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David Sylvian
The David Sylvian that fronted new wave pop band Japan wore luminescent hair and glam make-up; on the cover of his solo debut, 1984's Brilliant Trees, he was stylish and refined, a gentleman popster. But the illustration that introduces 2003's Blemish sends a different message: he's bedraggled and unshaven, his far-off expression turned haunted. The new millennium has seen a more serious Sylvian, several steps further along on his musical journey and seeking new sounds to explain new traumas.
While Japan started off as one of many '70s New Romantic bands, they made an unpredictable break with their hit "Ghosts" - a searching and evocative single where spare rhythms and fleeting electronic sounds lay under Sylvian's smouldering tenor. "Writing 'Ghosts' was a turning point for me," Sylvian recalls. "So much of what we created with Japan was built upon artifice. With that song I'd felt I'd had the breakthrough I was looking for. I'd touched upon something true to myself and expressed it in a way that didn't leave me feeling overly vulnerable. In the coming years I'd forget about all notions of vulnerability, opening up the material to a greater emotional intensity. I knew that I had to find my own voice, both figuratively and literally."
On his solo records of the '80s, Sylvian's explorations in music took him from the pop-funk, stylish jazz and windswept exotica of 1984's Brilliant Trees; the ambient landscapes and epic ballads of 1986's Gone to Earth; and the romantic orchestrations of 1987's Secrets of the Beehive. His collaborators included leaders of progressive music, from jazzmen such as 
Mark Isham
trumpetb.1951
John Taylor
piano1942 - 2015
Kenny Wheeler
flugelhorn1930 - 2014
Robert Fripp
guitarb.1946
David Torn
guitar, electricb.1953
Jon Hassell
trumpetb.1937
In the early '90s, Sylvian embarked on a series of acclaimed tours with Robert Fripp, leading to their 1993 studio release The First Day as well as their 1994 multi-media installation Redemption - Approaching Silence in Tokyo's P3 gallery. This followed Sylvian's first foray into the world of art installations in 1990, when in collaboration with Russell Mills, Sylvian created the installation entitled Ember Glance (the permanence of memory)' also held in Tokyo. And 1991 saw the release of Rain Tree Crow, a Japan reunion under a different name. But Sylvian grew less prolific as the decade wore on, enjoying his new marriage to Ingrid Chavez and taking four years to finish 1999's Dead Bees on a Cake. As seductive yet eclectic as any of his prior work, Dead Bees included the hit single "I Surrender," where Sylvian crafts an eye-openingly beautiful vessel around his spiritual journey. Immediately following Dead Bees on a Cake, Sylvian also released a retrospective of his work titled Everything and Nothing, a re-arrangement and re-evaluation of his career dating back to Japan.
Sylvian's work with his spiritual teachers has led him through a rigorous process of study and self-examination. Says Sylvian, "I've never come across anything that is as pinpoint accurate as the message you get through the guru. You go through this process with other people who have common goals, you see them confronting their fears, the tests that they're put through, and you look at the manner in which they're tested and think, 'I could handle that.' But when the opportunity for you to learn from your fears comes along, it's like, 'Jesus Christ, give me any other lesson you choose, but not that one.'"
His determination to confront his vulnerabilities led to arguably his most powerful album to date, 2003's Blemish. Recorded in his home studio in six weeks, with contributions received via the Internet from improv legend 
Derek Bailey
guitar
1932 - 2005
Christian Fennesz
guitar
Blemish also marked the debut of his own independent label, SamadhiSound. "I think of [SamadhiSound] as being global, and not necessarily based in the States. It's stretched between the States, Europe, and Japan. I think nowadays it doesn't really matter where we are physically located. We create our own culture around us to a large extent, whether it's what we're listening to, what we're watching, what we're reading - it can have very little to do with one's immediate cultural environment. We are in a global culture in that respect." Samadhi has featured artists from around the world, including new releases by Sweet Billy Pilgrim, " data-original-title="" title="">Harold Budd, Thomas Feiner, and David Toop, and the last studio recordings by Derek Bailey. This reach is also borne out in a remix album, The Only Daughter, where pieces from Blemish are reinterpreted by artists including Burnt Friedman, Sweet Billy Pilgrim, and Jan Bang and Erik Honoré.
