DAVID SYLVIAN & ROBERT FRIPP: THE FIRST DAY

The music on the album mix David Sylvian´s experimental, atmosperic and ambient pop/rock with Robert Fripp´s experimental guitar playing and on paper that sounds pretty intriguing. Some parts of the album fully meet my expectations while other parts of the album don´t impress me much. The first 5 tracks are decent experimental pop/rock songs with both rock styled and more ambient sections. I´m actually reminded a bit of the most rock styled songs on the nineties albums by Depeche Mode. The guitar playing is much more experimental than Martin Gore´s ditto though and gives the album it´s progressive sound. After a good opening to the album the last two tracks unfortunately drag the album down considerably. The 17:17 minute long "Darshan" is extremely repetitive and to my ears quite a drag. While it´s a bit more enjoyable and pleasant than "Darshan", the 8:31 minutes long and ambient "Bringing Down the Light" doesn´t offer much of interest to me either. I usually enjoy David Sylvian´s pleasant and warm voice and his sophisticated delivery but while his performance here is relavitely strong it never reaches the heights of his best performances. His performance on "The First Day" lacks the intimacy that I so greatly enjoy on his best albums.

The musicianship and sound quality are generally excellent although the drums do have a distinct early nineties sound that is probably an aquired taste.

Overall I found "The First Day" to be a decent album but not much more than that. Especially the last 25 minutes of the album drag my rating down and a 3 star (60%) rating is warranted. Interesting but flawed.

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