EVERYTHING AND NOTHING

How on earth this man, his vision and voice goes nearly unnoticed on this site is beyond belief. Is Progessive Music really only about rehashing old Genesis, ELP or Yes classics? Or about finding musical traces (i.e. the mellotron) of 'The Court of the Crimson King'? Are Porcupine Tree really the next best thing we have to listen to? If anything, we progress here. Sylvian must have one of he most beautiful voices in Pop/Rock/Music history, and apart from that the man can compose deep, haunting, intelligent songs, most of which are offered on this compilation. The name-checking of the musicians list alone would leave anybody interested in high-quality compositions in a healthy state of Zen anyway. To make it short: in a recent forum issue people asked for the future of prog music and for me, if you translate 'Prog' as progressive, i.e. moving forward, you'll find it here, in every single note composed and performed.

An excellent introduction to the work of David Sylvian, this doubled cd set gather together tracks from his most recognised solo records and a bunch of rare and previously unreleased tracks. It doesn't much include, for obvious reasons, the long ambient works, often over 20 minutes, of albums like approaching silence, plight and premonition or flux and mutability but it does tastefull lift from Brilliant Trees, Gone to Earth, Secrets of the Beehive, some of the Fripp collaborations and from Dead Bees on a Cake. It's a great place to start and ion tandem with the Camphor collection of instrumental works and rarities could well be all the Sylvian you'll need unless you suddenly find yourself becoming a major fan, which could very well be the case if you get this.

Even if you have all of Japan's albums AND his solo albums, this compilation is well worth getting. There is a wealth of unreleased and hard-to-find material on this 2-CD set, and it's NOT filler. As usual, the artwork is stunning, the guest list reads like a you-know-what, and the sound quality is superb. It has enough of his best-known tracks to function as a good introduction for the neophyte, too.

As a person who is not very enthusiast about compilations in general, I must admit that "Everything and Nothing" is one of the finest compilations ever assembled.

For those unfamiliar with the work of Sylvian, it is the best place to start because it concentrates on his vocal, song-oriented musical career (another compilation, "Camphor", covers his instrumental-ambient side).

Key studio albums ("Secrets of the Beehive", "Gone to Earth", "First Day" and "Dead Bees on a Cake") are fairly represented along with 3 tracks taken from the JAPAN side project "Rain Tree Crow" and only one song from debut "Brilliant Trees" (which makes the only objection from my side!). But that's not all, because roughly half of the collection (14 tracks) are previously unreleased compositions among which "The Scent of Magnolia", "Heartbeat", "Ride" or "Cover Me With Flowers" are wonderful pieces of songwriting.

David Sylvian can easily be put side by side in a row of excellent, quite unique musical artists so diverse as David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Robert Fripp, Brian Eno, Nick Cave, Bryan Ferry, Tom Waits, Ry Cooder, Holger Czukay, Jon Hassell... to name a few giants. So, if any of these guys catched your listening nerve, you would do good to check Sylvian too.

His music is hard to describe (isn't it true for all music in general?), but let's say it contains elements of pop, rock, jazz, classical, ambient-experimental and art/prog rock. Most of his songs are slow, laid-back, lengthy (6-9 minutes) compositions including diverse instruments (from jazzy brass, electronic keyboards, acoustic bass, ethnic percussions and sampled tribal/Asian chants). Lyrics are largely introspective and sometimes you feel you are listening to an adventure novel.

"Everything and Nothing" is perhaps nothing, a mere drop in the ocean of the global music industry, but it is almost everything you need to have from David Sylvian, if you are not keen on buying his individual albums. Absolutely recommended!

I'm not the first one to wonder how unnoticed is this man's discography here. David Sylvian's relations to prog genre are not very notable, which partly explains it. He's done some experimental (more or less ambient) music and has collaborated with e. g. Robert Fripp; his band before going solo in '84 was an arty New Wave group JAPAN, not included in the Archives. This 2-CD compilation concentrates on his song-oriented material with many tracks (14!) unreleased before. Some Japan tracks re-worked too. This is indeed one of the finest compilations I know. Suits perfectly as an introduction but also worth having if one already had several studio albums.

Seyo's description of Sylvian's music is excellent, it's hard to add anything crucial. I'd like to use the (unofficial) term 'art pop'. It's elegant, cool, sophisticated, moody, hurriless, musically rich, with elements of various directions from jazz to ethnic music. Uptempo rock playing is mostly absent, and good so. And his voice is one of the finest in the history of pop. The impressive list of musicians includes Ryuichi Sakamoto, Richard Barbieri, Jon Hassell, Kenny Wheeler, David Torn, Mick Karn...

Highlights is rather unnecessary term to use in this brillant context, but I enjoy especially 'Riverman', 'Ride', 'Some Kind of Fool', 'Scent of Magnolia', 'Wanderlust' and 'Let The Happiness In' to name a few. (PS: David Sylvian was sometimes somewhere elected to be the most beautiful man, but don't let that fool you. On the other hand, the UN-testosteronic appearance is in sync with the elegancy and depth of his music.)