DAVID SYLVIAN

— First review of this album —

'World Citizen' is a 2003 collaborative EP released by Japanese sound designer Ryuichi Sakamoto and ex-Japan frontman and moody crooner David Sylvian, containing two distinct versions of a song that was supposed to be part of a series of projects developed by the two musicians upon the instigation of the former. Of course, the collaborative efforts between these well-known figures in the world of art rock/pop date back to the 1983 single 'Forbidden Colors', a fairly well-known piece of music that has surfaced the discographies of both ever since. Now, on 'World Citizen' two distinct compositions appear - the self-titled one, which is a more traditionally-structured piece of art rock with acoustic guitars, gentle melodies and soft synth sounds in the background, reflecting upon the superpowers' fowl play, so to say. The EP offers a shorter version, a longer one (with slightly extended instrumentals), and a Ryoji Ikeda remixed versions, quite an interesting addition to the release, more pertinent to glitch pop and electronica, patchy but really effective.

The other version is the 'I Won't Be Disappointed' one, and this is where the influence of Sakamoto is more prevalent as we hear a more electronic and beat-driven piece within which the vocals fit perfectly well the collage of piano samples and static sounds purveying the piece with ambient qualities. The longer version here works in a really sublime way and perhaps overshadows the other number on the EP. Interestingly enough, a re-arranged version of this song appears on a compilation album released recently by Sylvian, adding up to the appeal of this track. Overall, this is an excellent release replete with emotive sounds, comforting and smooth, sufficiently avant-garde but never really overdone, a strong work that combines two complementary musical forces.

The early-90s collaboration between the talents of David Sylvian and Robert Fripp has birthed a marvelous exploration of elegiac art rock infused with improvisational bits and unorthodox rhythmic disruptions. The 1993 album 'The First Day' is composed of seven pieces of music whose style ranges from free-form funk to dazzling guitar improvisations as the duo is joined by stick player Trey Gunn, who would later join a new iteration of King Crimson as well as drummer Jerry Marotta and percussionist Marc Anderson, with David Bottril producing the record. After Fripp had invited Sylvian to form a new King Crimson, the latter had instead redirected the opportunity to a studio and live project, hence anticipating what would become 'The First Day', one of the most brilliant and overlooked albums of that decade, a record that oversees the fascinating merge of two of the most ingenious talents of the past two decades.

'God's Monkey' is the first song on this album, an artsy rock/pop tune with fine melodies and minimal but sufficiently dazzling amounts of Fripp-style picking, only a taster of what is about to come. It becomes immediately obvious how well-suited Sylvian's vocals are to the rich and disjointed guitar sweeps of Robert Fripp. A quirky single follows in the face of 'Jean the Birdman', a song that almost exhibits a pop sensibility, definitively contrasting with the avant-garde 10-minute suite 'Firepower', originating from a live jam and greatly extended in the studio, with prominent contributions from Fripp. The dynamics of 'Brightness Fall', on the other hand, certainly evoke a familiarity with the music on 'THRAK', which would come a bit later, while the textured piece '20th Century Dreaming' is another jam-based movement filled with mesmerizing passages. The centerpiece here has to the 18-minute 'Darshan', a piece based on a repetitive rhythmic pattern with various guitar-based, electronic and vocal pieces developing over it, leading to an intense and challenging but gorgeous piece of experimental rock, followed only by one of Fripp's ambient pieces, 'Bringing Down the Light'. A majestic collaboration truly in the spirit of progressive, this album is avant-garde and disruptive, but also beautiful and enchanting.

An exploration of music in free form, we have the excellent seventh solo studio album by David Sylvian - 2009's 'Manafon'. This is a sonically intense and claustrophobically intimate album that dares to wander across the territories of avant-garde music and presents several pieces that can be described as sonic collages, full of discrete sounds and cryptic playing, all of which happens solemnly in the background, while upfront we have the majestic voice of David Sylvian delivering the lyrical content of an album that dares to be delicately conscious about social issues and rather intelligently mysterious, philosophical, and evocative. 'Manafon' is definitely an experimental project that may often remind you of the music of Andrew Liles and Ryuichi Sakamoto as one may discover an artistically selfish element to the album that renders it both slightly challenging yet indefinitely rewarding and spacious as a continuous listen - one that offers an engulfing ambience intertwined with vivid imagery.

