JAPAN, DAVID SYLVIAN, RYUICHI SAKAMOTO, YMO

Interview: Ryuichi Sakamoto

2010-10-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

story Matthew Schnipper

Ryuichi Sakamoto has the finest hair you’ve ever seen. It’s incredibly thin, but there’s so much of it, like the hair version of a high thread count. It comes up from the center of his head and out in two U arches. He is constantly flipping it over his face while he talks, just like he is constantly laughing. Actually, he’s giggling. And mostly at himself. While he is an incredibly serious composer, he’s got undeniable goofball vibes, as though as an adult he decided to stop taking this music shit so seriously and just jam the piano until he was entertained and that that might be good enough. Turns out, it is. In his West Village studio, surrounded by keyboards of different types, a big cardboard box of various percussion, years worth of scrapbook photos pinned to the wall and a rug that looks like it may have once lined a playpen, we talked with Sakamoto about his new album, the simply, aptly named Playing the Piano. Sakamoto has had a long career dabbling in many varieties of music—from his ’70s electronic group Yellow Magic Orchestra (kinda like the Japanese Kraftwerk) to his film scores (including the Oscar-winning The Last Emperor)—but on Piano, he’s winnowed away the extras, reworking many of his complex compositions to their marrow and playing them solo. It’s a beautiful, moving record, and, curious about the propulsion behind its origins, we sat with Sakamoto to find out. He plays New York City this Monday. It’s sold out, but worth scalping for. Playing the Piano is out now.

When did you first play the piano?

In kindergarten, all the kids had to at least touch keys, and that’s probably the first encounter for me. Also, one of my uncles was a music lover and he had a big collection of vinyl, and sometimes I went to his room and picked up some vinyl and played it by myself. Mostly classical. After kindergarten, my friends took a piano lesson with an old Japanese lady piano teacher, so I just followed my friends. It was not my intention to fall in love with piano. When I realized no one was there, like fifth or sixth grade, everyone had stopped piano lessons except me. So it was not my intention, it’s just like a routine I went there every Saturday and Sunday. It’s always like that.

How did you decide to do a solo piano album?

I call it self-cover, because the pieces I played were written before for certain reasons, for my own solo albums, so I don’t think there’s a new piece for that CD, they’re all covers. I just wanted to play, that’s what I do onstage for a tour. More recently I played the piano of those pieces—some film music, some from my solo albums—but just on the piano. So that’s what I do. I just wanted to put out what I do recently.

Why is it just you?

It’s probably the easiest way to express my musicality, because I started playing the piano when I was three or four. I was forced by the school to play in kindergarten, but it was good. I was probably lucky to touch the piano. Since then, the piano is the closest instrument to me, almost some extension of my body. When I imagine some music in my mind, almost automatically I imagine the piano keys. Sometimes some kind of music is not able to be played on the piano. As far as the timbre, of course the piano is very limited, like compared to the guitar you can express many, many different timbres, very pure acoustic or very electric. With the piano, it’s so limited, and also you cannot play the intervals between keys, that’s also a limitation. But there are many benefits also. Probably more than half of the cases I imagine music in my mind on the piano keys. It’s easy to go to the scores to write in that case. It’s the easiest way for me to play music. Cost-wise, it’s cheaper.

I would have expected you to have a very emotional response to it, but this seems very logical. Do logistics dictate that much of how you think about music?

Probably the biggest reason [I play piano] is I cannot play the other kinds of instruments. I’m a terrible drummer, I almost cannot play the guitar, nor sax, nor trumpet. A little bit of tuba, because when I was in junior high I played the tuba in marching band, but that’s it. The piano is the instrument I can play the most.

But if you said, I want to make this record and tour with a drummer, you could. You have before.

The simplicity to have a piano on stage and just myself… It could be really wonderful to have Christian Fennesz, actually we have toured just the two of us in Europe sometimes, like last year or the year before, just my piano and Fennesz in summertime in Italy. It was so beautiful. So it’s still possible in the future, but this time I like simplicity.

What does it feel like to perform solo?

It’s also easy to play with a band or with a big orchestra, because they can hide me. Just being myself on stage with nothing to hide, I feel like I’m naked, totally naked in front of the audience. It’s intense.

Really? You’ve had such a fruitful career, it’s still scary?

If I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t. But after the CD release, still I have to do it by myself, to show up on stage and present my music to the audience. More than 30 years ago when we were doing the Yellow Magical Orchestra, we were talking about maybe we should stay in the studio, and with 3-D projector cam project live from the studio to anywhere in the world. Now we can do that.

In the mid-’80s you made an album mostly of samples. So many people are catching up now to what you were conceptualizing, and now you’ve gone back to what you were doing when you were three.

Because not many people are doing this kind of thing. The majority is using the laptop now. I sometimes do use a laptop. People hate practicing, even me I hate practicing, and nowadays it’s not a joke. You don’t need to practice, or even be a player, you just need a laptop and you can make music, seriously. But I feel like because I’m trained, I can play with my body robotically.

What compels you to still make music? Or to sign new bands and have a record label? What’s exciting to you about music now?

There are many aspects. One thing is I’m still discovering, almost every day, unknown music to me. Finally discovering the music of Mahler, and some people were talking about those composers in the beginning of the ’70s already. For some reason I hated it, so I can listen to those composers, just very recently, this year. The switch was on somehow, so I started listening to those pieces, to those composers, and it’s very interesting, very very interesting. So the good thing is there is always unknown music in the world.

But you’ve known Mahler probably since you were a teenager.

Of course, but I didn’t like it.

What changed?

As I get older, boundaries get lower somehow. Boundaries between music, or between what I like and don’t like. I used to dislike Hawaiian, for some reason. I don’t know why. Then some years ago, I went to Hawaii for a holiday, and I happened to listen to the earlier Hawaiian music, the original not the resultant music, by chance, and I was just blown away. So I started collecting and I’m still fascinated. So I got to know Hawaiian music and how they created that result. That was created for the white people from American when they started building the hotels on the shore. Chanting was originally when they finally came to Hawaii from Tahiti, they brought the chants from Tahiti. So curiosity never stops. That’s a good thing in music.

How did you start doing a record label. I saw you signed OOIOO, and I can’t think of a band more different from Playing the Piano. What’s exciting to you about a band like that? In feeling, are they the same thing as what you’re doing now?

Not the same thing, but I have both. Not only two, but many sides. I grew up with the music of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, but on the other side I grew up John Cage and avant garde jazz and free music, improvisation. It is not the music, but the sound. I honestly like any sound. Birds. I have a very broad space to accept or enjoy anything, except quite.

That must be overwhelming, because everything is exciting.

I mostly choose what I like, what I listen to. I’m very focused on working on something here, working hard, but as soon as I hear about singing I stop and go there to listen to it or record. If there’s some beautiful music I would love to use them in my music, I do sometimes. But field recoding is like, you get maybe five very short beautiful moments in fifteen minutes of recording. It’s hard to find the beautiful moments.

What were biggest musical moments in your life?

There’s several big moments in my early life. Like when I got to like the Beatles, that was a big moment, 11 years old.

Did you speak English at that point?

No.

But you just knew it. I guess everyone in the world knew it.

Yes. The lyrics didn’t mean so much. The sound, the music and the style, the fashion. The impact of the Beatles was huge. Then the next impact was Debussy.

Oh yeah! That makes better sense.

Two years later or something, 13, 14. It was a big impact on me.

What was it like?

When I heard the Debussy for the first time, I knew there was nothing like this music of what I had listened to before. So this was really a new sound. I didn’t know this kind of music, it was totally different from music that I knew like the Beatles, but there was some similarity between the Beatles and Debussy I found, some kind of harmony, the sense of harmony, that there’s some similarity. I kind of sense that, like a ninth. [Here he gets up and plays the piano in the ninth chord.] But because I didn’t know the name of the harmony, I had no idea. Then some years later, I found this is called a “ninth,” ninth harmony, ninth chord. Maybe by chance or maybe George Martin did, in the Beatles music there’s a ninth harmony. There’s a lot in Dubussy’s music.

I would never ever make that connection. Did that feel weird that you made that connection when you were 11 years old?

I didn’t feel it was weird. But its an excitement, a lot of pleasure to find this kind of harmony and find the connection between very different music, it was a huge excitement.

That connection between different music is maybe the strand between your entire career. So knowing that you think all sounds may be equal, do you have to play on a special piano?

There’s no guarantee to get a good piano when I go on tour, when I use local pianos. In many cases I get terrible condition in pianos. Terrible! Even in Italy. It happens all the time. So I asked Yamaha to make one. Actually, I asked three. So then, one in New York, one in Japan, the other one is in London. I tour mostly in Japan and Europe and very rarely here. But for the recording, I use the new piano most.

What’s special about it? You don’t strike me as picky, honestly.

To have a customized piano costs a lot, so, I have to use it. But meanwhile, I sometimes miss the sound of the Steinway, sometimes. So, sometimes I go to the studio maybe they have Steinways and maybe I go and play it. But, also carrying my own piano on tour costs a lot. And last year I did and this time in the states I carried two pianos.

Why?

Well cause some pieces I want to play for the duet, I need two pianos. I could hire another pianist or something, but I want to play both.

Can you still play without any of these things though?

If someone said there was a concert you wanted to play in Kansas or in Prague or any of those things and they said, would you still do it? Or do you need all of those things now?

I need all of those things. But I have another idea to play music in a very little audience like maybe four or five people, in a very little small room, almost a tea ceremony room. Of course we cannot put a piano in a tiny room, but something like total intimacy.

Please invite me.

That’s my dream.

Why? That’s a great dream, it’s just a funny dream.

It is funny. Well, I had an experience sitting in a tea ceremony room in Kyoto some years ago. It was a very unique and special experience. When we were sitting no one talks, and suddenly a storm came. And so we were just listening to the sound of the storm outside. Inside, sitting inside a very tiny room for maybe half an hour. I felt like I was in the center of the universe or something, it was almost like meditating. So that, according to that experience I wanted to share a similar experience with very few friends and you know. It’s a very different way of listening to a sound.

FLASHBACK : BLEMISH

2010-09-07T05:43:00.000-07:00

SOURCE : http://www.ascentmagazine.com/articles.aspx?articleID=32&page=read&subpage=past&issueID=23

Aspirant and musician, David Sylvian, on learning to embrace both darkness & light into his experience of sadhana - Interview by Marcus Boon

photo by darren keith, www.darrenkeith.com

Introduction:

My favourite David Sylvian song is called “Fire in the Forest.” Recorded in 2003 for his most recent CD, Blemish, the song, just a voice singing over a humming guitar drone, has a gentle intensity that pulled me through a winter spent riding around on public transportation in the suburbs of Toronto. Phrases like “there is always sunshine/behind the grey skies/I will try to find it/yes I will try” heard on headphones again and again in snowy darkness somehow showed a fragile determination to transcend the ego’s limits. The track itself is all the more moving for its place at the end of a record full of dark songs about spiritual struggle.

Blemish is not a word normally associated with spiritual practice, yet the record reflects Sylvian’s growing and deepening experience of sadhana, first with Mother Mira, then Shree Ma, with whom Sylvian and his family lived in California in the mid-1990s, and in recent years with Mata Amritanandamayi or Amma, as she’s affectionately known.

Sylvian grew up in a non-religious family in South London, England and formed the group Japan in 1974. The group went on to considerable success as glam/new romantic rockers, but broke up after releasing the marvelous Tin Drum (1981). Sylvian has pursued a solo career since, with early highlights including Brilliant Trees (1984) and Secrets of the Beehive (1987). A master of material describing an existential spiritual struggle – such as Tin Drum’s “Ghosts” with its chorus, “Just when I think I’m winning/when I’ve broken every door/the ghosts of my life/blow wilder than before” – Sylvian’s songs have taken on an increasingly explicit spiritual form, reflecting his studies with various teachers after his move to America in the 1990s, where he still lives with his wife, singer Ingrid Chavez, and children.

After the devotional lushness of 1999’s Dead Bees on a Cake, the austere, intense Blemish, with its stunning minimalist guitar work courtesy of Christian Fennesz and Derek Bailey, comes as a surprise. The surprise for me, however, is one of recognition, of having feelings, confusions and internal struggles that I could not find a way of articulating suddenly manifested, in gentle yet rigorous form.

One of Sylvian’s most remarkable songs, Secrets of the Beehive’s “Orpheus,” sings of the Greek legend, whose singing could charm animals, humans and gods alike. We think of music today as something disposable, as “pop,” as background music. Without hiding behind the rhetoric of “high art” or of any particular religious practice, Sylvian’s music points to that Orphic power of music, to reveal to ourselves what it means to be alive.

I met Sylvian in downtown Manhattan with his ten-year-old daughter, Amira. The singer still has the beauty of legend, but little of the ethereal quality that is habitually attributed to him. He speaks quietly, thoughtfully, precisely, while his daughter speaks on a cellphone to her mother, or lounges, reading, generously tolerating us. –MB

Interview:

David Sylvian: I often feel that there’s a greater union between myself and my teacher when I’m not physically in their presence. There’s a whole other level of experience when I’m in their presence, but that sense of non-physical merging, of intimacy, is profound.

Marcus Boon : It’s surprising that you can visit someone who’s been dead for 600 years and burst into tears in their presence. That’s how I felt at Hazrat Allaudin Sabri’s shrine in India. They say that he was so fierce in his lifetime that the only person who could come physically close to him was a musician, who would sit fifty feet away and play for him. And you can still feel that fierceness today!

DS : That’s another element, isn’t it? The element of ferocity in the proximity of the guru. People talk about the experience of bliss, but the level of ferocity, the fire that one has to walk through, live through – that is also very intense. The degree of suffering increases as the experience of sadhana deepens, for me, because at first there’s less attachment to who one believes one is and it’s easier to let go of all the things that need to be let go of. As you move through different stages, the degree of fear increases because ultimately you’re getting to the root foundations of the ego, which are unshakable. And there is real fear because you see the death of the ego approaching, and if you let go of that, what is there?

As you have to face your fears in the presence of your guru, you witness other people going through their experiences. There’s often this perception, “Why do I have to live through this fear? I’ll take on anybody else’s obstacles, but not this one!” [laughs]. It’s so pinpoint-perfect, it’s precision-made, this laser-like intensity focusing on just what needs to be focused on. Once you move beyond a given level of fear, apprehension, there’s an enormous release and a whole new world of possibility seems to open up. You live and breathe that for a while until you come up against that next obstacle.

MB: A lot of people like to think that a spiritual narrative consists of going from darkness and suffering to peace and equanimity, but I think of your music, and in particular of Blemish, which is so much darker than the records that came before. It’s still a record about sadhana …

DS: It’s darker than ever! But going through that experience of darkness at this point in my life is very different than before. First of all, there is a certain amount of objectivity, of being able to step back and say, all of this is just par for the course, it’s just part of the learning process, whatever comes out of this is just to strengthen me and help me to burn off whatever needs to be cleared away so that I can see things clearly.

And a lot of things that I couldn’t face in my life I could face in the studio environment. I closed that door and started working and opened myself to whatever came through. And often it was very negative emotions. And I thought, well, I’ll just look straight at them, and more than that, I’ll take them even further than I feel them in my daily life, because I wanted to go as far with them as I possibly could. I felt very safe doing that. I felt that there was a strength inside of me that would allow me to pull back at the end of the day and be able to do away with those emotions. So I was pushing myself deeper and deeper into the negativity of the experience, wanting to know what that felt like, how does that surface and how do you give that a voice? It was a way of experiencing those experiences and giving them a new vocabulary that was pertinent for now.

MB : Now, as in our time?

