producing one of the most critically revered albums of the 20th century. Mark Hollis and producer Tim Friese-Greene blacked out the studio windows, invited dozens of session musicians to improvise in near-darkness, and then edited fragments of tape together into something that bore almost no resemblance to their earlier synth-pop. The record was rejected by EMI on delivery and became commercially negligible.

Talk Talk had been successful new wave pop artists — "It's My Life" and "Such a Shame" were Top 40 hits across Europe — before Hollis, a reclusive perfectionist, decided to pursue a fundamentally different kind of music. Spirit of Eden's four long tracks drew on jazz, ambient music, gospel, and silence to a degree that baffled the label and press on release but gained recognition in subsequent decades as a foundational document of post-rock. Brian Eno, Radiohead, Bark Psychosis, and many others have cited it as a direct influence.

Wessex Sound Studios at Highbury New Park was also the recording location for the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks (1977) and The Clash's London Calling (1979), giving it a remarkable place in British music history. The building has since been converted to residential use. Mark Hollis made one further album (Laughing Stock, 1991) and a solo record (1998) before withdrawing from public life entirely. He passed away on February 25, 2019.