Inspired by the life and poetry of Welsh poet Ronald Stuart Thomas, 'Manafon' is indeed heavily informed by the themes dealt with by the Welshman, with the captivated Sylvian penetrating his art and re-proposing it in improvised musical form. Brief glimpses of acoustic guitar and a piano, a nearly complete absence of percussive instruments and an extensive personnel of collaborators, a carefully curated cast of musicians selected for particular reasons by Sylvian, the entire album might seem a puzzle, but it is actually a very fine work, in which each element plays a vital role. After all, the whole is made up of the sum of its parts and each part represents the sum at the smallest scale - this rule has to be valid for the boundary-breaking 'Manafon', in which improvisation and chamber music creep into the sonic palette. The listener will quite literally experience glitching, slurping, knocking and abrupt sounds that imitate both nature and the realm of ghosts perhaps - an engaging, haunting, intimate listen that should be taken in its entirety. Definitely one of Sylvian's strongest and most daringly bizarre albums.

1Taking The Veil for the association of cold voices and keyboards of JAPAN and the magic guitar of Robert FRIPP 2 Laughter And Forgetting for the sober piano and a voice like Joe JACKSON and the finale with the jazzy, bluesy, ethereal trumpet and bringing a cinematic sound before its time 3 Before The Bullfight and its long glacial metronomic crescendo with the bright pad, the viscous monotone voice and the aerial guitar notes, all still sprinkled with the trumpet: clean tinkered sounds 4 Gone To Earth starts again on the convoluted melody, substrate between the spleen and the metallic with a deconstructed guitar that lasts like forever 5 Wave follows and carries everything away, the melody becomes groovy and marshmallow, sticky, Robert using his instrument to torment the ears; the sound becomes apart from the norms, between cold wave and a latent pop air, with the trumpet still printing the late night title in a dark café on 11th Avenue; in short, monolithic and metronomic, an endless title like this wave to infinity 6 River Man enters a little more into the turmoil of his mentor Robert with the sound that continues; a dark pad, percussion, Robert who responds to David's typical vocal; the pride of place for Robert's unique vibrations 7 Silver Moon for the western pop folk ballad with sax and pedal steel to better set off on the great deserted US roads.

8 The Healing Place soaring, ambient, latent; the guitar prints an echo, that of the duel between guitar and bass, that of vibration, of introspection 9 Answered Prayers dives lower, its archaic contemplative; the progression is linear but very present, inviting a journey without answers supported by a crystalline acoustic guitar 10 Where The Railroad Meets The Sea with the piano for the dark softness, the guitar in a jet of notes; to be taken as a monolithic interlude 11The Wooden Cross for the reverb like that found on a frozen lake, imprinting the smooth sound 12 Silver Moon Over Sleeping Steeples for an interstellar interlude with the moon in the distance, a melancholic acoustic variation on the pedal steel of great beauty 13 Camp Fire: Coyote Country with the slide and the sensation of visualizing a ricochet on a lake, Robert tormenting his strings again and again and imprinting the climate of the concept album without seeming to 14 A Bird Of Prey Vanishes Into A Bright Blue Cloudless Sky ad repetitum 15 Home with the electric piano bringing a little more serenity after the dark hours, this keyboard reminding me of that of 'Birdy' from a year before on an umpteenth heady crescendo 16 Sunlight Seen Through Towering Trees with perhaps bursts of sunlight piercing through the trees 17 Upon This Earth as a musical melting pot with the slow progressive decline that grinds the mind, keeping it on alert.

David Sylvian is one of the most important, prolific, progressive, and intriguing characters of the art rock scene by a large margin, even if he never reached the cult status of someone like Bowie, for example. Whether it's his work with Japan, his extensive solo career, the side ventures of Rain Tree Crow or Nine Horses, I do believe that he has left a mark on popular music, and is responsible for some of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces one could listen to. 'Brilliant Trees' is the debut solo album of Sylvian, released in June of 1984, amidst the rise and commercialization of new wave and art rock. In a concise yet straightforward manner, the album masterminded by the former Japan front man is one of the most far-reaching and eclectic offerings of the decade, displaying an exuberant array of styles and feelings in just seven songs. In my book, there is a truly progressive approach to the songwriting here, that is strongly felt on each and every track. Not to mention the great cast of characters brought in to help Sylvian in his craft, including Richard Barbieri and Steve Jansen, former Japan bandmates, Holger Czukay of Can, and Japanese instrumentalist Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Sylvian's love for the experimental or the unconventional can be sensed in the very first track on the record, the explosive and funky 'Pulling Punches'. The bass playing is criminally tasty, the melodies are gorgeous, and the vocals are excellent all throughout. 'The Ink in the Well' follows up this one, a hypnotic piece that depicts Sylvian's longings. Beautifully introduced, the more ambient sections do much favor to this track, all instruments are used intelligently and work in harmony towards the ultimate goal of creating something beautiful and profound. 'Nostalgia, perhaps the most mellow song on the album, is a representation of the more tender side of Sylvian's music. 'Red Guitar' is one of his most well-known tracks, I personally find it to be one of the most progressively influenced and player new wave hits of the 80s.

