Japan / Sylvian

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gek-opel

entered apprentice
michael said:
Yeah, I think the lyrics are fantastic there, also the banality of things like Late Night Shopping becomes amazing in contrast to the music.
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Yeah, the contextualisation between music and lyric is very finely judged (ie- in this case some kind of lysergic semi-comatosed witching-hour doom electronic funeral march with dead handclaps... transforming the otherwise humdrum domestic conversation of the lyric into something deeply sinister and otherworldly). And the closing end-piece of "Fire in the Forest", glowing with dying electronic embers like a synapse reaching for depleted serotonin, a reaching for a sort of hope.
 
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N

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
I've followed Japan and Sylvian since ca 1980 (I used to play Polaroids/Quiet Life to death over the speakers in the record shop I was working in at the time).

And I am probably the only one on here who found Blemish a disappointment.
I just found "Blemish" too bleak and too foggy when it came out; I get the sense of loss and breakup, but it just does not touch me.
Tthe last time I listened to it I still felt the same.
I will pick it up again one day and see if I can see the light, but for me the standout track (Late Night Shopping) and the artwork are the best bits.

For a breakup album I'd much rather listen to Marvin Gaye's "Here My Dear".


Tin Drum is the pinaccle of Sylvian, now he seems to have gone the same way as Bill Nelson, a soul with enough dosh to get by and looking for guidance in mysticism and religion while releasing introspective musings. I went the whole hog with Bill (well I jumped off around 1990 after losing interest) and Dave seems to be going the same way as Nelson (ie obscure soundtracks or ballet/theatre/installation music).

You might as well start with the Everything and Nothing collection for an intro (even if it overlaps with the "real" releases there are tracks on there that is not elswhere and it covers a lot of ground). The Hansa collection "Assemblage" is a good intro to the pre Tin Drum stuff (the only LP sampler available at the time, but seems to have been re-issued endlessly with different extras/tracklistings on CD). For the instrumental works try Camphor, but listen before investing.

The Rain Tree Crow release is worth getting as well as his contributions to other people's works (ie Sakamoto, Virginia Astley, Fripp, Sandii&the Sunsetz etc).

(and if anyone's got a Laserdisc player I still got "Oil on Canvas", but never seen it. The idea was to get the player, but before I got the player the technology had died).

Might be worth having a look at this list as well -
http://www.nightporter.co.uk/pages/newdiscog.htm
 
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F

francesco

Minerva Estassi
The anthology 2cd Everythig and Nothing is great, since Sylvian albums are flawed in my opinion... otherwise my favorite is Secret of the Beehive, sort of Scott Walker 3rd album meet Ecm.
 
P

polystyle

Well-known member
Taking Islands ...

Generally echoing , seconding and thirding all those best tracks on the Albums.
The group synthsized from this and from that, Satie , Night Porter, Asian perc.
Ghost definitely a standout .
The vid with Sakamoto playing it with them was great, don't think he played on the record track .
Bamboo Music essential listening, Sakamoto's sounds are fresh, great production,
in that Sylvian taking an Asian wind' way.
Taking Islands In Africa a real fav too. Those '80's clunky punchy syn and real drums.

Of David's post - Japan stuff , Songs For Shaman made up of all tasty cuts

Didn't follow his thread that closely after that ...
 
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henry s

Street Fighting Man
Tin Drum really um, obscured the glammy stuff that came before it...which is too bad...I mean, how about the snarling euphoria of "Automatic Gun"?...or the teutonic boogie of "Adolescent Sex"?
 
T

Tyro

The Kandy Tangerine Man
Both ''Adolescent Sex''and ''Obscure Alternatives'' contain some great music.Although heavily inspired by Roxy Music,influences from both contemporary Funk and New Wave were also prevalent making for quite a unique sound.

Unfortunately their OTT glam image set them at odds with their contemporaries,and it was this that ultimately stopped them breaking through sooner than they did.



http://www.myspace.com/thekandytangerineman
 
M

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
gek-opel said:
The problem with Sylvian is not "pretension" (which he's very good at...) but rather a tendency to drift towards overly lush adult-contemporary organicism. It is when he is set against his most rigorously synthetic backdrops that he does his best work (Tin Drum, Blemish etc). And hence the fact that large swathes of his solo discography are no-go areas for me as they end up being overly polite wallpaper.
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I love the pretension yeah. But all of the earlier solo albums were trying too hard, like when Bros tried to go adult, it dulled any interest for me. 'No, I'm a serious artist! Really!'
I hate it when pop musicians get serious, which ultimately for me Sylvian 'merely' is. 'Late Night Shopping' was the one that brought me back, I was like 'finally the pet shop boys do something worthwhile'.
 