DS : Yes. I was also feeling that all the familiar forms of popular song were no longer doing it for me. Even those evergreen artists that you go back to time and time again weren’t moving me anymore. The form had lost its potency; it had been exhausted. I was beginning to feel: what next, what do you do? And I felt that I personally had to find a new form for what I was experiencing. I feel it’s true of other arts, too: now is an important time to find vocabularies that are pertinent to our time.

Everything becomes a commodity. We’re told that if we understand someone’s taste in how they decorate their home, then we can probably guess what kind of music will go with that environment.

Everything gets tied together in packages so we can all have what’s known as “good taste.” We can dress well, we have good taste in our cultural environment, we can participate in it but without any commitment, no going out on a limb, always tapping into something that’s termed “classic,” whether it’s a couch or a Marvin Gaye record.

But when we find something that challenges all of that in the culture, that’s when we discover who we are, and our response isn’t preconditioned. We don’t have the benefit of reading a review of this experience prior to having it. We have to comprehend it on our own terms, ask: “Why did I feel so irritated when I was provoked in that way?” I want to have that kind of experience. The one that isn’t scripted. The one that will throw you into the deep end of an experience and you just have to work it out for yourself. There is no right or wrong response, only your true response. And that’s what I try to find in my work, that true response. It doesn’t necessarily make it that comfortable an experience to listen to, but that’s not the issue here. It’s just trying to find a means to grapple with what it means to be alive in the here and now, trying to find a vocabulary for it, trying to press the right buttons in me, and hopefully that will communicate to others.

MB: When you think of musicians who’ve become involved in sadhana, they often take on the costumery that comes with sadhana, but you seem to have made a conscious decision against doing that.

DS : It’s just not an outfit that feels comfortable to wear. You try everything at some point or another. When I was with Shree Ma we went through that, as a family, supporting and performing with her, but it didn’t feel right.

MB: Have you done bhajans?

DS: I haven’t recorded them, but we’ve sung them, obviously. I’m very familiar with the form. But there’s a certain resistance to that as a musician, an artist. I feel that I’m a very fallible person, I have powerfully conflicting emotions, and I don’t want to give the false impression that all is right in my world.

On one level, the world has a beautiful simplicity and clarity to it; on another level it’s only got far more complicated, with an increased degree of suffering. Sometimes I may only want to focus on the blissful elements of Divine awareness, maybe within an entire project or just within one piece of music. Or maybe it lies behind everything I do already. It’s hard to say. I don’t analyze what I do to that degree. But I can’t do away with all the questions I have about what it means to be alive in the here and now, all the troubles and emotional conflicts, the love and hate that live side by side.

I don’t believe I ever feel only love except possibly in the lap of Amma. Outside of that beautiful place, love is accompanied by a whole complexity of emotions, including its mirror opposite. I want my work to have that complexity, because the best work is the kind of material that, no matter what frame of mind you come to it with, you can still see yourself mirrored in it.

The great failure of so-called “spiritual music” that we’re surrounded by in this culture is that it’s a music that tries to placate, it tries to insist that you be peaceful and filled with love. Well, nothing could irritate me more than being surrounded by a work of art at any level that insists I feel something. I would rather my work embody all the possibilities and let people find themselves within it, and find a release. That’s the best that I can do. I wouldn’t want to give the impression of an ivory tower existence where nothing seems to touch you anymore, that somehow you can ride over all these obstacles because you’ve found a greater inner peace.

MB: That’s the problem of New Age music, and why so many people are so resistant to the idea of spiritual practice, or music that addresses spiritual issues.

DS : Yes, but it’s funny – we spoke earlier about spiritual music, and the first name that came up was John Coltrane. And that’s the antithesis of everything we think of culturally as spiritual music. But it’s right there, the fire of purification, of suffering, of bliss. It’s all there, embodied, and you can tap into that work on any of those fundamental levels and experience it in a beautiful and profound way. That’s the beauty and strength of a work that reflects all that we are and potentially can be. Maybe it’s too much to strive for and maybe you’re guaranteed to fail 99.9 percent of the time. But it’s definitely a goal worth aspiring to.

MB: Your own sadhana is involved in very complex spiritual traditions, but the terms in which you describe spiritual struggle in your music, aside from a song like “Krishna Blue” on Dead Bees on a Cake, avoid direct reference to these traditions and practices. Why do you think that is?

DS: I don’t want to fall into a stereotypical response to my relationship to the Divine. I don’t want it to feel too comfortable in my own work, as a writer. Writing a piece like “Krishna Blue” – that was during a period of the enormous romance of the relationship with the guru, which is lovely, and it’s still present in my life. But now I want to deal with the complexity.

In a sense, the guru romances you to begin, you kind of get an easy ride so that you can just experience all the profound love that is there, without the discolouration of your own ego. And once you have been led in so far, you begin to have experiences that are more profound but far more difficult to undergo. I don’t want to fall back on the romance of the journey. What is more intriguing is the reality of the journey because the reality is so much more amazing than simply the romance. The reality of the journey encompasses so much, and there’s no separation from it in any aspect of life. Not one aspect, no matter what one is doing. That’s an incredible thought.

I compartmentalized my life at some point, saying, there’s this and there’s that and then there’s spiritual life. To me, now, it’s all become spiritual life. Compartmentalizing seems to be born out of what one perceives to be the good and bad in one’s self, the different faces we show to ourselves, and ultimately the need to tell a story about who we are that excludes activities that don’t quite fit in with the story, which we may enact occasionally and then bury when they’re no longer necessary. There’s no part I’ll allow myself to push to one side and say, well, that’s my dirty little secret and I keep that over there. No, it’s all a part of my spiritual life. That’s a tremendous recognition. Years and years of analysis couldn’t have brought me to this point in time, to bring all of these separate elements together and embrace them as one.

MB: It’s so hard to know what to do with the outbursts, the things that one would like to be exceptions to the nice pure spiritual system. I love that title, Blemish, for that reason. It’s the hardest thing to face up to.

DS: It really is. To me the notion of telling a story about who one is, while it facilitates a sense of mental well-being and coherence to one’s life journey, is basically a lie. It’s so well edited that it can’t possibly embrace who we really are, and of course who we really are is beyond all of that. So I’ve tried to let go of the notion of the story. In fact, now that there are all these different component parts of who I am, there is no conceivable story that can hold it. There are moments that shine with clarity and beauty, and then there are these darker elements that are extremely dark. What am I going to do with them? All I can say is that that’s Divine too, and I now have to bring them in and embrace them as who I am, and they’re part of me until whenever, until the next stage.

Marcus Boon teaches contemporary literature at York University in Toronto. He writes about music for The Wire, and studies ashtanga yoga and Tibetan Buddhism. His work can be found at Hungry Ghost www.hungryghost.net.

Thanks to Eddie Stern, Robert Moses and Kristin Leigh for their generous help with this article.

Copyright ©2007 ascent magazine, first Canadian yoga magazine, yoga for an inspired life

MICK KARN APPEAL

2010-06-05T01:05:00.000-07:00

With great sadness we regret to inform you that Mick has recently been diagnosed with advanced stages of cancer. Mick is currently in a positive mood and undergoing further tests and treatment. His family and friends are close with him, supporting him in practical ways, and surrounding him with their love, friendship and care.

Mick has been struggling financially for some considerable time now and we are hoping that this appeal may help to raise funds for any necessary treatment and perhaps go some way towards providing a small degree of financial support whilst Mick's immediate family provide the care and comfort we would all wish for him. We are hoping that his friends, fans and musical colleagues will, over the coming months, offer any support they feel capable of giving. Quite aside from the sheer brunt of daunting medically-related costs, Mick's clear and major concern is for the security and well being of his wife and young son.

If you would like to make a donation whether as an individual or as a group, you can do so via the paypal link below which has been set up for this sole and express purpose. Any support you are able to give, no matter how small, could make a difference in helping Mick cope during this difficult period. His friends will be looking at a variety of ways to raise funds.

If you would simply like to leave your kind messages of support for Mick, please do so, here: Messages

We will keep you all updated as often as we can.

Please do note that news is released with Mick's full approval.

Posted: 3rd June 2010 in http://www.mickarn.net

FROM LIFEINTOKYO DOT NET - THE JAPAN CONNECTION

2010-05-30T19:54:00.000-07:00

WITH BEST COMPLIMENTS TO http://lifeintokyo.net

Tsuchiya on the cover of his 1982 solo album, "Rice Music." Photo by Masayoshi Sukita.

Masami Tsuchiya & Ippu-Do

Not to be confused with the Aum Shinrikyo scientist Masami Tsuchiya, who was sentenced to death for his involvement in the 1995 Sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway, this Masami Tsuchiya is much more happy to walk around in space-age stewardess outfits and unleash face melting guitar solos on the unsuspecting public.

Tsuchiya formed Ippu-Do in 1979 along with keyboardist Akira Mitake and percussionist Shoji Fujii and the group released their first album, "Normal," that same year (with the name " Ippppu-Do" on the cover) Crafted with standard New Wave sensibilities, their debut can be a bit of a frustrating listen as Tsuchiya's generally painful vocals, backed by a plodding rhythm section and numbing production, occasionally give way to sharp synthesizer programming, groovy rhythms and supreme guitar shredding. It's a bit like Japan's first album, actually, since Ippu-Do find themselves sticking to second-fiddle rock archetypes more often than to their own, and much stronger, ideas.

Their next two albums, 1980's "Real" and 1981's "Radio Fantasy," followed the same general pattern, mixing low-tier New Wave with moments of occasionally brillant technopop. These records come off equally as frustrating, as it's clear the band isn't playing to their full potential.

Ippu-Do finally seemed to get their act together with the 1982 single "Sumire September Love," a light hearted pop track that reached #2 in Japan, sold 800,000 copies and was used in a Kanebo Cosmetics commercial 2, 3. Much like how David Sylvian totally changed his vocals for Japan's "Quiet Life," Tsuchiya's vocals are completely calmed down on "...September Love." Without the phony rock howl, Tsuchiya comes off as a much more comfortable and confident singer (though his voice is still pretty limited), and it leaves a lot more room in the mix for the track's punchy synthesizers and out-of-nowhere violin solo.

Following "...September Love's" success, Ippu-Do took a short break for Tsuchiya to record his first solo album, "Rice Music," and play guitar with Japan during their Sons of Pioneers tour in 1982. One of Tsuchiya's best efforts, "Rice Music," is a consistent set of songs with somewhat avant leanings. Tsuchiya thows in the ususal East vs. West, traditional vs. modern stuff one would expect from someone working in the shadow of Yellow Magic Orchestra, but he, along with his cast of excellent guest musicians, uses those themes to great effect. It's worth tracking down a copy of the album just for the guests, who include Steve Jansen, Mick Karn, Ryuichi Sakamoto (on the track "Kafka"), Bill Nelson and Percy Jones. Tsuchiya even has photographer Masayoshi Sukita (famous for his pictures of David Bowie in the 70s) "playing" a Polaroid SX-70 on the album!

After returning from his tenure as Japan's tour guitarist, Tsuchiya re-formed Ippu-Do with Akira Mitake to record a fourth album, 1983's "Night Mirage." Percussionist Shoji Fujii didn't return to the band for this album, and they instead enlisted Steve Jansen to play drums. Richard Barbieri also contributed to the album, and his synth programming can be heard all over the track "Moon Mirage." Tsuchiya's time touring with Japan clearly influenced him substantially, and the LP plays as a fantastic companion to the material on Japan's "Gentlemen Take Polaroids" and "Tin Drum." The album is filled with similarities to Japan's work, from jilted East/West funk to Erik Satie inspired compositions. However, the LP still stands extremely strong on its own and is likely Tsuchiya and Mitake's finest recording.

Ippu-Do called it quits after releasing a live album in 1984 and Tsuchiya and Mitake managed fairly well with their solo careers through the end of the 80s. Tsuchiya has since released another six solo albums, though none have reached the caliber of "Rice Music." Tsuchiya also landed a gig with the Duran Duran offshoot Arcadia (more proof of Nick Rhodes' idolization of all things related to David Sylvian) and contributed to their excellent 1985 LP, "So Red the Rose." Mitake has fared slightly less well in his own pursuits, though his 1983 solo debut, "Out of Reach," produced by Richard Barbieri, is generally a satisfying listen.

RYUICHI WON MEXT ART PRIZE

2010-03-13T20:50:00.000-08:00

Summer Wars' Hosoda Wins Japanese Government Prize (Updated)
posted on 2010-03-12 07:16 EST

Ryuichi Sakamoto, the composer of The Wings of Honneamise, Appleseed, and the Oscar-winning score for The Last Emperor live-action film, won this year's main MEXT Art Encouragement Prize in the General Entertainment category for his "Ryuichi Sakamoto Playing the Piano 2009" solo tour.

MORE ON DAVID SYLVIAN - MANAFON

2009-11-07T04:39:00.002-08:00

Categorized | Featured, Record Reviews
Tags | David Sylvian, SamadhiSound, TLOBF Recommended

David Sylvian – Manafon
Posted on 21 September 2009 by Jude Clarke
(http://www.thelineofbestfit.com)

ORIGINAL LINK

David Sylvian has been on one heck of an artistic journey since his first musical appearance as front man in the early, New York Dolls-apeing incarnation of 1980s favourites (and thinking-person’s New Romantics) Japan. That gradual, but ultimately dramatic evolution, from swoon-inducing lead singer to fiercely intelligent and challenging avant-garde writer and performer has continued, and quite possibly attained its highest peak yet on this, his twenty first post-Japan release.

The first thing to say about this astonishing work is that it’s less an album of “songs”, more almost an audio poetry book. Before I could even begin to start marshalling my thoughts sufficiently to write about it, I felt compelled to sit and transcribe the lyrics to each track (bar the instrumental ‘The Department Of Dead Letters’), the better to mull over and savour the striking images, ideas and above all emotions that they articulate.

To the sparsest, sparest musical accompaniment, Sylvian seemingly lays bare a troubled soul. It is hard not to interpret the words as disturbing and personal, particularly in the repeated references to suicide: “My suicide, my better days, there’s nothing I regret” from ‘Small Metal Gods’, for example, or pretty much all of ‘The Greatest Living Englishman’, which taken as a whole reads like an extended suicide note, or at best the story of a failed attempt. It tells (autobiographically?) of a man who felt that “the love he engendered would never be enough”, who encountered “plastic-coated surfaces” and “shut himself outside” and appears to be singing from a hospital bed where “the curtains round the bed are drawn / Broadcast voices from the ward / The humming of machines are heard”. The reference to “a man with so much self in his writing” would only appear to confirm that this is Sylvian telling his own story. The description of a “child of the 50s / with no common sense / no easy resting place” in ‘The Rabbit Skinner’ also sounds autobiographical.

In ‘Random Acts of Senseless Violence’ Sylvian moves one step away from the purely personal, and manages to evoke, probably better than any writer that I’ve read thus far on the subject, the feeling of non-specific, generalised dread and fear that have seeped into the general psyche since 9/11 and the London bombings. Bald couplets like “The targeted will be non-specific / We’ll roll the numbers, play with chance” and, especially, “Someone’s back kitchen stacked like a factory / With improvised devices, there’s bound to be injuries” and “No phone-ins, no courtesy, no kindness / And the future will contain random acts of senseless violence” produce a genuine chill, and a shock of recognition that is the mark of genuinely affecting poetry.

A female protagonist also appears, elusive, withdrawn, and mysterious on ‘Snow White in Appalachia’ (“Sometimes you’re only a passenger in the time of your life”) and ‘Emily Dickinson’ (“Without so much as a kiss, or the comfort of strangers / Withdrawing into herself”). The album’s pervasive sense of hopelessness and nihilism is best illustrated on the former, with the line “And there is no maker, just an exhaustible indifference”.

