Album Notes: Personnel: David Sylvian (guitar, synthesizer, samples); Robert Fripp (guitar); Frank Perry (bells, bowed gong). Recorded in London, England and Minneapolis, Minnesota between 1990 & 1994. Originally conceived as music for multi-media installations, as an audio-only experience Sylvian's album provides us with a soporific dose of ambient sounds. The title track is made up of cyclical motifs of bells and sustained chords reverberating like ripples on a pond, punctuated by a rich gong-like guitar chord. This is suffused with hushed animal calls, fragments of fuzzy talk-radio programmes and the garbled falsetto of contributor Robert Fripp. "Epiphany" takes sampled material of passing trains and hushed church bells and a plaintive human wailing phrase to make an all-too-brief interlude. Continuing in much the same atmospheric vein "The Beekeeper's Apprentice" is a summer doze in a wooded glade. Imagine chandeliers tinkling in the warm breeze and half-hear the faint sound of a distant civilisation. The hypnotic doze is peppered by shards of muted feedback buzzing in and out like an inquisitive bee, associating the music with its title. Bearing in mind this music was intended to accompany art installations it does work as an ambient album. It has less variety of sounds than, for example, the KLF's CHILL OUT but this disc serves to transport the patient listener to a calm and tranquil place.
Album Reviews: The Wire (1/00, pp.91-2) - "...[His] guitars, synthesizers, short-wave and samples blend with, or soak alongside, firstly Frank Perry's bowed gong and finger bells and, on the title track, Robert Fripp's frippertronics....[the results being] diffuse Chinois wallpaper motif..." Alternative Press (5/00, p.108) - 4 out of 5 - "...An ambient project that echoes Brian Eno's understated recordings from the '70s....this once-background music translates well as a pure listening experience....ethereal entertainment of the highest order."
Advantages: darkly personal challenging adult electronica Disadvantages: hard to listen to at times, plus Derek Bailey's atonal guitar
...DavidSylvian, the velvet voiced ex singer with Japan, and a solo artist since the early eighties is most well known for his often lush, romantic music.
Blemish is nothing like the neo-classical Secrets Of The Beehive, nothing like the ambient rock of Dead Bees On A Cake, nothing like the proto-world music of Words With The Shaman.
Blemish was written and recorded very quickly, as Sylvian was in the throes of a very painful separation from his wife and children, and predominantly features just Sylvian himself on all manner of electronica, which buzzes and fizzes most disagreably. Shards of angular guitar crop up courtesy of jazzer Derek Bailey but these are even more atonal than the electronics.
The opening title track is a hard to listen to reflection on his break up, lasting 13 minutes! If you can survive this, then...
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Advantages: wonderful songs on one the best recorded live albums ever Disadvantages: no "Darshan"
...You need this album. You just do.
I could just leave it at that, but I will elaborate a little.
I was at this concert - Royal Albert Hall, December 1993 - and it was one of the most amazing gigs I've ever attended. Never have I felt so emotional at a gig, never has the music spoken to me in this way. I know that sounds a bit farty, but please bear with me!
A few years earlier Robert Fripp had asked DavidSylvian (ex singer with Japan and now a successful and innovative solo artist) to front a new version of Fripp's band King Crimson.
Probably wisely Sylvian declined but the pair agreed to work together, first on series of improvised concerts in Japan and Italy in 1992 where they developed a stunning selection of new music, then on a fully fledged album project with a full band. This was issued in 1993 as The First Day and is well...
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Advantages: It's real music Disadvantages: It takes a few listens
...Who are and what are Nine Horses?
You may ask, this band name or more correctly musical collective is the tile for a one off musical collaboration between DavidSylvian (ex 80's pop group Japan) and his brother and long time musical partner Steve Jensen (ex-Japan drummer) and re-mixer, electronic composer Burnt Friedman.
The 9 tracks that make up the album "Snow Borne sorrow" (catalogue number SS006) started off life as compositions in 2001, with Sylvian and Jensen renewing a song writing partnership from many years past.
With the end of the 20-year association with the Virgin label David built his own studio called Samadhisound and also gave his own label the same name.
At first the brothers where writing as a means of getting used to the newer technology in the studio.
The pace of the work was painfully slow as both of them...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
very helpful 26.03.2007
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