M

michael

Bring out the vacuum
WOEBOT said:
except 'dead bees on a cake' which is pretty naff
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Yeah, stuff in 90s was almost all dire, IMO. That album he did with Fripp was as bad as you might expect. Awful, awful stuff. To an extent Nine Horses continues that trajectory, which is why I'm surprised I like any of it... ah well. The album closer, The Librarian, is pretty damn successful though. I seem to have a thing for album closers, though.
 
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michael

Bring out the vacuum
Also, thinking back to the original point of this thread, I'm not sure any post-Japan Sylvian stuff would particularly appeal to Japan fans. We've been raving about Blemish, but stylistically there aren't many points that have a similar appeal to Tin Drum or what have you. I don't like Japan much, actually...
 
D

dHarry

Well-known member
michael said:
Also, thinking back to the original point of this thread, I'm not sure any post-Japan Sylvian stuff would particularly appeal to Japan fans. We've been raving about Blemish, but stylistically there aren't many points that have a similar appeal to Tin Drum or what have you. I don't like Japan much, actually...
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Hmmm... Brilliant Trees can be considered as a development from Tin Drum, despite the acoustic-jazz organicism - Red Guitar's opaque (p)arch(ed) funk providing the bridge.

I love almost everything Japan did, and also a fair bit of Sylvian's solo work, from BT through to Blemish, in spite of his lapses into mawkish soul-baring, tasteful poeticism and MOR Sting-iness ("Let The Happiness In" on Secrets Of The Beehive, a lot of Gone To Earth and Dead Bees). There's usually enough interesting music and production going on to alleviate the sqeamishness, though admittedly I'm prepared to cut him more slack than most, for giving us Japan and style, poise, elegance, beauty, mystery and pretention.

I read a great blog-piece years ago reading Japan's Orientalism as a classic example of Deleuzo-Guattarian Becoming (rather than dodgy quasi-racist fetishism of the Other) - the reciprocal process whereby bored suburban Brits become-Oriental at the same time as their Oriental fantasies (of peasant life, communism etc.) become-western Pop fabulation - both creatively transformed in the process into something genuinely Other, new and strange. Transformative Pop exoticism - as evidenced by the preposterous Tin Drum cover: fetishised period details of peasant/communist China combined with the sublimely poised Sylvian, complete with chopsticks, designer specs and hairpsrayed dyed back-combed side-parting, looking off-camera, yet almost naturalised in the setting. Too incongruous to be read as simply a Chinese scene, a pop singer's portrait or album cover shot, or mere cultural tourism - like the album itself, it's all of the above and more, a vertiginous hall-of-mirrors of trans-cultural reference, a postcard from somewhere that doesn't exist:
4149TKTTC9L._AA240_.jpg
 
jenks

jenks

thread death
I seemed to spend huge chunks of the nineties listening to Gone To Earth, in the dark:slanted:

I think the general tenor of the discussion is accurate - his work can be uneven but even on soem of the less well recieved pieces - Damage, for example, - will have a glorious moment, the last track - The First Day.

I ahve found the doodling with Czukay never quite matching my hopes for sucha dream partnership but teh work on Nine Horses and Rain Tree Crow shows how well he can work with others, particularly the Japan contingent.

In the end Beehive is the album I now return to most, encapsulating the stark instrumentation and that proper sylvian croon complete with some of his finest lyrics.

And i still nick his line 'Guilty of stealing every thought I own' on a regular basis!
 
N

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
gek-opel said:
overly lush adult-contemporary organicism.
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It's definitely that, but currently 'Gone To Earth' is a good match for the cloying overcast humidity that's trying to pass itself off as a summer evening in my part of the world.

Whatever, 'Answered Prayers' is a genuinely lovely piece of ambient music.
 
CHAOTROPIC

CHAOTROPIC

on account
A friend lend me a copy of 'Gone to Earth' recently. Very very offputtingly expensive-sounding. The Sting comparison was apt ... all Les Paul Customs & vintage microphones, & the effortlessness of people with the studio time & cash to get things spot-on. I could hear the keys to the Porsche jingling in the pocket of the slap-bassist's cream deconstructed suit. & you just know the fucker's wearing a t-shirt under it, Dave Gilmour style. Dunno why that whole image bothers me so much*, but it does.

*really base jealousy??
 
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