One of the many impressive things about the lyricism Sylvian displays is that you notice, almost as an afterthought, how he manages to produce perfect rhymes, time after time, without sacrificing the sense of the words, or ever making it sound contrived. Just look at these lines, from ‘Small Metal Gods’:

“I’ve placed the gods in a ziplock bag, I’ve put them in a drawer

They’ve refused my prayers for the umpteenth time, so I’m evening up the score

Small metal gods from a casting line, from a factory in Mumbai

Some manual labourers’ bread and butter, and a single-minded lie”

Beautiful, meaningful and they sound as good as the meaning that they convey.

What of the music, then? Sylvian assembled a collection of expert musicians in the series of sessions that created this album (the first in 2004, the last in 2008), whom he describes as a “remarkable group of individuals who’ve pursued the less trodden path where music and free improvisation are concerned”. The resulting accompaniment is sparse, spare, sometimes interjecting fiercely to punctuate the lyrics and Sylvian’s beautiful, tremulous yet underplayed vocal, at other times stepping back and letting the words and voice do most of the work. It also succeeds in genuinely mirroring or conjuring up distinct and specific moods and feelings to complement those conveyed in the words.

In summary, then this album is one to immerse oneself in. Accepting and embracing the slow, painstaking pace, and allowing the words, sounds, ideas and that voice seep in (possibly whilst reclining in a darkened room) will truly reveal its manifold, dark, truthful and brave appeal. One of the most striking and impressive releases of the year.

2009-11-07T04:39:00.001-08:00

MANAFON

2009-09-25T22:15:00.001-07:00

Mojo & The Wire Interviews

More Manafon reviews...

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ORIGINAL SOURCE

David Sylvian and the Mysterious Sound of Inspiration
By PAUL SHARMA

Stretching pop music to the point where it reaches the avant-garde is no easy feat. But over the course of 30 years, starting as a teenager with the New Romantic band Japan and through a series of acclaimed solo albums, David Sylvian has successfully navigated the musical opposites of improvisation and composition, tonality and atonality. Along the way he's worked with a changing ensemble of top-flight musicians from the jazz and electronic worlds.

David Sylvian (by Yuka Fujii)

Mr. Sylvian's new release, "Manafon," which comes out next week, brings together leading figures from jazz improvisation scene, including Evan Parker, John Tilbury and Keith Rowe, as well as the electronic musicians Christian Fennesz and Otomo Yoshihide. Each piece of music on the new album was improvised and recorded in one take. Mr. Sylvian added his vocals at a later stage, basing the melody on the improvised themes and writing the lyrics on the spot. "Manafon" is a sparse work from start to finish, with Mr. Sylvian's minimalist melodic lines upfront in the mix, working against an abstract musical background. But it is lyrically dense and explores themes such as faith and solitude -- in spirit close to the films of Ingmar Bergman. The result makes for intense listening; "Manafon" is unlikely to be played as background music.

We talked with Mr. Sylvian about his new release at his management's office in West London.

Q: How would you describe the working process behind "Manafon"?

I've tried to create a modern chamber piece, in the sense of chamber music as well as theater, where there is a central narrator, but every slight nuance around them adds or changes the meaning of the work. So, I wanted a dramatic intimacy, but sense of a profound isolation of the main character. There is an economy of means and I tried to strip the work back to the bare essentials -- this has been an ongoing process for me. I think I have found the right context with this group of improvisers, with enough silence in the music, so that the voice could make its presence felt.

Q: And that voice added after the improvisation?

There was nothing written when we went into the studio -- this was very much free improvisation. So, the selection of the group of musicians for each improvisation was paramount. I recognized on the day which pieces could work for me. The process was that I took the material away and then wrote and recorded the vocal line over in a couple of hours. So I couldn't analyze my contribution and that in a way was my form of improvisation -- and I enjoyed the rapidity of response.

Q: The resulting vocal lines seem stripped back.

The improvisations have minimal melodic lines, but I think that the vocal melodies are richer and quite folk-like. They are drawn out and they don't repeat very often, so in that sense they are complex. So I didn't shy away from melody -- I enjoy melody -- they are all suggested by the improvisation and there is nothing in the vocal that isn't at least hinted at by the improvisation. It was important the vocal felt integrated and not layered on, even though it was recorded at a later date.

Q: It seems that the lyrics are much less personal than on previous work.

That's right. The opening track is in the first person, the rest are not. Recently, I wrote a piece for another project and I had to recast it in the third person as it became too much.

For me now, the idea of stories has become more attractive, and I found could speak more home truths that way, without it becoming overwhelming. So, it is a cloaking mechanism for an intensely personal record. It was definitely an unburdening.

Write to Paul Sharma at Paul.Sharma@dowjones.com

Arve Henriksen

2009-06-26T02:25:00.000-07:00

ORIGINAL SOURCE

Arve Henriksen, trumpet - Cartography - ECM
More strongly electronic than Henriksen's previous work
Published on June 10, 2009

Arve Henriksen, trumpet - Cartography - ECM B0012444-02 **** [Release date: May 5, 09]:

(Arve Henriksen, trumpet; Jan Bang, samples; Audun Kleive, percussion/beats/programming; David Sylvian, voice; Heldge Sunde, string arrangements/programming; Eivind Aarset, guitars; Lars Danielsson, doublebass; Erik Honoré, synth/samples; Steve Jansen, samples; Arnaud Mercier, treatments; Trio Medieval, voices; Vérene Andronikof, vocals; Anna Maria Friman, voice)

Arve Henriksen is a Norwegian jazz trumpet player who is inspired by the sound of the Japanese shakuhachi. He achieves a unique flute-like sound on his instrument, and has done several albums for the Rune Grammofon label as well as for ECM. On the latter he has performed with Norwegian pianist Trygve Seim and others, but this is his first solo outing. Henriksen has also recorded with Jon Balkes Magnetic North Orchestra, Supersilent, and Food for Quartet.

This CD is more strongly electronic than his previous work. Producer Jan Bang has put together some very interesting electronica here - textured, floating, often quite orchestral, with all sorts of subtle ambient details. The sound reminded me of trumpeter Jon Hassell’s albums on some of the tracks. On the track “Recording Angel” the vocalizations of the Trio Mediaeval are featured, and on two of the other of the dozen tracks poet David Sylvian reads his own poetry over the music, his quiet approach fitting in well with the album’s approach. I’ve been resistant towards electronica and jazz, but Henriksen seems to have it together in this effort. I was only wishing the disc could have been in hi-res surround for a more immersing effect
TrackList:

1. Poverty And Its Opposite
2. Before And Afterlife
3. Migration
4. From Birth
5. Ouija
6. Recording Angel
7. Assembly
8. Loved One
9. The Unremarkable Child
10. Famine's Ghost
11. Thermal
12. Sorrow And Its Opposite

-- John Henry
-----------------------------------------------

Arve Henriksen: Cartography
By Jeff Dayton-Johnson

Arve Henriksen - Cartography - ECM - 2008

Talking about the album Cartography, trumpeter Arve Henriksen says, “...I've been feeling uncomfortable with the idea of ending up playing 'improvised jazz.'” It's an unusual thing to say, particularly coming from a musician who has contributed vitally to a host of releases on ECM, one of the most celebrated jazz labels in the world. Is he opposed to improvisation, or to jazz? Or both? It turns out that Henriksen is pioneering, together with a loose collective of like-minded fellow travelers, a potentially radical new idea of both concepts. But one that in the end is a lot friendlier to bedrock conceptions of improvised jazz than Henriksen lets on. And that's just fine.

In principle, what Henriksen is doing on Cartography moves away from jazz improvisation in a perpendicular way, based as his sound is upon remix and sampling. Now, the remix--from thunderous Jamaican dub to New York dance clubs, spinning an original recorded performance into an insignificant atom among its infinity of reconfigured versions--poses a frontal challenge to traditional conceptions of jazz improvisation. A remix is improvisation, often ingenious, witty, breathtaking as an Art Blakey drum break, or it can be, but it is unlike jazz improvisation in that it moves the center of attention from the performance to the recorded artifact, from the stage to the studio, from the soloist to the producer.

Sampling, in this musical universe, just adds insult to injury: by building the sound document with found objects of other recordings, the original performance is further devalued and demoted in favor of the producer's bricolage.

Aggressively remixing and sampling is one way that Henriksen and company part company with older ideas of jazz improvisation. But there's another way of looking at it. Henriksen and his comrades in the annual Punkt Festival in Kristiansand, Norway, loving chronicled by AAJ's own John Kelman, remix performances as they happen (”live remix”). Henriksen's band is centered around “live sampler” Jan Bang.

The difference between remix and live remix, between sampling and live sampling, is what makes Henriksen's approach particularly innovative, but also more jazzlike. That is, Henriksen and friends are taking remix and samples back to the stage, putting them back in the hands of the performer. They're deploying these as tools on a par with the instrumentalist's solo or trading fours in the rhythm section.

That's one family resemblance between improvised jazz and what Henriksen does. A second has to do with the community that creates, and is created by, Henriksen's music. Improvisation, if it's effective, depends critically upon a shared understanding of the conceptual framework, the rules of the game, among the musicians. And if the improvisation is to communicate or resonate, the audience too must share some of that understanding. Henriksen and the other Punkt live remixers share just such an understanding. It may not be based on quoting lines from “All The Things You Are,” but there is an implicit sense of community when these musicians improvise in their fashion.

High-minded concepts, but what does it sound like? Spare, elegiac, tending to slow the mind's attention like Zen meditation; created with obvious intelligence and attention to craft. Henriksen's breathy, plaintive trumpet playing owes an obvious debt to Jon Hassell's, whose sound is in turn partly derived from the fragile, vulnerable side of Miles Davis' playing (another unsuspected link to the tradition). And there's poetry by ex-Japan frontman David Sylvian. It's too early to say just where this is going, but eminently worth staying tuned.

Tracks: Poverty and Its Opposite; Before and Afterlife: Part One, Part Two; Migration; From Birth; Ouija; Recording Angel; Assembly; Loved One; The Unremarkable Child; Farmer's Ghost: Part One, Part Two; Thermal; Sorrow and Its Opposite.

Personnel: Arve Henriksen: trumpets, voice (1, 6), field recording (1); Jan Bang: live sampling (1, 5, 10), samples (2, 3, 6, 8-12), beats (2, 3, 7), programming (2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 12), bass line (6), dictaphone (6, 8), arrangement (11, 12); Audun Kleive: percussion (1, 11), drums (10), organ samples (7); David Sylvian: voice (2, 11), samples (2), programming (2); Helge Sunde: string arrangements (2), programming (2); Eivind Aarset: guitars (3, 11); Lars Danielsson: double-bass (3); Erik Honore: synthesizer (3-5, 7, 10), samples (3), field recording (4, 7), choir samples (7); Arnaud Mercier: treatments (4) Trio Mediaeval: voice sample (6); Verene Andronikof: vocals (6); Vytas Sondeckis: vocal arrangement (6), vocal performance (6); Anna Maria Friman: voice (10); Stale Storlokken: synthesizer (10), samples (10).

Bang on a Can Marathon - initial 2009 lineup (Bill Frisell, Tortoise, and RYUICHI SAKAMOTO included)

2009-04-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

by Andrew Frisicano

Ryuichi Sakamoto

The Bang on a Can Marathon returns to World Financial Center for its fourth year to kick-off the 2009 River To River Festival on May 31st. The 12-hour marathon (noon-midnight) of mind-boggling, genre-bending music will include Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tortoise, Bill Frisell, Bang on a Can All-Stars and more.

Those acts will be performing "music composed by Gavin Bryars, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Evan Ziporyn, and many more." The annual NYC event is free.

As previously reported, Tortoise will play a Saturday, May 30th show at the Bell House, in addition to the Marathon. Tortoise also has an appearance at Pitchfork Fest, plus a new album coming out and a track on Thrill Jockey's Record Store Day comp.

Michael Gordon, whose work will be performed at the Bang on a Can Marathon, is also having his composition Trance performed by Signal at a (Le) Poisson Rouge show on Wednesday, April 22nd.

Other free shows coming up at the World Financial Center this summer include M83, Mountains and Scanners. Clogs and Laurie Anderson play there TONIGHT (April 15).

The Japan Times recently profiled Japanese pianist and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who will be performing at the Bang on a Can Marathon, about his 30 year career and his connections with David Bowie, John Cage, and others. Read an excerpt from that, with videos of Sakamoto solo and with Iggy Pop, below...

Ryuichi Sakamoto & Iggy Pop - Risky

Ryuichi Sakamoto & Iggy Pop - Risky
Uploaded by pezhammer

Hearing Ryuichi Sakamoto talk softly about his 30 years in music, which have elevated him to the status of an officially designated National Treasure, is to witness a perfect exercise in Japanese modesty.

"I haven't achieved anything," he says as he reclines on a sofa in the backstage bowels of Kochi Prefecture's awkwardly named Cul-Port Plaza down in Shikoku. "This is how I feel.

"Maybe someday in the future I will do something . . . but I'm not satisfied with what I have done so far."

Hold on a moment, let's just remind ourselves of a few things here.

As one third of Yellow Magic Orchestra, in the late 1970s and early '80s, Sakamoto helped spark the Western chart-topping New Wave synth revolution that still reverberates through every electro-influenced track from the likes of LCD Soundsystem and Daft Punk to Perfume.

Viewed as Kraftwerk's Asian counterparts, YMO brought Japanese music out of its insularity into a world of success not experienced by any Japanese native since singer Kyu Sakamoto in the '50s. Since YMO went their separate ways in 1984, Sakamoto has flourished as a solo musician.

He has released film scores including "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" (1984), in which he starred opposite David Bowie, and "The Last Emperor" (1987), for which he received an Academy Award. In addition, his own albums -- including "XYZ" -- have hit the spot worldwide. [Japan Times]

YMO - SOLID STATE SURVIVOR

2009-01-12T14:43:00.000-08:00

Yellow Magic Orchestra Solid State Survivor
[Alfa Records/EMI; 1979]
Styles: synth-popOthers: Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, Sparks

Like the majority of bands that first played with electronics, it’s hard to discuss Yellow Magic Orchestra without referencing Kraftwerk. However, to combat the homogenization and simplification of modern music’s trajectory, one must try. The Japanese group, hugely successful and still influential in their native country, had only minor hits in the Western world during their late 1970s, early 1980s heyday. They’re probably more remembered nowadays as one of the first projects of Academy Award-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (the ’Danny Elfman / Oingo Boingo complex’). Nevertheless, their music is worth reappraisal.

YMO’s second album, Solid State Survivor, was released in 1979. Although they would release more ambitious (1981’s Technodelic) and well-crafted (1983’s Naughty Boys) works, it’s here that their unique, left-field musical manifesto is best expressed. Indeed, despite the presence and implementation of mile-high stacks of synthesizers and other electronic gadgets, YMO’s sound is rooted in composition and performance. Whereas their German counterparts were masters of minimalism, YMO layer and weave. The ‘robotik’ sound of other synth pioneers is tweaked with the inclusion of Sakamoto’s classically-trained keyboard runs, Haruomi Hosono’s bass stabs, and Yukihiro Takahashi’s drum embellishments, as well as traditional Oriental instrumentation.

These contradictions are present on the album’s most famous tracks: "Rydeen" is a giddy thrill of synth-pop bliss, with strong melodic lines performed like high-register wind instruments. This hyper consonance and carefree momentum is an unmistakable influence on early Japanese video game music. Equally, "Technopolis," for all its Technology TV Show Theme stylings, is importantly punctuated by a funky bass that rumbles and pops. "Behind the Mask," a psychologically paranoid ‘love song’ straight out of a Philip K. Dick short story ("Is it me/ Is it you/ Behind this mask?"), is almost sabotaged by Sakamoto’s use of vocoder, which completely obscures his vocals. The song works — though, the lack of a strong conventional vocal hook has given birth to horribly overwrought re-imaginings and covers of the song, the most successful of which was recorded by Eric Clapton during his mid-’80s Phil Collins period.