The second side of the album features three very strong compositions. 'Weathered Wall' is a fantastic song that displays a more experimental and even jazzy approach. 'Backwaters' is perhaps the most haunting song on the album, with its audacious one-minute ambient intro. For me, some of the most hellish and hypnotic synths found on an art rock album are played here. Finally, there is the title track (which clocks in at a little less than nine minutes), the absolute climax of the album. It could sound a bit paradoxical to consider such a longing, tranquil, yet menacing song a climax, but everything comes together on this one. The entire album could not really be appreciated without immersing into 'Brilliant Trees' in the very end.

I do consider this album to be entirely excellent for all the reasons mentioned above, certainly a masterpiece in the David Sylvian universe, a strong digression from the Japan sound, and a bold representation of a musical talent who seeks to go beyond the conventional and comfortable.

The seecond collaboration between Sylvian and the Krautrocker Holger Czukay confirms the format of Plight and Premonitions: a vynil with one track per side. Of course the side A is "Flux" and side B is "Mutability". There are also a couple of guests more respect to the previous album. Flux is an ambient track which, despite some dissonant sounds in the background, has a strong newage flavor. In particular the flugelhorn played by Marcus Stockhausen reminds to the trumpet of Mark ISHAM in his excellent "Tibet". David's guitar is very in background and the track is built around a lazy percussion. Background voices, speeches and what seem mantras, the African flute played by Jaki LIEBEZEIT (from CAN as Czukay) add an oriental touch to the suite. I think I can name it as "meditative music". Liebezeit is also the only guest appearing on side B.

Mutability is missing the percussive element so it's even more relaxing and meditative. Guitar softly sliding over a keyboards carpet. This track can be compared to some of the works of ALIO DIE. Apparently it goes nowhere and sounds like a fluid exercize about harmonies. A good soundtrack for uncommented images. I would use it to comment coloured landscapes, gardens, waterfalls, nature in general. Maybe somebody has done it already, who knows?

Take it if you are in a meditation mood.

The more accessible half of Holger Czukay's two ambient collaborations with David Sylvian followed closely in the footprints of its sibling album "Plight & Premonition", released one year earlier. Both recordings created a delicate, dreamlike aura bathed in lush yet understated atmospherics. But the additional support here by Czukay's bandmates from CAN turned this session into an unofficial Inner Space reunion (the finished album hit the market exactly one month before the final Can LP "Rite Time").

Like its predecessor the new album was more of a sustained mood piece than a true compositional effort, with every instrument and effect layered carefully and creatively into a fragile web of musical clairvoyance. Sylvian's primary contribution had to be the drifting heat-haze synth bed. Czukay provided the distinctive pinpoint guitar accents and his patented sampling cues: stray Middle Eastern radio signals; a snippet of Latin high mass, and so forth.

All beautiful stuff, well beyond the Peak of Normal. And the overall effect is more spellbinding than the similar abstract doodles of Sylvian's many other off-trail solo soundscapes. But because the music was more obviously grounded here than on the mirror-image "Plight" album, it lacked the same air of timeless mystery. My own assessment was in fact completely turned around after revisiting the music two decades later. This one had more of an immediate impact than its older brother, but in the long run didn't have the same legs.

Author and professor David Toop said it best, in his liner notes for the recent (and recommended) double-disc compilation of both albums in one package: the later album is "perhaps more satisfying for those who like to have a road to follow."

I'm reviewing an album 30 years after having bought it. At the end of the 80s I didn't like Japan so I don't remember how I actually went to buy an album by David Sylvian. I also knew CAN only by name, so it wasn't for Czukay for sure. I suppose that what raised my curiosity was the album having one track per side. In the same period I was into KLAUS SCHULZE's Dune, so this might have been a reason.

The album was quite a surprise. I remember to have forced myself in listening it in one shot. Japan were a new.wave electronic band, so I was expecting at least some electronic drums. Nothing at all. "Plight" is a keyboard driven soundscape with some flute-like sounds and progressions of notes that remind me to Claude DEBUSSY. It's dreamy. Listening to it I'm still able to create mental images of ice, white woods, but also elven, fairies and magical beings. This is surely influenced by the track subtitle: "spiralling of winter ghosts". With a bit of imagination it could bring the listener into space, or in the deep of the ocean.

Fans of the pink period of TANGERINE DREAM know what I mean. Some passages are darker, other are just relaxing. Some sounds have a far east flavor. This is the matter dreams are made of. An "astronaut like" voice closes the track, but I'm unable to understand the language he speaks.

