From the group Japan to His solo works Like Brilliant Trees, Gone To Earth and Secrets Of The Beehive, to his collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Holger Czukay, Robert Fripp, etc., David Sylvian seemes be one of the more disctinctive artists around -- any fans?

(BTW, Random Prince fact--David ended up marrying Ingrid Chavez--Spirit child from " Lovesexy" and "Graffiti Bridge")

Yep

bananacologne is too
.

me me. i think songs form the beehive is my favorite. the thing with fripp was cool too.

yeah, I can never decide which album is the favorite...I think this week, it's Gone to Earth, mainly because of " Taking The Veil"...that track is slammin!!

Add me to the list... though I didn't follow his latest works that close (Blemish - still haven't got that one).

Gone To Earth is my favourite too - that's where I got attracted. Hmmm... similar to Prince. He got me with SOTT and I still love this one most. Maybe it isn't the music alone anymore. It became a part of my life.

SOTT, Gone To Earth & Hounds Of Love (side b = The 9th Wave) by Kate Bush - I think these are the only albums to have reached this status.

Wolf

His Dead Bees On A Cake album(from '99)is Excellent--kinda picks up where Secrets From The Beehive left off (another Random Prince Fact--Dead Bees has Tommy Barbarella on keyboards)- But the latest one, Blemish, is more avant garde/experimental music - If you're not into his sound experiments, I'd pass on the latest one...

I haven't listened to any of his music in many years, but I really like his first album, "Brilliant Trees". I also liked some of the albums he did with Japan.

paligap said:

I also have to add that I really didn't like the album I have that he did with Holger Czukay - but I love Can.

i love to fall asleep to DEAD BEES ON A CAKE. it's so calming and beautiful.

Love his work with Japan..Gentleman Take Polaroids or something like that..
[This message was edited Wed May 12 1:39:40 2004 by Zelaira]

David´s "Secrets of the Beehive" is my all time favorite record ever. Nothing can touch that.
Got into him in the late 80s and since then i bought all his releases and almost everything by Jansen/Barbieri/Karn. David´s latest release "Blemish" is quite difficult to listen to.While "Dead Bees on a Cake" was a celebration of life and his marriage to Ingrid "Blemish" could not be more different. The lyrics are very dark and he sings them above almost atonal ambient soundscapes.
It seems as if his relationship to Íngrid is now over if you take the lyrics literally.

thanks to this thread im gonna have the chorus to "Adoloscent Sex" in my head for the rest of the day.

big fan of Japan & david here ! Tin Drum is my favorite Japan album. I heard that Ingrid & David have broken up..
[This message was edited Wed May 12 8:24:49 2004 by PhilG]

I'm a big fan of this album.

langebleu said:

Somebody holla my name?

Excerpt from a recent interview with Mojo Magazine (conducted february 2003):

Rumours abound that his marriage is now over, that this is his 'Here, My Dear'.

"There are emotions I want to turn away from in real life which I can immerse myself in once I lock myself in the studio," he says, deflecting beautifully.

"Ill go as far as I can with those feelings and not be afraid of them. There's brutal truth there, and integrity, and it may alienate a lot of people who are familiar with my work, but I have to go with it. The whole forest around me was ablaze once, a forest fire - I just watched, and rested in myself, in my heart, and refused to be overwhelmed by it."

DOWNLOAD 'ORPHEUS' (live) HERE
(U will need Stuffit eXpander - u can download the free version here):
STUFFIT EXPANDER
(enter a load of crap for in the required info fields - trust me, if u havent heard this live soundboard version of the beautiful Orpheus
(from his BEST album!) then it's WELL worth the effort!)
Trust me...

And as 4 his marriage? We all have bad patches. I think they're more than strong enough 2 get thought it. David seems 2 have confronted his frustrations head-on in his recent work. But who knows? I havent heard much since earlier this year.

A Fire In The Forest...

Q INTERVIEW - SPETEMBER 2003:

David Sylvian: the Q interview
By Nick Coleman
28 September 2003


David Sylvian, 45, was born David Batt in 1958 and grew up in Lewisham. He formed the group Japan with his brother Steve in the Seventies, enjoying a hit in 1982 with "Ghosts". He was then designated "the most beautiful man in pop". His first solo album, Brilliant Trees, emerged in 1984, setting the pattern for a career which has moved slowly and reflectively away from pop stardom towards a philosophical way of life and music on the east coast of America, where he lives with his family. His back catalogue is currently being remastered and repackaged.

Is it true to say you've spent your life trying to escape your childhood?

It wasn't a happy childhood. The initial impulse was to get away from it, because then you can create enough distance to address it with a sense of safety. There was a conscious drive away from everything that childhood represented. And the impulse is still to run...

Is there something about English suburbs that upsets you?

Well, the landscape becomes a reference point for emotion. So, sure, to ride a train through the London suburbs would be a profound journey to take. It would cause enormous discomfort in me, but at the same time at this point in my life, enormous fascination - because I'm more fascinated in what discomforts me than comforts me. If you get to the point in life where you're only interested in comfort, you might as well give up ... [I do have] a desire to address everything that fills me with fear and therefore holds me back from experiencing life as it is.