This sense that YMO are, at times, self-sabotaging their easiest bids for pop success is no more evident than on the cover of The Beatles’ classic "Day Tripper." What is first a proto-hard rock song — a prime candidate for the basic moog-and-arpeggiator makeover — is transformed into an off-kilter mutant. It’s almost post-punk in its convulsive rhythms and far ahead of its time in the use of intentional glitching. It could be one of the more prescient tracks on the album. Furthermore, the title track, placed right at the end of side two, is a straightforward New Wave song, containing the album’s only full-bodied vocal performance from Yukihiro Takahashi. It comes off as a kinetic tribute to Roxy Music or David Bowie. Here, however, YMO show a mischievousness: the majority of the vocals are drowned out by scratchy, distorted samples in favor of, once again, an instrumental chorus hook.

Solid State Survivor presents all sides of its creator’s complexity. YMO are at times synthetic, at times vital; they are frustrating, joyous; willingly accessible, yet defiantly stubborn. In the future, they would craft more one-dimensional, satisfying albums. Technodelic would take the experimental innovation to new depths, just as much as Naughty Boys would feature fully-fledged pop songs, with proper vocal performances from Takahashi to boot. Sakamoto would find better means of expression — both in his solo compositions and in collaboration with other artists, such as David Sylvian, Alva Noto and Christian Fennesz (in a graceful, atmospheric mode represented here by "Castalia"). On this album, however, YMO display a smörgåsbord-like approach. They move away from Kraftwerk’s clinical, futurist kitsch. Instead, they use the synthesizer as a composition aid. The result may not be as iconic as their Germanic contemporaries, but YMO’s art shows a great deal more sophistication.

1. Technopolis 2. Absolute Ego Dance 3. Rydeen 4. Castalia 5. Behind the Mask 6. Daytripper 7. Insomnia 8. Solid State Survivor

by Nevsky

JAPAN SYLVIAN ON FACEBOOK

2009-01-10T09:55:00.000-08:00

DAVID SYLVIAN - THE SHIFT

2009-01-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

http://www.shift.jp.org/en/archives/1999/04/david_sylvian.html

David Sylvian

Most of people, probably know David Sylvian for the unforgettable voice that illustrated "Forbidden colors" the song by Ryuichi Sakomoto, the soundtrack of the motion picture "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence". Other people know him for being the ex-Japan singer. But Sylvian is far more than that. He's maybe one of the best song writer for ages. He's able to conjugate the elegance of his compositions with introspective lyrics.

Five years of silence separate us from "Secret of the beehive" to "Dead bees on a cake". A metaphors that hides the truth of David Sylvian; the quest of the perfect song slowly becomes the quest for purity for him. We met someone that have just realized the symbiosis between his art and his spiritual evolution. A great encounter.

There's a legend about your work. It is said that you are really a perfectionist and that your record company is always obliged to steal your tapes before you finish your recording. Is it true or not?

(Laughs) Am I a perfectionist? Yes I am! To a large degree. At least that's everybody tells me so I'm beginning to think it's true. What is happened in the past is that I worked on material for as long as I possibly can until the budget for the recording has basically run out. At that moment in time I have to make the best of what I have to hand. It's not always the album that I have intended to make that finally gets released. For example "Secrets of the beehive" there's pivotal, a center piece of the album that is missing. The pivotal compositions if you like around which the others revolved. And it was never completed in time. Sometimes I feel that the work has to be reconstructed in some way. They are incomplete as far I'm concerned. I'm not giving the opportunity to finishing them. People often willing to let me great a financial assistance to complete the work. So I accept that fact sometimes it's pretty difficult to let your work go when you know it's not a 100 percent there for you. But it gains a life of its own. You know there are people that think "Secrets of the beehive" is my strongest album, most personal album and people who like to in a very intense way I think. It works on some " " but it wasn't my original intention. My original intention was not a different album but as I said the pivotal center point is missing and one day I would like to reconstruct the album as I originally intended it.

And I can say that about other projects I've worked on I find they are incomplete some degree. It may just be a remix that I wanted to do, I wasn't happy with a particular mix either a particular track. But nevertheless I would like to always been able to see the project through to the end as I have done with "Dead Bees On A Cake". I've taken my time there was no financial constraints. I could just keep working until I would felt I was happy with it.

Who can give some advice to tell you that your work is quite finished?

Nobody I make that decision myself.

Did you find the "Secret of the beehive", could it be Death?

For me it was more of a, I guess, a sociological phenomenon. Like the Iraqi at the beehive. I guess I was thinking more in terms of having spiritually... To politically it is. It's just a concept that appeal to me and somehow inform the work that I was making at the time. So it's not something that I'm personally going to find. It's certainly something you embrace in your own life. And you can recognize somebody, something or someone or some God or however. You wish to interpret your own life as the object of your devotion as something that represents the goal. That's the way I try to adapt it in my life.

And what about the concept of death? The fact that you find "Dead bees on a cake after "The secret of the beehive" Is it a positive way to interpret death, like the idea of rebuilding something or improving your knowledge of life?

In the context of the new album, the metaphor of the bees changed. I lived with the title for sometime I didn't really understand the significance until later on to the out of stage of the recording process. The album was dealing with the things of love and devotion and divine intoxication. I was looking for a title that reflected that but not in an obvious way. I didn't want to be dogmatic about it. I found that the title of the album began to represent that for me in some oblique way. The bees began to represent the eagle and the cake the object of desire. And so it's the eagle that's dying and merging with the object of desire. This is a concept that spoke over a great deal on a spiritual path. You can find it on many texts as being the ultimate goal, the liberation from the eagle. That's what it began to represent to me.

Is there an important role of the lyrics. Do you work more on lyrics or compositions?

They are all equally important. I don't place one about the other.They are very much apart of one another. I don't like to separate them.

Is there an easiest aspect to develop? Is it easy for you to write the lyrics that reflects your feelings?

It's not difficult to write a song. It's very easy to sit down and just write for the sake of writing. What is difficult is to write a piece of music that has relevance to you the writer and that resonate to some perform way in your life. And that's the difficult part. But the music and the words seem to come relatively easy when the time is right. There's not a struggle generally. The writing stage is probably most exhilarating by the whole process and it tends to happen quite naturally, quite quickly.

Do you that your compositions are a timeless music? You don't care about the last trend, the superficial aspect of music industry and what you could have done it five years before or maybe ten years after?

It's hard for me to say. Could I have made this album five or ten years before the answer is no because of the subject matter. Experience did allowed me to write about the subject matter. So that place is at a moment of time for me. I do try to create a music that the individual can adapt in their own life in some ways. In other words this album is clearly autobiographical but I wouldn't want people to come to the album to view that melly autobiographical. That is not a strength I would be a witness I think. The point is I try to leave the piece open to such an extent that the individual can adapt the work to their own life. At that point the work takes a life on its own and in that sense it gives a new life every time somebody becomes attached to it. That would make it timeless. If people over and over again came into contact with the work and breathe new life into it through having communion with the work. We have to approach work in an inspired way. As listeners, readers. It's not a passive act. That has the power to make it timeless.

Your musical path is full of musical encounters. What was the most important one?

Every encounter has a certain quality. I would say is important to me. Some encounters grow and mature with a period of time. I had no idea when I met Ryuichi in 79 I still be working with him 20 years later. We work well over the years, yes, and consistently. I see the partnership going on into the future. But it's always strange, each time could be the last time we collaborate really. We don't look to one another as collaborative partners that intend to going. Our collaboration has matured over the years and continue to evolve. And yeah he is becoming the most important collaboration that I have musically.

What about Holger Czukay?

Holger is a dear friend. I benefited it from working with him enormously I think. Yes improvisation, that would have been the first time I touch upon it. I touch the notion of improvisation in the context of my work. When I worked with Holger that area of work just grew in significance for me because it is obviously an area he's been working for many years or had been working for many years with Can or his own project. So his improvisation methods of writing and recording became very fascinating for me and influenced not just the project we did together but the Rain Tree Crow project that followed on. And still influenced the work that I do in some degree. That's the main experience that I have taken away from working with Holger.

You've been involved into plastic arts. You did exhibitions with Russell Mills. He realized his first musical experience on Time Recording, you did collaborate on it. Do you think that its a natural process that gives opportunity to musicians and plasticities to work both on sound and pictures esthetic?

Yes I think it's quite natural to cross over these days. It's quite a challenge. I'm sure Russell found a challenge to work as a musician. Because he's really not a musician. Given the opportunity to make an album is too good to refuse. He came out with the concept that would work for him. It's the same way as myself and the visual arts. Suddenly you are offered an exhibition base, it's not something you plans. But there you are you are given the opportunity to create an installation and you didn't turn your back on it because it's just a too good opportunity to turn down. This area of work I don't actively see. I'm really happy to work in music because I work so slowly. There are so many ideas, so many pretentious projects that get left behind. In a sense there is not enough time to complete all the work that I want to do in music. Should somebody come to me tomorrow and offer me an exibition place, I would not refuse it cause it's too much of a challenge for me. I really enjoy working in the visual arts. It's a challenge to create and develop a vocabulary of mine. I see Russell doing the same thing in music.

There's a woman voice on the song "Praise" ion the last album. It seems to be a religious song, is it the case?

Yes. It is sung in Sanskrit. It is a song of praise to the three aspect of the divine mother. The singer is an Indian holy woman by the name of Shree Maa. Should I say something about her?

Yes of course!

She was born in India into a family of renom but in a early age she just walk away from all that to walk into the forest of India and turn her back on materialistic life and devoted herself to God. She lived in the Himalaya for a period of time. She became Shree Maa, this holy woman through devotion. She came to America in 1994 she had a very reclusive life, very humble existence, it still does. In 1997 she undertook a first trip across America. She came to stay into our house with 40 people and transform our house into an hasram. It was a place of worship. At the end of each morning she would sing the song. Her voice resonated through our house it was magnificent. It was so deeply moving. I have a studio in house and she very gracefully allowed us to record her. We captured something that was a very important document for us. It became part of our practice we would listen to that piece over and over again on daily basis. And ultimately it felt right to include this part of the album as Shree Maa seems to be the example of the goal. She can sing with such clarity of devotion just purity. She's the vocal point of the album, the pinnacle if you like.

Did you think you did a gift for us by recording her?

She's the Gift. She's giving offer herself to everybody. It's her grace.

What did you discover from this Oriental mysticism?

The point for me was to find a discipline with which to work in life on a daily basis. I was and still am very interested in Buddhism particularly Zen Buddhism. And that is informed my practice. Working alone because I 've never had a teacher, the practice became very dry and ultimately didn't informed my life enough. When I met Ingrid (ED : Ingrid Chavez David's wife) we kind of made a pact that we were going to explore that aspect in our life together. It was a common goal between us. We start to see different teachers. It gives us a focus and gives us a discipline and somebody to constantly inspire the practice. And in part of the practice includes the notions of surrender which I talk about in the album. To surrender not being an once on life time act. You surrender and it's over is not that simple. Surrendering is something that needs to be confirm and reconfirm with every breath. So it became an act of meditation, an act of will, an act of consciousness. It's a means of maintain consciousness. That is very much the kind of path I have chosen to take. It also embrace aspects of hindouism. Either I wouldn't call myself a buddhist or an hinduist. But my practice embraces aspects of both.

Tell us a bit more about the cover design of your last album. We know that you pay a particular attention to the layout?

It's an etching by a Japanese artist Shinya Fujiwara. He did the photographs for the Rain Tree Crow album cover. He's a well known photographer in Japan and essayist and critic but he is also a very good visual artist in terms of his graphics. So he's done an original work for me for the cover. It's a very beautiful cover. Russell Mills is designed it Yuko and I had directed it, there's photograph by Anton Corbijn. It's printed on gold.

It's your team!

Yes it's my team (laughs) All of about friends working together and produce something actually is extraordinary beautiful extraordinary beautiful. It's a lovely cover I'm really happy with it.

CHRIS MINH DOKY

2009-01-05T10:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=17632

Born: February 7, 1969

CHRIS MINH DOKY

Chris Minh Doky stands out as one of the most talented bass players in contemporary music. The New York-based artist is regarded among the masters of the upright bass widely recognized for his passionate delivery and extraordinary technical gifts. As expressed by Down Beat Magazine: ”...there is a softness and crisp clarity that is very different from the sound others derive from the acoustic instrument”, Doky carries on the distinct Danish bass tradition of the acoustic bass being a lead instrument. With musical roots deriving from his love of American East Coast grooves and the lyric tradition of Scandinavia, Doky has developed a distinctive sound as well as created a style that is uniquely his own.

Doky’s rare ability to perform with equal creativity and dynamism as both a solo artist and as a sideman has put him on the list of Top Ten Bassists in Reader’s Polls and earned him Artist of the Year awards as well as platinum- awarded sales. Parallel to leading his own band, Doky continues to play with some of the most significant jazz artists of today. Being an integral part of the Michael Brecker Quartet since 2001, he is also currently playing and touring with the Mike Stern Band.

Over the years, Doky has released seven solo albums, including the highly praised Cinematique and the most recent electronica-jazz album The Nomad Diaries. Besides co-leading two recordings with his brother he is also appearing on countless recordings as a sideman. And with his great musical sense, Doky is increasingly in demand for soundtracks and as a producer for both jazz and pop artists.

Doky was born into a musical family in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1969 to a Vietnamese father and a Danish mother. Motivated and taught by his father, Doky commenced playing the piano at age six. He won several awards attending local classical piano competitions. By a twist of faith he picked up the electric bass while in high school. A passionate fan of groups like Earth, Wind & Fire, the teenager played in different funk bands. But it was the Miles Davis album ”My Funny Valentine” that introduced him to the jazz tradition at age 16. A year later, he switched to his signature instrument, the acoustic bass. Before long he became a sought-after bassist at jazz clubs around Copenhagen.

After high school, the 18 year old left home for New York City, determined to explore the jazz tradition first hand. Here, he began working in the studios and gigging in the clubs of Manhattan with other young, up and coming musicians such as pianist Joey Calderazzo, whom Doky would later meet again playing with legendary saxophonist Michael Brecker. Soon proving to be not only an excellent sideman but also an inventive soloist, Doky got his first big break in 1991 when Mike Stern asked the talented bass player to join his band. By 1992, Doky was getting firmly established on the international jazz scene and earning a reputation as one of the top bassists in New York. Much in demand, he found himself playing with some of the great musicians he had been listening to growing up, including David Sanborn, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Michele Camilo, Trilok Gurtu, and Bireli Lagrene.

In 1994, Doky joined forces with his older brother, pianist, Niels Lan Doky forming the Doky Brothers. Signed to Blue Note, the group made two successful recordings that brought a larger audience to jazz in their native Denmark. Following the second Doky Brothers album, Chris Minh Doky released Minh on Blue Note in 1998, his first solo album in eight years. It met widespread acclaim from both critics and audiences alike propelling Doky’s international solo career to a new level.

Doky’s work on Minh, was brought to the attention of Danish icon, pop- and rock singer Sanne Salomonsen who asked him to work with her. In 1999, Doky produced her hit album In a New York Minute that reached double platinum sales and earned a Danish Music Award nomination.

Following extensive world wide touring on the success of the album Minh, Doky took his touring band to the studio to record the acoustic jazz-funk album, Listen Up. The album featured special guest appearances by long time collaborators John Scofield, Kenny Garrett and others.

