Desire Avenue

A new compilation from David Sylvian, entitled Sleepwalkers, features the Nine Horses track, 'Wonderful World',a song that features Stina on vocals.

http://www.davidsylvian.com/sleepwalkers/

Love the cover artwork!

Are any of you lot fans of Sylvian's solo stuff? I was so mad about him when he was in Japan, but I don't think I've ever heard any of his solo stuff.

I was on youtube listening to Japan stuff the other day and there's a fantastic live version of 'Ghosts' I'd never heard. Ooh, that song was my theme tune when I was a teenager.

No, i've never been a Sylvian / Japan fan but there is a bizarre coincidence in that in 1986 David did a duet with Virginia Astley, my favourite female artist along with Stina, who of course sung with David twenty odd years later.
It really is a small world.

I've been a longtime admirer of Sylvian, ever since I heard 'Ghosts', which completely stopped me in my tracks. I thought it was easily the best and most interesting single in 1982, a year when it had stiff competition.
I could be exceedingly boring and tell you why, musically, it's so good, but I'll spare you that. Got a link for this live version, Beth?

Some of his solo albums are sublime-'Brilliant trees' for example, but there's nothing quite as good as 'Tin Drum' which was sui generis. The other track I love most on that album is 'Still Life in Mobile Homes' which has an outrageously brilliant melody for the chorus.

The Japan guys got together a few years later as 'Rain Tree Crow' and did some nice things, somewhat akin to 'Wonderful World' and 'Birds sing for their lives', two tracks that I think are great, albeit hugely enhanced by Stina's contribution.

He did some horrible collaborations with Robert Fripp, both of them should have known better.

For me, his best work was with the wonderful Holger Czukay (Can's bass player, say no more). They made two ambient albums 'Flux and Mutability' and 'Plight and Premonition' which I'd like to have on my desert island for when I'm having the Badedas bath in the lagoon.

sound world wrote:I've been a longtime admirer of Sylvian, ever since I heard 'Ghosts', which completely stopped me in my tracks. I thought it was easily the best and most interesting single in 1982, a year when it had stiff competition.

It had the same effect on me, it was completely mesmerising. I was trying to explain to someone (younger than me) once how extraordinary this song seemed in 1982, being one of the first mainstream pop songs done mostly on computers, and the only way I could describe the effect it had was to say it sounded like music from another planet. There was just nothing else like it around, despite electronic music having been in the charts for several years at that point. I still remember them performing it on TOTP, how utterly bizarre and out there it was compared to everything else on the show.

sound world wrote:]I could be exceedingly boring and tell you why, musically, it's so good, but I'll spare you that.

I'd like to hear please, if you don't mind? I'm not good at grasping music theory but I find it interesting nonetheless.

sound world wrote:Got a link for this live version, Beth?

Yep, here you go:




The footage is from 1983 so it's not visually great, but the sound is pretty good considering it's 27 years old. I just love the way they've made an already eerie song sound even stranger and darker in the live version, that saxophone and the added effects really add to the atmosphere. Sylvian's vocal is great too I must say.