Do you think you experience "life as it is" living in the States?

No. I think you take your baggage wherever you go. There's no running away. There's only an illusion of escape.

Did having children have an impact on your fear?

Yeah, it did, absolutely. I became far more forgiving of myself. I think the environment I grew up in was terribly unforgiving in many ways. And having children and seeing the world through their eyes, so to speak, enables you to re-experience your own childhood. Suddenly these things you'd completely forgotten come back to you with real clarity, don't they? ... But sometimes wounds go very, very deeply. You know, children don't come into the world without baggage. They respond to the world in different ways. It's set up, preordained, and no matter what the conditions they're in, they're not going to turn out alike. That is eye-opening. I obviously came into the world with particular baggage that did not allow me to adapt well to my environment.

Pop music is a pretty good career if you're interested in escape, disguise, that sort of thing. What do you think you'd have ended up doing if you hadn't been a pop star?

I don't think that I would have survived.

You were suicidal?

Yeah.

What made you so unhappy?

I don't think I can go into that.

Which of your projects do you look back on most fondly?

Probably Brilliant Trees - there was such a sense of adventure there, making one's first solo record, meeting those wonderful musicians for the first time in a place alien to us all - Berlin - having never spoken a word to any of them before ... That sense of dislocation - it frees up the minds of the musicians and brings greater commitment from them as players.

Your music is quite dislocating in effect - do you need to feel a sense of personal dislocation to feel good?

Interesting. In my younger years I'd have to say yes, it was true - hence the game-playing and the absence of myself in my own work. But over the past 20-odd years that's not been the case. I'm trying to get into the greater reality: the essence of the moment. Once there, time stretches, as in dreams. There's a profundity that changes your perspective, your level of awareness and your appreciation of what's actually going on.

The music never seems to rise above walking pace...

Hah. Well, I've always been drawn towards slower tempos. Even with Japan, I'd bring a song into rehearsal and my brother would go "Jesus, can't you write something a bit more up-tempo?" But no, I just could not go there. Hmm. I guess I want to be mesmerised. I don't want to be provoked. And if you rise above a certain tempo, it's provocative. It's insistent - you are now going to feel this way... I want to engage listeners, seduce them.

Do you see yourself as a seducer in life, or a seductee?

I think the work is seductive. Whether it's the timbre, the grain of the voice, the context, the sounds used within the composition... yeah, there's an element of seduction there for sure. But I like to be seduced also. I like to be sold on something, drawn in against my will. So if I'm seduced into something, I'm often very grateful to find myself in an entirely different landscape.

Was the recent album with Derek Bailey [Blemish] a train trip back to Lewisham?

Absolutely. It was everything I couldn't face head on in real life. I went in the studio, shut the door and delved deeper than I had to, into emotions that weren't profound to begin with. Like hate for instance. The level of hate I was experiencing wasn't that intense, but I wanted the challenge of finding out what that felt like. It was like automatic writing.

What are you currently reading in bed?

I've been focusing on poetry for a while now - poetry and books on spiritual practice.

Do you ever get weary of the effort of being the person you are now?

Oh, if it was an effort to be what I am now I'd be on the wrong path entirely. I'd be screwed up. The only way it can work is that I am being, without effort ... Breathe in, breathe out - and it's all there and you can let go of everything else.

Fave David Sylvian album has 2 be 'Secrets of The Beehive' - just an amazing piece of work. 'Gone To Earth' is amazing too.

Love his experimental stuff - particularly the 'Plight & Premonition' album with Holger Czukay.

Talking of experimantal instrumental music, anyone here heard Jansen and Barbieri's 'Other Worlds In A Small Room'? If not, u could always org note me...

I think this was why I was SO disapointed with 'NEWS' - because having been weened on this kind of music through David Sylvian, Czukay, Sakamoto, Jansen & Barbieri etc I was really hoping 4 Prince 2 take a leap 'out there' and do something... well, 'avant garde' I guess.

I still say that it was a wasted exercise imho.

But hey, that's another story, 4 another forum.
[This message was edited Wed May 12 12:00:16 2004 by bananacologne]

Cool!! Thanks, bananacologne!!

...And I agree about "NEWS"!

I LOVE JAPAN!!!!!

Especially their early Glam rock/Funk stuff like "Adolesent Sex" and "Obscure Alternatives". Coonsider them the missing link between Roxy Music and Duran Duran.

He is just amazing ~ The Song Which Gives The Key To Perfection is the most beautious, introspective sound ~ totally brings me to tears. I have nearly everything he has released but 'Nana truly is the resident expert on David S.!!!!!

(by the way nana ~ Sigur Ros is scheduled to release a new album very soon).

Blemish is brilliant but very a fractured and painful listen ~ Fire in the Forest brings it to a serene but disturbing finish.
[This message was edited Wed May 12 20:39:23 2004 by bratchildsfriend]