After years of exploring the funk side of jazz, Doky felt it was time to 'come home'. On Cinematique, Doky brought together some of the greatest musicians of his generation in a true jazz trio setting. Doky and his longtime friends created an intimate and original recording exploring Doky’s favorite movie and television themes.

On his most recent CD The Nomad Diaries, Doky shows the result of his long time exploration into Electronica. Inspired by the works of artists like Massive Attack, Bjork, Nils Petter Molvaer, Talvin Singh and Ryuichi Sakamoto (with whom Doky has been playing with for years, and who is also featured on the album) Doky draws on both his production and bass playing skills. A genuine organic meeting of worlds that is arguably Doky's most European album to date, drawing heavily on his Scandinavian bass tradition.

Home: New York, NY

Press Quotes

QUOTES

“...there is a softness and crisp clarity that is very different from the sound others derive from the acoustic instrument.” Down Beat (US)

“Excellent playing!” Billboard Magazine (US)

“He emerges from the background of the piano solos to seize the lead with a bear like hug that is briefly overwhelming before it subsides behind the piano, still trailing vestiges of its rugged power” The New York Times (US)

“Chris Minh Doky is the frontline of the new horizon in the world of Acoustic Bass” FMFAN (Japan)

“A powerful bassist...superb technique.” Jazz Times (US)

“...few bassists combine softness and supple strength so distinctively, or mix dense, swirling runs and the simplicity of an underlying theme in such a shapely and unforced manner” The Guardian (UK)

“..but especially notable is Chris' lyrical bass and the work of John Scofield” Winnipeg Sun (US)

“Chris Minh Dokys playing was a young master's class in opposite counter- melodic improvisation” The Guardian (UK)

“Excellent” The Evening Standard (UK)

“the only other bassist that in regards to his relationship with his instrument, comes close to that of Niels Henning Orsted Petersens” Politiken (Denmark).

“..world-class bassist...” The Guardian (UK)

“A virtuoso “ Le Monde (France)

**** (4 stars out of 5)” The Guardian (UK)

“Minh Doky delivered the first of a dazzling succession of unaccompanied solos...” The Guardian (UK)

“...a mix of virtuosity, funky directness and enthusiasm” The Guardian (UK)

“..singing tone and perfect technique.” The Guardian (UK)

“...a commanding presence...” The New York Times (US)

“... a deep respect for the tradition paired with a very broad contemporary experience “ Berlingske Tidende (Denmark)

“ ...world class musician...” Bass Magazine (France)

“Chris Minh Doky is schooling and influences and all, that rare thing: A Natural. He makes music flow, sing. It talks to you. You can't learn that. It's a gift. And with it comes a sound of one's own. Chris' sound is is, and it's a beautiful thing”. Rutgers University (US)

“Majestic!” Berlingske Tidende (Denmark)

“A Danish export success “ Gaffa (Denmark)

“...he has a special soft tone that is candy for your ears” Politiken (Denmark)

“Young Power!” Aarhus Stiftidende (Denmark)

“Chris Minh Doky is a very elegant musician with a sense for the powerful” Politiken (Denmark)

“Chris Minh Doky is extremely skilled as a soloist as well as an accompanist” Aarhus Stiftidende (Denmark)

“Chris Minh Doky is a fine, strong bassist” Windsor Star (US)

“...he plays solos with instrumental excellence” Jyllands Posten (Denmark)

“Chris is in a class of his own. He is an extremely skillful bass player “ Mike Stern.

“A great musician who brings his own energy, personality and style to every musical endeavor.” Michael Brecker.

“His sound is distinct, his conception is unique- he's simply one of the best.” Randy Brecker.

“Chris Minh Doky is a great bass player . . . great to play with, great to listen to. He can play all the kinds of music that I like to play - and that's hard to find.” John Scofield.

“One of the most versatile and musical players I know. Minh definitely has the goods!” David Sanborn

“It's very obvious that Chris Minh Doky is an extraordinary musician. This comes through clearly in both his playing and writing. What also makes Minh so special is his incredible enthusiasm for music and that he always plays his heart out.” Mike Stern.

“I've had the pleasure of watching Chris Minh Doky develop from a being a very talented teenager to becoming a player, composer, bandleader, recording artist, and producer of the first rank. As a player his sound is istinct, his conception is unique- he's simply one of the best.” Randy Brecker.

RYTHM OF BLISS - TALVIN SINGH

2009-01-05T10:33:00.000-08:00

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Potpourri/Rhythms_of_bliss_/articleshow/3933742.cms

He is amongst England’s most innovative sound artistes, DJ/producer/tablatronic masters.

Talvin Singh (TOI Photo)

Talvin Singh’s knowledge of both
Indian classical and Western music
has made him a much sought
after artiste, who has worked
with the likes of Madonna,
the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,
and many others. A pivotal
figure in Britain’s ‘Asian Underground’
movement during the ’90s,
he has pursued his own audio
explorations while also enthusiastically
promoting the work of other
like-minded musicians and DJs.

Ask him what made him turn to music, and
he says, “My early life was in Leytonstone.
I began playing the tabla, break-dancing and
listening to punk-rock as a child. At the age of
15, I came to India where I studied the tabla
under the tutelage of Pandit Lashman Singh,
but then I returned to the UK after just one
year. By the late 1980s, I had decided to
turn towards the fusion of sounds, and began
working as a musician with such artistes as
Madonna, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, AR Rehman,
the Indigo Girls, David Sylvian, Siouxsie and
the Banshees, Sun Ra, Björk, Massive Attack
and the Future Sound of London.” And talking
about his kind of music, Talvin has this to say:
“My music is unique, and you can look forward
to a combination of electronic dance music
styles, with innovative fusion of the Indian
bhangra music, drum ’n’ bass and electronica
with the tradition of Indian sounds and music.
It’s not just fusion music.
It’s not crossover, because I don’t separate
music. If you don’t separate, then you don’t
need to fuse it or cross it over. You just treat
it as one element. Whatever it is, fundamentally
it’s still a group of 12 notes,” he explains.

Coming back to Asian Underground, isn’t it
underground music anyway?

“In fact, it’s not. Many hip-hop and R&B
musicians are listening to my music,
enjoying it and incorporating it in theirs.
And ever since I have started releasing
albums, I am totally overground,” says
he with a smile.

The artiste who has won the coveted
Mercury Music Prize in England
has his own take on Indian music.
“My India visit has certainly brought
me new insights. This time, I discovered
that dance music and electronic
music are really very big in India now.
I get the feeling that Indians know
a lot more about Western music than
Westerners.That’s the way the world
is,” he says.

SANDII & THE SUNSETZ IN WIKIPEDIA

2008-10-28T02:15:00.000-07:00

Sandii & the Sunsetz were a Japanese technopop or J-pop band that collaborated from 1979 until the 1990s. The Sunsetz, led by Makoto Kubota, and Sandii started as separate artists, and each have a separate discography. However, their collaboration provided a particular body of work that is representative of the period, and which successfully blended Eastern, Western and pop influences.

Early days

Sandii (born Sandra O'Neale) was born in Japan of mixed Japanese, Spanish and American blood. Her father was in the U.S. Navy, and she spent her early life in Japan, but moved to Hawaii in her early teens and began to study hula and Pacific dance. After becoming accomplished as a singer and dancer, Sandii released her first record "Perusha Neko" under the name Sandi Ai. Returning to Japan in 1975 she was befriended by Kyu Sakamoto, who helped her to get a job as a DJ on NHK TV in Japan. Sandii performed during the interval of the "World Popular Song Festival" in late 1975, and secured a record deal with Toho. Sandii's debut album was titled "Sandi Ai" and mixes Japanese originals with covers of well known songs by John Lennon and Olivia Newton-John. The album was not a great success and Sandii left Toho for Discomate Records.

In 1976 Sandii had performed at the Yamaha World Popular Song Festival as a non-competitor interval act, but the next year she won the prestigious “Grand Prix Best Vocal Performance” award with the single Goodbye Morning, her best selling record to date.

Sandii met Makoto Kubota in 1976 when he was a guest on her NHK TV show and afterward joined his band Yuyaka Gakudan (Sunset Gang) as a backup singer. Makoto was an accomplished musician with broad influences, and the collaboration went on to be critically acclaimed, though never quite achieving the popular success expected. The music of The Sunset Gang was very influenced by Blues, Southern and West Coast rock, but later they became increasingly interested in Hawaiian and Okinawan music. At this time Sandii also became friends with the future members of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, frequent collaborators with the Sunset Gang; Haruomi Hosono naming her "Sandii" because of the connection with Hawaii. However, until 1980 Sandii used a variety of names for different session work e.g. "Sandra Hohn", "Sandi A Hohn", even "Sandy Ayako". This makes her 1970's material a challenge for collectors to find!
On the soundtrack of Lupin The Third Sandii performed the songs "I Miss You Babe" and "Love Squall"; the latter was a single release paired with the theme of the TV series by Yuji Ohno
In 1978 Sandii sang the end title theme for the Japanese release of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile, which became a top 20 hit in Japan. This gave Sandii and Makoto the opportunity to record a follow up album. With limited time and budget, the album "Mystery Nile" consists of disco and pop cover versions including "Dancing Queen" by ABBA. Sandii and Makoto used fake English names on the record - "Sandy O'Neil" and "Theo Layer".

Other guest appearances include the albums "Dead End" and "Monkey Magic" by Godiego plus "Melting Pot" by Yamamoto Sho, whose backing band became Ippu-Do (including future Japan member Masami Tsuchiya.

In 1979, again using the name "Sandy O'Neil", Sandii released the disco track "Hey! King Kong", which failed to become a hit. The same year saw Sandii's first guest appearance with the Yellow Magic Orchestra on their album Solid State Survivor. Right at the end of '79 the Y.M.O. and Sandii began to record her debut for Alfa Records, "Eating Pleasure", at which point Makoto wound up the Sunset Gang and Sandii & The Sunsetz were born. The two groups had the same members, but Sandii became lead vocalist. Sandii and Makoto are on record as saying they were influenced by the sound and success of Blondie and later became friends with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein.[1]

The Sunsetz

Their first show as Sandii & The Sunsetz was opening for Yellow Magic Orchestra at Budokan in December 1980. In 1981 their next album Heat Scale was released in 17 countries - most international releases adding tunes from "Eating Pleasure". From the release of "Heat Scale" until the next album release "Immigrants" The Sunsetz spent a lot of time in the UK, recording with David Sylvian and Fun Boy Three producer Dave Jordan. Sounds, NME and Melody Maker gave The Sunsetz extensive coverage which gave the group a lot of credibility in Japan, leading to increased record sales. Their live act gained many fans in the international music industry following their support slot on the final Japan world tour. The Sunsetz went on to tour and play festivals with Eurythmics, Inxs, Blondie and David Bowie. Their extensive touring and TV appearances in Australia in 1983 allowed them to achieve the #11 charting hit single "Sticky Music"[2]. Sadly, the group had problems with international distribution and promotion and were unable to replicate that success worldwide, but had a keen cult following.
Steve Cropper saw Sunsetz guitarist Keni Inoue play in his distinctive plucking style (as heard on "Open Sesame") and asked to be taught the technique.

In 1985 Sandii & The Sunsetz left Alfa Records for Toshiba-EMI, whose greater financial muscle gave the group a better budget to work with. Following a collaboration with Stephen Duffy ("Something Special") the group released the rock influenced "La La La La Love", released as "Banzai Baby" outside Japan. Although a strong album musically the group were disappointed that it was not promoted internationally, despite following the guidance of the record company, and opted to follow their own creative vision for subsequent releases. This led them to reggae, dancehall and other Jamaican styles which heavily influenced the final Sunsetz albums "Rhythm Chemistry" and "One Love".

Latter days

In 1990 the group had another re-invention, just using the name Sandii, although they would carry on using "& The Sunsetz" for live appearances well into the 90's. Sandii and Makoto decided to concentrate on the Asian market and subsequent releases sold in greater numbers, helped by Sandii recording key songs in up to four languages. In 1996 Sandii recorded the first of her "Hawaii" albums and became increasingly involved in Hula culture. It has been speculated that her decision to train as a Hula teacher and move away from the pop and rock industry may have contributed to her split with Makoto Kubota, which occurred around 1999. Sandii now runs two Hula schools, in Harajuku, Tokyo and Yokohama and has a TV series on NHK, contributing to the popularity of Hula dance in Japan and allowing Sandii to release roughly two albums a year of Hawaiian and other Pacific style music. In late 2005 Sandii achieved the rank of Kumu Hula and celebrated with an event at a shrine in Ise, with old friend Haruomi Hosono providing the music.

Makoto Kubota is still a major music producer in Japan, always exploring new directions in world music. [1]

Discography

Single "Perusha Neko" as Sandi Ai, Pineapple Records Hawaii, USA 1975
"Sandi Ai" as Sandi Ai, Toho Records 1975 (included the singles "Ai No Melody" and "Kuzitsuke no yurushite")
Single "Goodbye Morning" as Sandy, Discomate Records 1976
The Sunset Gang Dixie Fever 1977 - also several other albums by Sunset Gang during the 1970s with Makoto on lead vocals.
"Mystery Nile" as Sandy O'Neil, Toshiba-EMI 1978
Single "Love Squall" as Sandra Hohn, Vap Records 1978
Single "Hey! King Kong" as Sandy O'Neil, Toshiba-EMI 1979
Eating Pleasure Alfa Records 1980
Heat Scale Alfa Records 1981
Immigrants Alfa Records 1982
Single "Sticky Music" Alfa Records/WEA 1983 (Lyrics: Chris Mosdell)
Viva Lava Liva: "1980-1983" Alfa Records 1984 - a different version came out in Australia
Single Something Special Ten Records/Virgin 1985
Single Babes In The Wood Eastworld/Toshiba EMI 1985
La La La La Love~Banzai Baby Eastworld/Toshiba EMI 1986
Rhythm Chemistry Toshiba EMI 1987
One Love Toshiba EMI 1988
"East Meets West" A&M, US/Canada, 1989 (compilation of material from 1980 to 1988)
Orientation (Best Of 1985 - 1988) Toshiba EMI 1990
The Bomb the Bass Remix Alfa Records 1991
"Twins - Super Best of Sandii and Sunsetz Alfa Records 1996

Ryuichi Sakamoto Joins Cape Farewell’s Disko Bay Expedition

2008-09-17T08:13:00.000-07:00

ORIGINAL SOURCE

On September 25, Ryuichi Sakamoto and 40 other artists, scientists, architects, comedians, musicians, playwrights, composers, engineers, film-makers and journalists journey aboard the science research vessel - Grigory Mikheev, from Kangerlussuaq to Disko Bay. The boat will then voyage across the front of the Jakobshavn Glacier, one of Greenland's largest glaciers moving at a faster rate than ever before, losing 20 million tons of ice every day.

The climate challenge is a cultural one, it is the way we have evolved our lives and values that is the cause of climate change. Cape Farewell asks our best creative minds to respond to and inspire a sustainable cultural vision to this potentially devastating climate reality.

In 2007, there was record loss of the sea ice at the North Pole. Recent satellite images show that this year's figure could exceed the 2007 demise of the Northern Ice Cap. Onboard science teams from the British Geological Survey and National Oceanography Centre will undertake scientific research, mapping the ocean currents and analysing the Greenlandic seabed. Film Director, Peter Gilbert will be documenting the journey, making a film for Sundance TV Channel on his return.

Follow the team live at www.capefarewell.com. Daily blogs, photographs and video - will be posted on the website as the journey unfolds. All blogs, images and videos will be available via RSS feeds.

