Mark Hollis and Talk Talk's time together spanned a single decade and five LPs but by the time their prologue was written with The Laughing Stock in 1991, no other musical artist I know of had travelled further from their original starting point.

Brian Eno says that if you make music you should let it guide you and follow it, rather than sticking to one successful thing and spending your time keeping that alive. Talk Talk epitomise the notion. Decades later, their journey through music remains singularly intriguing.

The initial two moves were tentative but achieved considerable success – The Party's Over and It's My Life, in 1982 and 1984. The Colour of Spring ( 1986) was their first giant leap away from their pop sound into another world entirely. With 1998's Spirit of Eden, they let go of the wheel and stepped off the planet, never to return.

The album consists of six improvised pieces, the first three of which blend into each other to form one single 23-minute continuum. The pace is slow and the spectral sound is seductive, propelled by a relentlessly gentle beat that ebbs and flows. The electronic synths they had started out with have all but disappeared here, replaced by an array of mostly acoustic instruments played by a huge cast of guest musicians along with the core trio.

Tim Freise-Greene, the producer who had been on board since the second album, is a major factor in how the story unfolds. He creates a distinctly old-world orchestral setting for the hushed refrains of Hollis and his plaintive yearning voice to rest upon. The results are intoxicating. A sombre and subdued tone permeates. The result is a totality of mood that only the very best records can boast.