Most of the pieces on Blemish depart from traditional pop song forms, a process that began all the way back with "Ghosts" and that continues in his solo work. More recently, he has also released Snow Borne Sorrow and Money for All, an LP and EP from the band Nine Horses. Nine Horses is a trio that includes his brother and regular collaborator Steve Jansen and electronica artist Burnt Friedman, as well as contributions from singer Stina Nordenstem, trumpeter 
Arve Henriksen
trumpet
b.1968
In 2009, the project that began in Blemish continues with Manafon, an album that assembles the world's leading free improvisers, including 
Evan Parker
saxophone, soprano
b.1944
Keith Rowe
guitar
b.1940
Most recently Sylvian revisited the presentation of his music in forms beyond the CD. When loud weather buffeted Naoshima was commissioned by the Naoshima Fukutake Art Museum Foundation on the island of Naoshima, Japan, as part of the NAOSHIMA STANDARD 2 exhibition which ran from Oct 2006 to April 2007. The composition was site specific. In fact, Sylvian has said that the work isn't really complete until the sounds of the town Honmura are incorporated into the listening experience. The piece has since been added to the foundation's permanent collection. In 2009, Sylvian collaborated with composer Dai Fujikura and a small ensemble on the audio installation "When we return you won't recognize us," located on Gran Canaria of the Canary Islands. The work was inspired by a 2003 genetics research article focusing on the Canary Islands, which discovered that despite Spanish colonization and the slave trade, fully half to three-quarters of the population retains its aboriginal genetic lineage. As Sylvian writes, "My interest lay in the connection between the physical or scientific reality of our biological make-up, the links to lineage (genetic genealogy), location and, to move beyond the realm of science into intuitive logic, the interior life of a community or people. An implied cultural heritage."
With the release of Manafon, Sylvian continues to confront the challenges, both personal and global, that have enriched his work for three decades. And he continues to follow this path - with patience, perseverance, and beauty.? Source: Chris Dahlen
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David Sylvian and Holger Czukay: Plight & Premonition / Flux & Mutability
by Geno Thackara
Names like Brian Eno or Steve Roach may most readily come to mind where classic ambient recordings are concerned, but there has never been a shortage of similarly fascinating material floating around under the radar, quietly and unobtrusively waiting to reach the right ears. The pair of late-80s LPs by David Sylvian and Holger Czukay make a defining if too-little-known example, a complementary yin and yang in immersive soundscapes. These are compelling pieces that flow and drift with the unexpected ...
Continue Reading12 Most Read Album Reviews: 2017
by Michael Ricci
All About Jazz tracks how often an album review is read, and the reviews listed below represent the top 12 published in 2017. There Is No Love David Sylvian by Phil Barnes Published: July 18, 2017 Bright Lights & Promises: Redefining Janis Ian Sarah Partridge by Dan Bilawsky Published: April 14, 2017 Official Bootleg: Live in Chicago, June 28th, 2017 King Crimson by ...
Continue ReadingDavid Sylvian: There Is No Love
by Phil Barnes
David Sylvian has long divided opinion. For every passionate supporter there are half a dozen who will decry his every move as pretentious. Even among his fanbase there are many who want him to do something more to their taste, along the lines of some past triumphs like Japan's Quiet Life or Tin Drum, or solo albums including Brilliant Trees or Blemish (delete as applicable) that represent their personal favourite(s). For Sylvian the answer is, I suspect, simple: if you ...
Continue ReadingDavid Sylvian: There's a Light That Enters Houses With No Other House in Sight
by Phil Barnes
David Sylvian's extended flight from pop stardom in the middle years of the 1980s was an enthralling counterpoint to that decade's facile obsession with surface and relapse into materialism. While mainstream pop retreated from the innovations and musical openness of post-punk into the empty banalities of bean counting corporate rock, Sylvian among a few others appeared to plot a different idiosyncratic path routed in improvised music and jazz. Central to this were his often inspired choices of collaborators ...