PARTICPATING ARTISTS

Musicians

Ryuichi Sakamoto
Laurie Anderson
Vanessa Carlton
Jarvis Cocker
Feist
Robyn Hitchcock
KT Tunstall
Martha Wainwright
Luke Bullen
Beatboxer Shlomo

Composer Jonathan Dove
Comedian Marcus Brigstocke

Theatre Makers
Mojisola Adebayo
Suzan-Lori Parks

Artists

Kathy Barber
David Buckland
Sophie Calle
Jude Kelly
Michèle Noach
Tracey Rowledge
Julian Stair
Chris Wainwright

Architects

Francesca Galeazzi
Sunand Prasad

Poet Lemn Sissay
Photographer Nathan Gallagher
BBC presenter Quentin Cooper
Activist David Noble
Film Director Peter Gilbert

Cape Farewell pioneers the cultural response to climate change. Working internationally, it brings artists, scientists and communicators together to stimulate the production of art founded in scientific research. Using creativity to innovate, Cape Farewell engages artists for their ability to evolve and amplify a creative language, communicating on a human scale the urgency of the global climate challenge. Cape Farewell is widely acknowledged to be the most significant sustained artistic response to climate change anywhere in the world.

Cape Farewell's Disko Bay expedition to the west coast of Greenland, September 2008.

The ambition of the expedition is to inspire the creative crew to respond to climate change both in the Arctic and on their return, feeding into our ongoing exhibition program. See www.capefarewell.com for the latest crew list.

TIFF 2008 Cinematheque Ontario Organizes The North American Tour Of Nagisa Oshima’s Audacious Oeuvre

2008-08-25T06:48:00.000-07:00

SOURCE

August 22, 2008

Toronto International Film Festival Group News Release

Cinematheque Ontario

Toronto, Canada (RUSHPRNEWS) 08/22/2008 - After years of research and preparation, Cinematheque Ontario’s Senior Programmer James Quandt brings to audiences In the Realm of Oshima: The Films of Japanese Master Nagisa Oshima, the first major Oshima retrospective in North America in 20 years.

Running from October 31 to December 9 and presented largely in newly struck prints, the 26-film retrospective will provide a substantial overview of Oshima’s transgressive and provocative body of work, including all of his fiction feature films plus two of his late documentaries.

The work of Nagisa Oshima, seminal figure of the Japanese New Wave and inspiration for many independent Japanese directors, has remained in relative obscurity, with few film prints available to exhibit and little released on DVD. In the Realm of Oshima: The Films of Japanese Master Nagisa Oshima will premiere as the official New York Film Festival sidebar, screening from September 27 to October 13. For further information visit www.filmlinc.com.

Cinematheque Ontario will tour the retrospective to key cultural institutions in approximately a dozen cities in Canada and the United States, including Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Pacific Cinematheque (Vancouver), Harvard Film Archive (Cambridge), Northwest Film Center (Seattle), Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), the National Gallery of Art (Washington) and George Eastman House (Rochester).

In the Realm of Oshima: The Films of Japanese Master Nagisa Oshima opens on October 31 with a recently struck print of Cruel Story of Youth (1960), considered the Breathless of the Japanese New Wave. Audacious in its unprecedented exploration of sex and violence, the film is a vertiginous examination of the alienated, amoral and apolitical youth of post-war Japan. Hot on the heels of Cruel Story of Youth, the 32-yearold Oshima continued his exploration of the government’s betrayal of those left out by the country’s post-war economic miracle in The Sun’s Burial (1960), a bleak tale set in the slums of Osaka that follows a tough and resourceful prostitute who sells blood on the black market. Shot and acted with ferocious intensity, Night and Fog in Japan (1960) is a cinematic essay on the dynamics of political movements in 1950s Japan, and marked a significant breakthrough in Oshima’s work. The film was shot in 47 long takes, and it takes place at the middleclass wedding reception of two leftist “comrades,” a celebration that gathers together a group of former student activists, all previously involved in riots against AMPO, Japan’s security pact with Cold War America. Night and Fog in Japan was withdrawn only days after its release by the Shochiku studio, prompting Oshima to leave the studio and start his own independent production company, Sozosha.

For many critics, the high point of Oshima’s sixties independent Sozosha cinema was the exquisitely designed and shot Death by Hanging (1968), a stinging Brechtian black comedy that tells the true story of R., a Korean student who is hanged for the rape and murder of two women but survives his execution. Once R. is found to be amnesic, his identity is “reconstructed” and his guilt is re-established so he can be hanged all over again. Boy (1969), based on another real-life case, is a stunning and trenchant tale that follows a family who use their child to make money by deliberately getting involved in road accidents and making the drivers pay compensation. In The Man Who Left His Will on Film (1970), Endo, a young filmmaker, leaps to his death and leaves random shots of Tokyo rooftops and streets as evidence in his movie camera. Motoki, a comrade who believes the leap was suicidal, becomes obsessed with finding the truth, and slowly begins to take over the life of the deceased militant. The film’s relentless close-ups can be seen as a revealing self-portrait and an existential puzzle in which the viewer must piece together what is real and what is re-enactment. With The Ceremony (1971), Oshima incisively chronicles the powerful Sakadura clan’s fortunes and woes from 1946 to the present, as its members gather for yearly ceremonies: burials, weddings, reunions. Through magisterial use of flashbacks, Oshima reveals the Sakaduras’ dark past, its communists and militarists, war criminals and rising businessmen, sports heroes and suicidal patriarchs, all involved in post-war Japan’s economic rise and societal shame.

Oshima’s international period is most famed for his provocative In the Realm of the Senses (1976), based on a true story of fatal sexual obsession in 1930s Japan. Banned, butchered, debated and denounced when it was released, the film explicitly depicts the entanglements of sex, power and violence. In tune with his previous filmic essays on racism and brutality, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) brought Oshima another important critical success. David Bowie plays Celliers, a rebellious World War II POW in Japan, and Ryuichi Sakamoto plays the fanatical camp commander who becomes increasingly fixated on Bowie’s character.

Oshima’s first fiction film in fourteen years, Taboo (2000), set in 1865 Kyoto, is a powerful tale of homosexual desire among samurai. A complex drama of lust, honour and revenge, Taboo culminates in a final battle between the two new Shinsengumi militia recruits, the rough and handsome rural warrior Tashiro and the lovely and seductively long-haired Kano.

From his emergence as a maverick and independent, through the classics of his New Wave period, to his international and late work, Nagisa Oshima exhibits such wit, beauty and furious invention in his films, that their conceptual gambits take on a sensual and emotional force. In the Realm of Oshima: The Films of Japanese Master Nagisa Oshima will offer audiences a unique opportunity to experience the extraordinary oeuvre of one of the most dynamic living Japanese directors, radically reframing not only their sense of cinema but their sense of the world.
Cinematheque Ontario screenings are held at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Jackman Hall, 317 Dundas Street West (McCaul Street entrance), Toronto.

Regular tickets are $5.90 for members and $10.14 for non-members. Limited Runs and Special Presentations are $7.08 for members and $11.56 for non-members. Lecture Series tickets are $9.91 for members and $15.33 for non-members.

Prices do not include GST, building-fund fee or service charges. Films playing at Cinematheque Ontario that have not been rated by the Ontario Film Review Board are restricted to individuals 18 years of age or older.

Our Box Office is located at the Manulife Centre, 55 Bloor Street West (main level, north entrance, open Monday to Saturday, 10am-6pm), or call 416-968-FILM or toll-free 1-877-968-FILM. Tickets on sale beginning September 30.Cinematheque Ontario thanks its supporters Bell, RBC, Ontario Media Development Corporation, Canada Council for the Arts, City of Toronto Economic Development Office, Toronto Arts Council and Ontario Arts Council.

Cinematheque Ontario is a year-round screening programme dedicated to presenting transformative world cinema through thoughtfully curated retrospectives, filmmaker monographs, and international programme tours. Cinematheque Ontario presents an ambitious selection of more than 400 films annually, including acclaimed director’s retrospectives, national and regional cinema spotlights, thematic programmes, exclusive limited runs, and classic and contemporary Canadian and international cinema, including many new and rare archival prints. For more information, visit cinemathequeontario.ca

Bell LightboxCurrently under construction in downtown Toronto, Bell Lightbox is soon to be the world’s leading destination for film lovers. This major new cultural institution on the Canadian and international landscape will be structured around five state-of-the-art cinemas celebrating film from around the world. Bell Lightbox programming will give context to films through innovative cross-media exhibitions, lectures, and film-related learning opportunities for all ages. Designed by innovative architecture firm KPMB, Bell Lightbox’s fluid design encourages exploration, movement and play within its soaring atriums.

The campaign to build Bell Lightbox is generously supported by founding sponsor Bell. The Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario each have contributed $25 million to realize Bell Lightbox. A gift of more than $22 million has been confirmed from the Reitman family - acclaimed filmmaker Ivan Reitman and his sisters Agi Mandel and Susan Michaels - and The Daniels Corporation, who together form the King and John Festival Corporation.

The project is also supported by RBC as Major Sponsor and Official Bank, Visa†, Copyright Collective of Canada, NBC Universal Canada, The Allan Slaight Family, The Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation, CIBC, and many other individuals and corporations. The Board of Directors, staff and many generous individuals have also contributed to the campaign. The total amount raised to date is $147 million, three quarters of the total campaign of $196 million. For more information on the Bell Lightbox campaign, visit belllightbox.ca

We are a charitable, not-for-profit, cultural organization whose mission is to transform the way people see the world through film. Our vision is to lead the world in creative and cultural discovery through the moving image.For information, contact the Communications Department at 416-934-3200 or email proffice@tiffg.ca

INTERVIEW - 2001

2008-06-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

INTERVIEW BY : JOSHUA KLINE - FEBRUARY 28, 2001

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/22779

David Sylvian was a member of the seminal new-wave band Japan when he experienced an artistic and spiritual epiphany. Increasingly steeped in Eastern religion and philosophy, Sylvian cleaned up his act and embarked on a solo career which, for all intents and purposes, still plays a part in his quest for enlightenment. A regular collaborator with impressive and individualistic musicians such as Holger Czukay, Robert Fripp, and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sylvian is also a skilled visual artist. The Onion A.V. Club recently spoke to Sylvian about Zen and the art of music making.

The Onion: You once said that music encourages introspection, but introspection often produces music. It's a chicken-and-the-egg proposition, but which do you think comes first?

David Sylvian: Introspection. It's a process of discovery, of revelation of oneself to oneself. This process of looking within, of, in a sense, moving into communion with the essence of one's true nature and touching base with that, and everything that transpires because of that conscious communication, that conscious grasp of one's own basic state of mind and heart. I think from that state, so much is born; there is obviously so much potential there, and music is often born from that place and can lead us back there. It's a kind of release, an opening. I think music is very powerful, because it leads directly to the heart. It bypasses the intellect, or it has the power to bypass the intellect and go straight to the heart. So by the time the mind has the time to evaluate, to calculate, to tear something apart because the mind is divided, the heart tends to unite. The heart has already been seduced and the mind is disarmed in that way, and that's the joy and the power of music.

O: Your artistic endeavors include photography and poetry. Do you think any other medium is as immediate or universal as music?

DS: I don't think so. I think for me, music really does have the edge, because it is not tangible. We soak it in, just like we're immersing ourselves in water. We're surrounded by it. Inside, outside, music takes you over in a way that, say, literature can't. For me, the visual arts are less powerful. The viewer has to have a greater focus, a greater concentration, to be overwhelmed by a work of visual art or literature. There's a greater participation on the part of the reader, let's say, or the viewer. Music has the power to seduce, to overwhelm. The only comparable medium could be film, but I do think music has the edge.

O: If your introspection leads to the creation of music, and the music in turn inspires others, that implies a transferal of consciousness, since your music becomes the direct link between your own introspection and someone else's.

DS: It's a political act, in a way, to create music that has that potency, because there's a possibility of fundamentally changing the awareness or consciousness of another human being. You're working at ground zero there, you know? Obviously, you could say that the ultimate goal—and, of course, most of what you produce might not even come close—is that process of looking within, of coming into awareness, that allows certain questions to arise. I think music acts as an environment in which listeners feel comfortable enough to open up to themselves. It allows for a certain security, if you like. They're cradled by the music. It doesn't really matter if it's the music that seduces, the textures and the sounds. It can be a violent or graphic piece of music. But nevertheless, in that sort of environment, we open ourselves up. We allow ourselves to open up to ourselves. And I think as a result of that, certain questions come to mind, the quality of the questions we ask ourselves that determine our future.

O: Your own music seems to have documented your personal spiritual journey over the years. When you write it, do you take into account how others might react to it, or is it strictly personal?

DS: Because the starting point is so often an intangible complex of emotions that you kind of tap into and carry with you for a period of time, there's a period of gestation, often, prior to writing a piece of music. You find a form to pin this complexity, to translate it, to put it out into the world. In a sense, what happens is, I start working with a visual image that somehow reflects the emotional state that I want to tap into, and I'll create a piece of music that relates to that visual image. When I'm in the studio and I'm recording a work, once it starts to mirror back to me that original impetus, the intensity of the emotional experience ends the visual image that accompanied it. I feel that the work is complete, and therefore I feel that I've embodied something that somebody else may be able to tap into—a similar emotion, a similar complexity—and therefore share in the experience.

O: How important is an audience's reaction to the realization of the original impetus?

DS: Well, that completes another cycle, doesn't it? In the process of creation. The work going out into the world and finding a sympathetic heart, mind, set of ears, whatever it is, that opens up to it. Then the cycle is complete. I guess it takes one other person to tap into it. But the more people that listen, the more people that open up to the work, obviously, the better. Because it is an act of communication. You wish to communicate with as many people as possible. I think that empowers the work. It gives the life longevity, I believe. I don't know how that works, but I definitely believe that is the case.

O: There are probably better ways to maximize your audience that entail at least some element of artistic compromise. You can turn on the radio and hear what millions of people are listening to, emulate that, and maximize your audience. So the listener is not strictly the goal.

DS: No, obviously not. I mean, you can't sacrifice any aspect of the work. You try to make the work as accessible as possible without compromising the work in any way. That's really as far as you can take it. Once you start compromising the work, you may have more people listening, but the work is disempowered to some degree. You're diluting the power that can be conveyed through music, the potency of music.

O: Are your own works all inspired from the same internal source? If so, how or why do they manifest themselves in their different forms or media?

DS: Ideally, it comes from the same source. I believe that it does. A truly successful work comes from the same source, and it's a matter of giving that work form in one way or another, whether it's in the form of music, a composition, a painting, an installation, a poem. You're basically bringing something, an energy, into the world, that you've tapped into. It's so intangible, in a way: Even to begin to describe the process, you fall way short. And, of course, I don't understand the process. That's the glory of it. You just get an inkling of what you think it's about, but you could be entirely wrong. [Laughs.] The thing about the whole experience is that you're tapping into something that you realize is so much greater than yourself, and way beyond your comprehension... I think that once there is recognition of that fact, there is the desire to understand it further and tap into it. Not with coincidence or prayers, but actually through focus, and discipline, and practice, and ritual. Talking to Robert Fripp about the same thing, I remember when we were working together, he said he was anything but a natural as a guitarist, and he had to work really hard to be as good as he is. He said he got to the point where he could tap into that energy, the discipline of being a guitarist—the inspiration of being a guitarist—at any point in time, whether he's having a bad day or a good day. He didn't have to wait for his mind to decide whether he was having a good or bad day. He could tap into that energy through constant practice and discipline, and through meditation. He's fully prepared all the time, which is an interesting comment to make, I think.

O: Is playing music in and of itself a form of meditation?

DS: Yes, it is. To varying degrees, though. There are times when you allow yourself to be totally lost in a work. So that is more like a kind of communion, you know, because you're being taken. You know you're in touch with something, so you allow yourself to be moved by it, be lost in it. It's an intuitive act, and you have to flow with it, whereas meditation is far more ritualized discipline, to reach that basic state where one is in control of the mind, where one is 100 percent focused. I think there is a difference in the techniques.

