DAVID SYLVIAN & HOLGER CZUKAY: PLIGHT & PREMONITION

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.