How Talk Talk Spoke To Today's Artists

IN HIS WEIGHTY 2010 TOME Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music, Rob Young charted a century's worth of musicians who helped define British folk. In the latter stages he rightly identifies and aligns the often-overlooked Talk Talk with the likes of Kate Bush and Julian Cope as genuine outsiders whose music belongs to a deep-rooted British tradition – artists who "sought to kick their way free of expectations and create hybrid, idiosyncratic sound environments ... [to] maintain a distinctively British voice".