O: When you're collaborating with someone like Robert Fripp, Holger Czukay, Bill Frisell, or Ryuichi Sakamoto, do you feel you're all drawing on the same energy, or your own personal energies? They all have their own dominating personalities, yet when you work together, it all seems to merge.

DS: That's a difficult one to answer. In a sense, of all the people I've worked with, the philosophy behind the work I probably share most with Robert. The musical element, I have very little in common with Robert. [Laughs.] That would be hard to answer. It's not actually something that's discussed amongst musicians when working together, but I think there's a general awareness, a consciousness, when something comes into form or shape. There's an awareness that, "Yes, this is working," but what each individual is tapping into, I have no idea. That was certainly true when working on the Rain Tree Crow project. [Rain Tree Crow was Japan's 1990 one-off reunion under another name. —ed.] The musicians hadn't played together or been in a room together for eight years, but suddenly we were performing together, and yet there was still that energy, and once something was tapped into, it was recognized. There was eye contact around the room that said, "Yes, this is interesting. Isn't this something." But to know what [another person] is tapping into, I don't think is possible.

O: Do you think the collective energy of a band project is more powerful than an individual's

energy?

DS: It can be. What might weaken the work is, if the other ones have compromised, it might come into play at some point along the line. And it often does come into play. Whereas if it's your own work, there needn't be any compromise, really. You just keep working in it until you hone it down, until it's just the way you believe it should be. We have four or five different people in the room, and everybody has a slightly different opinion of where a piece of music should go, you know, and there are compromises made, which ultimately may make the work suffer slightly. If there is one vision pulling the whole thing together, if there is one person there with the vision to put it all together, then I think maybe that's the most powerful setup to have, working within a group of likeminded musicians.

O: There are certainly specific musics where the collective consciousness does seem to play a part: jazz, of course, but also tribal music. But it doesn't seem to manifest itself too much in pop music.

DS: That's true. I think it could, and I think it does, occasionally. I think with ritualized forms of music, traditional folk music, this is music that's been digested for hundreds of years and becomes very much a part of the people and the culture. It is beyond mind; it is like a rhythm of the body. It's so much a part of the people. You could say that about jazz music, as well. The discipline involved in creating jazz, becoming technically proficient with the work and then going beyond that, to open up oneself, to go beyond one's technical limitations, to open the heart once the mind has been fully educated and engaged. Maybe there's a similarity there. The instrument becomes so much a part of the player. The player becomes as much a part of the instrument. And that's less likely to happen in pop music, because there isn't such a strong discipline involved. There isn't such a strong tradition involved. Jazz is opening up to improvisation and being focused and aware and in the moment, which are all wonderful meditative qualities. Pop music fails to show those qualities in most instances.

O: Do you think there's anything an artist can do to encourage a similar experience? Wouldn't every artist want to move closer to what he or she is creating?

DS: Maybe to move closer, they have to let go. They have to let go of desire. They have to let go of concepts. Again, I've talked to Robert a lot about this. You can do a lot of groundwork leading up to the creation of new work. You can study, you can listen, and you can have all kinds of conceptual ideas about where you want to go with a piece of work. But the moment you sit down and start writing a piece, you have to open up to any eventuality and let go of all that stuff for the work to really breathe. Because something could come through that could really surprise you and knock your socks off: "Wow, I wasn't expecting that." I've often found that if I sit down with the desire to write a specific kind of composition, or to overdefine the parameters in which I choose to work on that given day, I'm not being open-hearted or open-minded enough to allow that process of true inspiration to take place. So it's a tricky game, but I think ultimately it's a matter of remaining open. I think meditation is a wonderful tool. I recommend it for everybody, whether they're writing music or not. But it is a wonderful tool for musicians.

MICK KARN

2008-06-28T10:15:00.002-07:00

WIKIPEDIA

Mick Karn (born 24 July 1958) is an English musician, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, most noted as the bassist for the art rock band Japan, from 1974 to 1982.

Karn was born Anthony Michaelides in Nicosia, Cyprus before emigrating to London, England at the age of 3. He has worked with such noted and diverse artists as Gary Numan, Kate Bush, Midge Ure and Joan Armatrading as well as being a member of Dali's Car with Peter Murphy of the gothic post-punk group Bauhaus. In the 1990s he worked with artist David Torn as well as a number of Japanese musicians, including the band NiNa.

His use of the fretless bass guitar resulted in a distinctive sound and playing style, which makes his playing immediately recognizable not to mention highly influential. After Mick's first solo release Titles in 1982, Pete Townshend claimed that "Mick was by far the best bassist in the UK".

Karn played an aluminum-neck Travis Bean bass on all Japan albums up to Gentlemen Take Polaroids. In 1981 he moved to the renowned Wal basses, purchasing two Mark I instruments; one with rare African tulipwood facings, and the other being a cherry solidbody. Mick recorded Japan's last studio album Tin Drum with the Wal and has continued to use them, helping further their popularity worldwide. Today Karn also uses the ergonomically-designed headless Klein 'K Bass'.

Discography (albums 1982 to date)

Titles (1982)
Dreams of Reason Produce Monsters (1987)
Bestial Cluster (1993)
The Tooth Mother (1995)
Each Eye a Path' (2001)
Each Path a Remix (2003)
More Better Different (2004)
Love's Glove EP (2005)
Three Part Species (2006)
Selected (2007)

2008-06-28T10:15:00.001-07:00

WIKIPEDIA

Richard Barbieri (born 30 November 1957, in London, England) is the current keyboardist for British progressive rock band, Porcupine Tree.

Barbieri (pronounced bahr-bee-air-ee) started his musical career with the group Japan in 1976. Within a year the band was signed to the Hansa/Ariola label and began work on a debut album, which received severe criticism from the UK music press on its release. Although initially perceived as a "hyped" band, Japan went on to record five studio albums culminating in the groundbreaking Tin Drum which stayed in the UK Albums Chart for a year. The painstaking approach to synthesiser programming by Richard Barbieri and David Sylvian on top of the original rhythmic patterns of Steve Jansen and Mick Karn produced a sound that remains original to this day. They were the one of the most successful chart bands in Europe and Asia in 1982 despite the increasingly experimental nature of their music.[citation needed] The band split up at the height of their popularity after a world tour that year.

Beginning in 1983-84 Barbieri has regularly contributed his unique soundscapes and synth textures to David Sylvian's solo albums, working alongside such innovators as Holger Czukay, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Robert Fripp. Soon after, he started a long musical association with Steve Jansen, which has produced six collaborative albums to date, initially under the name The Dolphin Brothers (Catch the Fall, 1987) and later as Jansen & Barbieri (including Stories Without Borders, 1993,Other Worlds in a Small Room, 1996, and Stone to Flesh, 1997).

The band members reunited in 1989 under the name Rain Tree Crow, without guitarist Rob Dean, to release just one album for Virgin. The album charted and brought critical acclaim. Again the group parted company shortly afterwards.

Barbieri formed the Medium Productions label in 1993 with Jansen and Karn, with the objective being to enable the artists to create music and collaborate with fellow musicians on projects, without record company interference and restriction. They kicked off the label with the Jansen/Barbieri/Karn (sometimes abbreviated to JBK) release entitled Beginning to Melt. Thirteen diverse albums were released during a ten-year period; Jansen and Barbieri's collaboration with DJ Takemura on the album Changing Hands being one of the highlights.
During this period Barbieri also made two other collaborative albums, one with his wife Suzanne J Barbieri under the name Indigo Falls, and one with Tim Bowness from the band No-Man titled Flame.

Also in 1993 Barbieri joined the progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. Six studio albums and many tours later, they are enjoying chart success around Europe with sales of over 120,000 for their album In Absentia. The following studio album Deadwing entered the American Billboard chart on its first week of release. With the latest Porcupine Tree release Fear Of A Blank Planet, the band are enjoying even greater levels of success, with a top 40 entry in the UK album chart. Increased radio airtime and favourable mainstream magazine reviews and interviews are further increasing public knowledge of the band.

Aside from recording and touring, Barbieri has written articles on analogue synthesis for various publications; composed music for film; programs for music software and synthesiser manufacturers. He regularly guests with The Bays, an electronic improvisational group. Recent highlights include two Radio One sessions for the late John Peel and concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Brighton Dome.

In 2005 he released his debut solo album Things Buried. Although he has made many albums as part of a group, trio or duo, surprisingly this is his first solo work. The instrumental album also features the distinctive performances of Andy Gangadeen on acoustic and electronic drums, and Percy Jones on fretless bass.

ROB DEAN

2008-06-28T10:15:00.000-07:00

Rob Dean is a British musician, who rose to prominence playing guitar as a member of the British band Japan.

Dean joined Japan in 1975 at the age of 22 and saw them develop from glam-rock band to new romantics. He left the band in 1981 due to frustration with the lack of room for his guitar work.

Rob Dean's instruments of choice were a Gibson RD artist, and a Gibson SG.

Post-Japan he worked on some initial ideas for a solo album with keyboardist and composer Roger Mason (keyboard player for Gary Numan amongst others). He also played on Gary Numan's Dance album as well as Sinéad O'Connor's first record. Dean continued to work on projects with Steve Jansen, Richard Barbieri and Mick Karn such as a 1995 compilation album and a number of other works on their Medium Productions label.

His work with other artists has been relatively extensive:

Vivabeat

Vivabeat (supported by Peter Gabriel) combined the influences of '70s British art-rock to the kind of lush, technopop characterized by Bowie, Roxy Music and Sparks. They had a hit with Man From China’ and their work featured Dean on guitar.

Gary Numan - Dance

Gary Numan (vocals), Rob Dean (guitar), Roger Mason (keyboards), Mick Karn (saxophone, bass), Paul Gardner (guitar), Roger Taylor (drums), Cedric Sharpley (drums), Tim Steggles (percussion), Sean Lynch (programming). Dance was an ironic title for one of Gary Numan's latter-period recordings.

Illustrated Man - Illustrated Man

Excitement met Illustrated Man (1984) but they never achieved massive chart success. Hugo Burnham (ex-Gang of Four), Roger Mason (Numan and others), Rob Dean (ex-Japan) and Australian singer/bassist Philip Foxman combined to produce some well-written funk-rock music and some brilliant live performances.

The Slow Club - World of Wonders

Rob Dean contributing to this Australian band (1990)

Jansen, Barbieri, Karn - Beginning to Melt

WIKIPEDIA

This 1993 album features Rob Dean and ex-members of Japan.

Little has been heard of Rob Dean as a musician since. The occasional demo tapes from the eighties have surfaced for a range of projects (known as 'The Lost Tapes') where Dean experimented with electronica (with Roger Mason), his trademark guitar sounds and even acoustic tracks with vocals.

Dean's principal activities now are as a professional guide, writer and artist on the birds of Central America. He lives in Monteverde, Costa Rica, and, now known as Robert Dean, has established a reputation as an expert on the region's birdlife. In 2007, Dean collaborated as illustrator on a bird study book (along with Richard Garrigues), entitled The Birds Of Costa Rica: A Field Guide. He has been reported as occasionally playing guitar with local bands. It would seem that he has achieved some serenity after years in the music business.

STEVE JANSEN

2008-06-28T09:58:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia

Steve Jansen (born Stephen Batt, December 1, 1959, in Beckenham, Kent, England) with his brother David Sylvian, Mick Karn, Richard Barbieri, and Rob Dean formed the band Japan.

Jansen played drums and percussion. After Japan broke up in 1982, Jansen recorded with bandmate Richard Barbieri under the name The Dolphin Brothers, with Jansen handling lead vocals as well as drums and percussion. In 1991, Jansen, Barbieri, and Karn formed Medium Productions as a venue for releasing their own music, as well as releases by other artists.

Jansen has worked extensively as a session musician and in collaboration with a wide range of international artists such as Yukihiro Takahashi and Italian singer-songwriter Alice. His most recent project is Nine Horses with David Sylvian and Burnt Friedman, which has given birth to one album and one extended play CD released through Sylvian's record label Samadhisound.

Jansen played percussion on tour with Sylvian through the latter half of 2007, and compositions from his latest solo album "Slope", which was released on January 15, 2008, were included in the setlist.

---------------------------------

FROM : http://slope.stevejansen.com/

Steve Jansen never smiles behind the kit. In concert, he's steady and serious, expressing himself implicitly in the texture, the precision, and the subtle wit of his music. With his new album, Slope, a still tension underlies the crisp rhythms and intricate programming, while a collection of distinctive vocalists draw out the sentiment in his songwriting.

Slope follows Jansen's critically celebrated endeavour Nine Horses, with brother and long-time collaborator David Sylvian and electronica artist Burnt Friedman. As Jansen explains, "With this album I approached composition attempting to avoid chord and song structures and the usual familiar building blocks. Instead I wanted to piece together unrelated sounds, music samples, rhythms and 'events' in an attempt to deviate from my own trappings as a musician." Opener "Grip" lays out the challenge: skittering beats propel an instrumental with fragments of voices, resonant metal percussion and breathy snatches of saxophonist Theo Travis. The main theme is quizzical: the rhythm is insistent and affecting, a click track with a conscience. Disparate sounds attach to one another as like unpredictably finds like.

Next up is "Sleepyard," graced by the warm, grave vocals of Sweet Billy Pilgrim's Tim Elsenburg. Like most of the songs on Slope, the material didn't set out to support a vocalist, but Elsenburg makes himself at home, as he delivers his narcoleptic ballad. Acclaimed avant-pop singer Anja Garbarek pulls off the same trick on the mischievous "Cancelled Pieces," where she teases a melody over Jansen's unorthodox rhythms. Thomas Feiner of Anywhen contributes the ballad, "Sow the Salt," and both Sylvian and the remarkable Swedish chanteuse Nina Kinert perform the short, striking "Playground Martyrs." Listen closely to the outro of Sylvian's version: that whispery, distant howl is as carefully-crafted as anything on the surface, and the intent behind that clicking sound – like metal fingers snapping the beat – is entirely up for grabs.

Most unlikely of all is the bluesy "Ballad of a Deadman," where Sylvian's serene tenor meets the distinctive growl of Joan Wasser (Joan as Police Woman) in front of a weary guitar and Jansen's mulish drums. Fans of Sylvian and Wasser will admire how effortlessly their voices blend together on a song that doesn't fit either's background.

A rare glimpse of Americana on an austerely modern LP, "Ballad of a Deadman" shares one great quality with the rest of the disc: silence. Jansen's hunger for new sounds and his keen, inventive beats can cover a wide ground because every element on the record is necessary and thoroughly considered. "December Train," a driving instrumental constructed entirely by Jansen, kicks off with an exhilarating blend of strings and electronic constructions.

It's serious business to make music this stimulating, and to bring five years of work into such a polished, compelling package. But listen close, and you may catch him wink.

Presented as ever in a beautiful digipak with design by Chris Bigg, our resident designer.

Tim Elsenburg [http://www.sweetbillypilgrim.com/]
Thomas Feiner[www.myspace.com/anywhenmusic]
Anja Garbarek[http://www.anjagarbarek.com/]
Nina Kinert[www.myspace.com/ninakinert]
David Sylvian[http://www.davidsylvian.com/]
Theo Travis[http://www.theotravis.com/]
Joan Wasser[http://www.joanaspolicewoman.com/]

2008-06-20T05:02:00.000-07:00

SOURCE

Now that's magic: YMO on stage at the Royal Festival Hall. Photograph: Mark Mawston.

Armed with everything from a pedal steel guitar and looped euphoniums to a glass juice bottle and a toy piano, electronic pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra wowed the Royal Festival Hall last night.

