Limelight
HELD BY TREES
Talk Talk veterans team up on inspired post-rock project.
At the root of it all: Held By Trees’ David Joseph.
PRESS
AS A KID in the 80s, David Joseph was thrilled by his parents’ vinyl box set of instrumental supergroup Sky. As a teen in the 90s, his tastes extended to Pink Floyd, Chris Rea, Britpoppers Blur, and later, the likes of jazz giant Keith Jarrett and electro maestro Aphex Twin. And always there was Talk Talk, whose work truly nourished this budding singer and musician.
He’s 38 now, with a raft of ambient and singer-songwriter albums behind him under various pseudonyms, but Joseph (who endearingly describes himself as “a sleevenote reader”) says new project Held By Trees was different from the start. “I’d done an ambient track with [Floyd touring guitarist] Tim Renwick,” he tells Prog. “Then the first lockdown came along, I started writing, and like most of us I was in a particular headspace, with a quieter world around me. I was leaning into my great love of Spirit Of Eden, Laughing Stock, The Colour Of Spring and Mark Hollis’ [eponymous] solo record, which I kind of see as a continuum. The whole Talk Talk story is one amazing evolution.”