The Watchers
Nicholas Lezard
The Independent, April 2002
…Talbot made a self-deprecating moue and said that he’d done something 'kind of spooky'. It was; and it was better than that. Behind, above and between the voices of the various CCTV wonks, the eldritch shriek of Ann Widdecombe, and speciously reasonable voice of Jack Straw, Talbot’s music not only made one feel uncomfortable, it also made one feel wistful, conscious of an era of jettisoned innocence. 'If you’ve got nothing to hide', runs the mantra of the surveillance nuts, 'you’ve got nothing to fear'; those very words, replayed here, sent chills down the spine, or at least mine, for, yes thank you, I have plenty to hide. Have the people behind the cameras not heard the old line that if you sent a telegram saying 'flee, all is discovered' to all your friends, they’d all be gone in the morning?"