"Premonition" is opened by another voice. Female and likely speaking in German. With the Vyil one doesn't realize how much the two tracks are interconnected. Effectively it could be just one single electronic suite. Probably it was conceived in this way, This track is lighter. The far east flavor is enhanced by the subtle dissonances of the untuned (synthetic) piano which adds variations to a base mainly made of major chords.

I remember walking in an airport in a morning, just after an intercontinental flight, stoned by the jet lag. Tired but relaxed with the announcements coming from the speakers like I was still sleeping. This track brings that sensations back to my mind. I hope it can give the idea. Some tracks by VANGELIS have a similar mood.

Calling it electronic ambient music is not wrong but it's reductive. I have the impression that all the dissonances, the balance between the various keyboards and electronic effects doesn't sound improvised. There must have been a lot of work at least in the engineering and mixing phases.

An excellent addition (if you like ambient music)

The first of two matching albums made by poet-composer David Sylvian and Krautrock wild-card Holger Czukay was an exercise in attentive listening, for the musicians in the recording studio and - even more so - for unwary record buyers (like me in 1988) who might have been expecting something else entirely.

Where were the comic-relief French horns? The clever cut-and-paste radio-wave surfing? Instead of another "Cool in the Pool" hodgepodge of sampled pop flotsam, we got an album of music adrift in the aether: a pair of Eno-inspired ambient dream studies, dense with random atmospheric effects but at the same time lighter and more evanescent than early-morning dew at sunrise.

At first exposure it may not resemble anything more than a soundtrack to the best night of sleep you ever had. But each of the two long tracks was meticulously crafted and full of incident, albeit presented with subtle, almost intuitive care. Melodies and rhythms exist, but were slowed down and stretched out to a point almost beyond the threshold of perception.

In retrospect the album plays better as an unbroken composition, with the tentative "Plight" (mostly assembled by Czukay in his home studio laboratory) blossoming into the even more lovely "Premonition", the latter actually recorded live without overdubs. Heard together, the two halves complete a single piece of music sounding as natural and sustaining (and as easy to ignore) as the pulse of blood moving through your heart at this exact moment.

The passage of time has only improved the experience, and added some necessary perspective. Consider this: when the album was released in 1988 (two full years after it was recorded, thanks to record company cold feet), the music charts were topped by Bon Jovi, George Michael, Van Halen, and the score to the movie "Dirty Dancing". Measured against those platinum yardsticks, the Sylvian-Czukay collaborations have to be considered minor miracles of restraint and integrity.

The jazzy piano and the very warm voice of David Sylvian open the album. "September" sounds like a night club in NewYork (or the idea that I have of that, never been there). It's few more than 1 minute but it's enough to understand that this is a very good album.

"The Boy With The Gun" persists in the same atmosphere. The jazzy impressions come from the contrabass. The period is clearly identifiable: a song from the 80s with some connections with the more artsy side of bands of that period, JAPAN included.

"Maria" is sung with baritonal voice. It's quite dark and it reminds me to Richard Wright's ZEE. Sad and atmospheric. Personally I like it a lot.

Time for major chords: "Orpheus" is made of an incredibly good sequence of non-trivial passages. The pause of silence before the instrumental section makes you wishing more, and it arrives immediately after. There's some genius in this song. It ends with 3 quick chords totally unexpected.

"The Devil's Own" proceeds with 3 minutes of mainly piano and voice. Tere's no longer a night club. This is something different, but the Howe-like guitar starts the following track. In the 80s I've paid some attention to Suzanne VEGA. Call me mad, but I think that not only this song has similarities with some of her more intimate songs, even if I don't think she has never added an instrumental part of spanish guitar in songs of this kind like the excellent "When Poets Dream Of Angels".

Contrabass, piano and jazzy atmospheres are back with "Mother and Child". One of the best album's tracks. "Let The Happines In" starts with brass and the contribution of Mark ISHAM's trumpet is huge. This is even better than the previous one. Mainly based on two chords it could remind to David BOWIE.

"Waterfront" remains on the same soundscape as before. On this track, the similarities with ZEE are evident. Of course I don't think Sylvia has taken inspiration from that album, even if I consider it underrated. This is an album from the late 80s and what Wright did in 1984 was just a shy attempt to renew his offering.

The first release of the album end here. But my Japanese reissue has the two bonus tracks below:

"Forbidden Colours" is very famous. The theme was used as movie soundtrack and was actually a big hit. Very few to say about this song: It's impossible that anybody hasn't listened to it before. Thanks to Ryuichi SAKAMOTO.

It's time to close the album. The last about three minutes are entertained by "Promise". Classical guitar and warm voice. Also this song could feature on a movie soundtrack (if it effectively hasn't, I don't know). A bit too "sweet" compared to the rest of the album, so the organ at the end brings some sadness back.

Listen to it by night, on a sofa, with a drink.