Continue ReadingDavid Sylvian: On the Periphery (The Solo Years)
by Nenad Georgievski
David Sylvian: On the Periphery (The Solo Years) Christopher E. Young 372 ISBN: 978-0-9927228-0-7 Malin Publishing Ltd 2013 With his songs of spiritual and emotional quest, and unspeakable yearning, singer and composer David Sylvian really occupies his own musical cosmos. Often viewed as the quiet man of popular music who through hushed stillness and subtle, delicate and sometimes disturbing sounds, has created a body of work which provided an important bridge between ...
Continue ReadingDied In The Wool - Manafon Variations
by Nenad Georgievski
Inventive and beautifully direct, Died In The Wool is another masterpiece in a long string of albums that singer and composer David Sylvian has recorded. His varied career portrays a restless creative spirit who makes engaging work, and Died In The Wool is another winner. Few artists at this point of their career would accept such challenges or would stray from their identifiable core. Ever since Blemish (Samadhi Sound, 2003), Sylvian has been commissioning sister records for his ...
Continue ReadingDavid Sylvian: Died In The Wool - Manafon Variations
by John Kelman
David Sylvian Died In The Wool: Manafon Variations samadhisound 2011 As the world becomes a smaller place, so, paradoxically, do musical communities expand to reach around it. British singer/composer David Sylvian--first of 1980s pop group Japan, but then a solo artist taking increasing chances with each successive album--has been busting down boundaries of geography and genre since 1984, when he released his first solo album, Brilliant Trees (Virgin), bringing together Fourth World progenitor, trumpeter ...
Continue ReadingDavid Sylvian - Blemish (2003)
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Something Else!
By Tom Johnson It isn't necessarily that blemish was so drastically different than anything David Sylvian had done before. He'd done ambient, both alone and with such visionaries as Holger Czukay and Robert Fripp, and some of it verged on being noise to me. (I'm not a fan of noise-as-music, but I do like good ambient.) And he's of course done his share of vocal pieces—first as the voice of Japan and then solo. But never before had he blended ...
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Forgotten Series: David Sylvian - Gone to Earth (1986)
Source:
Something Else!
By Tom Johnson I have a sort of extra-sensory perception relegated solely to picking up the faint signals thrown off by the arrival of music I want in a music store at a specific location. Be it a brand new disc only available as an import or some equally hard-to-find domestically-released item, or even something I desperately wanted to find used, I will awake with an urge—no, urge is too weak a word—a need to hit up a particular music ...
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David Sylvian Announced as Artist in Residence for Punkt 2011
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John Kelman
David Sylvian has been confirmed as Artist in Residence for the Punkt Festival in Kristiansand, Norway (September 1-3). Sylvian will be creating an audiovisual installation entitled “Uncommon Deities," and will curate an evening of concerts, including the debut live performance of his 1988 release Plight and Premonition. In addition to Sylvian, this concert will feature John Tilbury, Jan Bang, Erik Honoré, Eivind Aarset and Philip Jeck. Thursday, Sepember 1, S?rlandeartmusuem, 18:00-22:00: David Sylvian: Uncommon Deities Opening evening of David Sylvian's ...
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Singer/Songwriter David Sylvian Interviewed at AAJ...And More!
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All About Jazz
Many artists deliberately avoid taking risks, making changes instead opting for the safe, but David Sylvian is not one of them. Across his illustrious career, Sylvian has always sought to take listeners out of their comfort zone. Self-consciousness and introspection permeate every corner of his works. His mostriveting songs have explored various topics, including spirituality and soul-searching for the modern world. His songs are evocative and fragile, confronting the listener about the challenges inherent in being human.
AAJ Contributor Nenad ...
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Born: February 23, 1958
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