The Royal Festival Hall is filled with what sounds like a recording of rain while the lights are up before tonight's gig. The audience are a mixture of Japanese people are here to see the seminal purveyors of Japanese 'technopop' from the late Seventies and early Eighties, who are up there with Kraftwerk in the electronic pioneer stakes. There are also lots of English fans and plenty of muso types - people in the know, WIRE magazine readers, not to say contributors - as well as a smattering of musicians - Mark Moore of S'Xpress is in the house while outside on the terrace I spot Paul Weller (though he could be here to see the acoustic reggae gig next door at the Queen Elizabeth Hall).

The band arrive on stage without fanfare but draw a huge cheer. The trio of Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums and percussion) and Haruomi Hosono (bass) are flanked by three younger musicians - Ren Takada on pedal steel guitar and various stringed instruments, Tomohiko Gondo on laptop and hard disk duties, cornet and euphonium, and Christian Fennesz on guitar, the latter also armed with a laptop through which he processes his instrument, drawing strange noises which add to the mix.

They work up a wonderful bank of sound - there is a wash of warm chords before a big bass note comes and hits me and a slow electro beat, made of conventional drum sounds and complex patterns of pops and glitches, like a rhythmic remodelling of the scratches on a record, kicks in and the three launch into 'I-Shin Den-Shin', their warm vocals joined in unison. I'm immediately reminded of several other people, and realise where Nineties electro/ dance artists such as Berlin's Schneider TM drew at least some inspiration; the bedrock on which Japanese pop exoticist Cornelius's work is founded is laid bare.

On the next track, 'Sportsmen', Takahashi plays a strange instrument that looks like a cross between an electronic metronome and a penny whistle and adds chanter-like tones to the mix; 'Fly Me to the River' which follows is crystal-clear and takes you up into blue skies - it's techno-pastoral par excellence, very refreshing.

The numbers seem to build in intensity and sometimes, backed by Shoko Ise's backdrops of static cascades of diamond shapes or moving banks of acrylic colour, as the ticking hi-hats make you want to cover your ears or Takada creates a growing, growling wash of a pedal steel chord, it becomes almost too much. 'Riot in Lagos' which stars with a kicking funk beat beneath an Oriental riff is particularly intense. Then again, all is tempered by the calming vocals, in unison and close harmony, intoning short simple slogans. 'Riot' is followed by 'Ongaku', a fast electro march with a cheesy lounge theme on which Hosono plays a glass juice bottle with a pencil.

For 'Tokyo Townpage', as for half a dozen numbers, Takahashi switches to a modest drumkit, and I'm taken with the way the patterns he creates on the hi-hats are used in loops, sampled live. In fact I forget to write anything down, staring at a backdrop of fading, nicotine-washed cityscape as the rhythms play out.

It's hard to pick high points. I like Gondo's euphonium lines, also looped live, and the sixteen bars of planned chaos on 'Turn Turn'; equally the positive jazzy 'Tibetan Dance' with its backdrop of quotes from the Dalai Lama on the Middle Way and global unity, or the intense 'War and Peace' where many voices ask the same questions about the nature of conflict and its opposite while the words ('Is war as old as gravity?'; 'Is peace quiet?'; 'Is making war an instinct we inherited from our hunting or farming ancestors?') play out on a backdrop of poppy fields and spent cartridge shells.

The last number of the set, 'Rydeen 79/07', finds Sakamoto playing a toy piano which is then looped as the track builds in intensity and the lights come up on the stage; the addition of the complex 'Chronograph' and second encore 'Cue' merely top off an engrossing, almost enveloping evening.

The Observer is a sponsor of Meltdown

Academy Award-Winning Composer and Technology Pioneer Join Forces to Celebrate a Japanese Tradition

2008-06-19T08:56:00.001-07:00

SOURCE

Thursday, 22 May 2008

Today Boing Boing TV (tv.boingboing.net) commemorates its 150th episode with a mini-documentary featuring internationally recognized technology pioneer, Joi Ito (joi.ito.com), accompanied by an original score composed by Grammy, Academy Award, and Golden Globe-winning composer, Ryuichi Sakamoto (sitesakamoto.com).

This special episode marries art, music, tradition, cuisine, and community in an extraordinary tale as told by Joi, an American-educated Japanese activist, entrepreneur and venture capitalist, who is also the CEO of Creative Commons (creativecommons.org). Joi is also the founder and CEO of Neoteny, a venture capital firm focused on personal communications and enabling technologies. He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan.

The video follows Joi as he sets off in a bamboo forest near his home in the heart of Japan, in search of a seasonal delicacy, takenoko (bamboo shoots). The video reveals the secrets on how this ancestral dish has been prepared and presented in Japan, set to a modern composition by one of today's most important global musicians. Ryuichi's interest in the story underscores his passion as an outspoken environmentalist -- his recent initiative, "More Trees" (www.more-trees.org) supports the planting of more trees to help offset carbon emissions.

"Technology enables us to communicate and connect in many ways, but sometimes we get so caught up in the flood of new information, we forget to stop and appreciate experiences that remind us of our history," said Xeni Jardin, co-founder and co-host of Boing Boing TV.

"Without technology, the larger public may never have had the opportunity to take this journey," said Boing Boing founder and Boing Boing TV co-host Mark Frauenfelder, "It was an honor and a privilege to share this unique and personal glimpse of tradition with the millions of Boing Boing followers."

Since its debut in October 2007, Boing Boing TV has won the hearts of fans, as demonstrated by the recent nomination as an "Official Honoree" for the 2008 Webby Awards, in the Online Film and Video category. Boing Boing TV's innovative model and premium content has also continually attracted major brands; including IBM, Dell, BMW, Verizon, Amazon, Adobe, Samsung, SanDisk, and JCPenney. Boing Boing TV is available on tv.boingboing.net, as well as Apple iTunes, YouTube, and in the inflight entertainment system on board Virgin America planes (www.virginamerica.com).

Boing Boing TV is produced in partnership with DECA, a digital entertainment studio that finances, develops, markets and distributes unique, high-quality digital entertainment properties including BushLeague.TV (www.bushleague.tv) and CNET's Dog and Pony Show (www.dogandpony.com).

Boing Boing TV is represented by International Creative Management (www.icmtalent.com), one of the world's largest talent and literary agencies.

Federated Media Publishing (www.federatedmedia.net) connects marketers with Boing Boing TV, and has helped the property attract sponsorships that include in-stream video advertising, pre-show announcements and millions of blog ad impressions.

About Ryuichi Sakamoto:

Ryuichi Sakamoto (Sakamoto Ryuichi, sitesakamoto.com) is a gifted composer, musician producer, actor and environmental activist. With multiple Academy Awards, Grammy nominations and Golden Globes, he is ranked as one of the top 100 most influential musicians by HMV.

Ryuichi got his start as a session musician, then formed the internationally successful synthpop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra, with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi.
Ryuichi's talent doesn't stop in the realm of creative arts; he's also an avid global activist, passionately assisting in the fight against global warming. His latest project More Trees, which began in 2006, seeks to support and promote special projects that allow for the planting of trees as a measure of carbon offsets. The organization has vowed to plant seven billion trees by 2009. To-date, 2 billion trees have been planted mostly through work with country governments including Turkey, Ethiopia and Mexico.

Ryuichi attended the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he earned a B.A. in music composition and an M.A. with special emphasis on both electronic and ethnic music. He is based in New York and Tokyo.

About Boing Boing TV:

Boing Boing TV ("BBtv", tv.boingboing.net) is a daily online video program featuring eccentric, adventurous, colorful, and provocative glimpses into undiscovered realms of technology, art, and culture. In addition to "mini-documentaries" featuring Boing Boing editors online and out in the world, BBtv has welcomed a diverse roster of guests including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, author John Hodgman, "Matrix" and "Speed Racer" effects wizard John Gaeta, and a webcam glimpse inside the making of a "South Park" episode with Matt Stone and Trey Parker. BBtv is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/).

About Boing Boing:

Boing Boing (www.boingboing.net) is co-edited by Cory Doctorow, Mark Frauenfelder, Xeni Jardin and David Pescovitz. Boing Boing Gadgets (gadgets.boingboing.net) is edited by Joel Johnson, Rob Beschizza, and John Brownlee. BoingBoing.net launched in 2000, and Technorati's list of most influential blogs -- based on how many other sites link to that blog -- now places Boing Boing at #1 in popularity and #5 in authority. By Comscore's measure, Boing Boing is among the five most-visited blogs on the web. According to Google, more than a million other sites link to Boing Boing. Forbes voted it "best of the web" among tech blogs, as did BusinessWeek. AdRants, ad exec Steve Hall's blog, said that if Boing Boing covers your ad campaign, it's gone viral. It was a 2006 Bloggies winner for Best Group Blog and Lifetime Achievement and a 2006 and 2007 Webby Awards nominee. In a 2006 article, The New Yorker described Boing Boing as "a technology blog that is read by geeks the world over."

About DECA:

DECA (www.deca.tv) was founded in 2007 by experienced entertainment and Internet executives who previously held senior roles at Sony Pictures, ABC, and Yahoo! Music. DECA uniquely identifies, funds, markets and distributes next-generation digital entertainment properties, bridging the gap between Hollywood, Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley. Based in Santa Monica, Calif., the company is backed by Mayfield, General Catalyst, and Atomico.

About International Creative Management:

International Creative Management, Inc. (ICM, www.icmtalent.com) is one of the world's largest talent and literary agencies, with offices in Los Angeles, New York and London. A cornerstone of the entertainment industry for more than three decades, ICM represents creative and technical talent in the fields of motion pictures, television, publishing, music, live performance, commercials and new media.

About Federated Media:

FM (www.federatedmedia.net) believes great voices attract great audiences, and supports those voices by connecting them to great marketers, as well as providing a suite of services that let authors focus on what they do best: make compelling media. In so doing, FM creates federations of respected voices that prosper on their own terms. Current federations include Sports, Technology, Automotive, Business & Marketing, Media & Entertainment, Video Gaming, Graphics Arts, News 2.0, Mobile, Lifestyle and Parenting.

CIPHER - SILVER MOON

2008-06-19T08:56:00.000-07:00

Silver Moon

This is etching work inspired by David Sylvian's "Silver Moon". Made in high school art class.

Posted by :

投稿者 cipher 場所

LIFE IN TOKYO

2008-06-12T06:37:00.000-07:00

retro futurist minimal electronic new wave analog synth electro pop music

Life In Tokyo

I SATELLITE's cover of Life In Tokyo is finished. There are two different versions of the track, a radio edit for Utopia, a Moroder tribute compilation coming out on Cohaagen Records this Spring, and an extended version with a longer intro. The intro right before the song kicks in is supposed to mimic the sound of a bullet train going by.

Right-click and click "Save Target As..." to download the MP3's to your desktop:

Life In Tokyo (radio edit) - 7.0 MB
Life In Tokyo (extended) - 8.6 MB

The following instruments were used to make the track:

MC-4b MicroComposer (x2)
Roland System-700 (bass left)
Minimoog (bass right)
Roland SH-1 (buzzy bass lead)
Roland CMU-810 (low arpeggiated lead)
Roland Jupiter-8 (phased strings)
Prophet-5 (rev. 2) (arpeggiated bassline)
Roland Jupiter-4 (through a Space Echo for the spacey stuff)
Oberheim OBX (chime sound)
LinnDrum
Roland PH-830 Stereo Phaser
Mu Tron Bi Phase
Roland SPH-323 Phase Shifter
Roland SBF-325 Flanger (x2)
Roland SRE-555 Chorus Echo
Lexicon PCM-80 (reverb and delay)
Lexicon PCM-41 (delay)
Korg SDD-1200 Stereo Delay

I really wanted this to be an authentic tribute to the work of Giorgio Moroder and Japan. But more than that, a tribute to the synths and sequencers of the pre-MIDI era. No MIDI or computers were used in the making of this track. All notes were keyed into the MicroComposer one-at-a-time or played live to tape.

Song History

Japan recorded Life In Tokyo with Moroder in early 1979. His trademark arpeggiated bassline can be heard throughout the track. It's likely they used the Oberheim mini-sequencer that Barbieri owned, instead of Moroder's MC-8, to trigger the OB-X or Prophet-5. The song Quiet Life, off the album of the same name, utilized the same arpeggiated bassline, and made the top 20 in the UK. A year after its release they split with Hansa for Virgin Records and produced one of my all time favorite albums, Gentlemen Take Polaroids.

Hansa rereleased a number of versions of Life in Tokyo to capitalize on Japan's success, but they didn't do well. A special remix of the song was released and did slightly better. In all there were 11 different versions of Life In Tokyo released over the years. One of them is simply the instrumental version of the track slowed down to half speed. I actually like the track Japan recorded before Life In Tokyo better, the Moroder-inspired European Son. It's one of my favorite Japan tracks, but Moroder had nothing to do with it, otherwise I would have covered that one instead.

Japan broke up in 1982 just as they had reached the peak of success with the Tin Drum album. It is rumored that Nick Rhodes approached David Sylvian to produce Duran Duran's first album, but he turned them down. Duran Duran ended up copying Japan's sound and look and went on to great success. :-( You can read more about Japan at the excellent Nightporter Web site. You can read more about Moroder at the Giorgio Moroder MySpace Site.

Lyrics

There's always something left inside here
I've really nothing much to lose
It seems so sentimental
Why should I care?

Somewhere the sound of distant living
Welcomed in high society
It seems so artificial
Why should I care?

Oh ho ho
Life can be cruel
Life in Tokyo
Oh ho ho
Life can be cruel
Life in Tokyo

Another vehicle heads for sunset
No other providence will do
They're only buildings and houses
Why should I care?

Oh ho ho
Life can be cruel
Life in Tokyo
Oh ho ho
Life can be cruel
Life in Tokyo

Enjoy the track! Send me an e-mail and let me know what you think!

[ I SATELLITE blog ] [ e-mail I SATELLITE ]

DAVID SYLVIAN

2008-06-12T06:26:00.000-07:00

SOURCE

David Sylvian by Sylvie Simmons - MOJO (1999)

He was the sensitive soul who fronted south London’s dodgiest glam-rockers, the World’s Most Lovely Man who chose tortured sainthood, pop’s preening popinjay who reinvented himself as a darling of the avant-garde. "I’m damaged goods," he tells Sylvie Simmons.

THERE’S NOT A LOT OF ACTION in Sonoma. Then again, most of its residents are retired. This quaint, leafy town only comes to life at weekends when the tourists come by on their California wine country tours. David Sylvian arranges to meet at a pink, faux Italian wine villa outside of town, set high on a hill over a big, flat valley of vines. They look powdery in the soft winter sun, like someone ironed the Bordeaux region and covered it in dust. David is teetotal. Hair shirts come in no end of fine shapes and sizes.

He is already there when I arrive, sitting alone on a bench at a long communal picnic table, looking decidedly not like a local: neat white shirt, black leather jacket, pale English face framed by short, dark, greying hair, the only thing to detract from the monochrome effect a scrub of reddish beard. A slim, delicate-looking man with spare, almost feminine movements, he’s feeding his cake to a flock of starlings. The sweet, pained smile adds to the effect of tortured sainthood.

Sylvian does not like interviews; he’s the first musician I’ve met who’s tried negotiating less magazine space if it would make me stop asking him questions. Especially questions about the past — plasterer’s son from Lewisham, Japan’s pin-up frontman…all the transitions that brought him to where he is today, a respected, blond-wedge-haircut-free solo musician living just down the road in the Napa Valley with his American wife and their two daughters, his guru close at hand.

It’s an extraordinary if not an entirely new story — there have always been artists who embrace the tragedy rather than the glory of pop. Nutshelled, Sylvian’s band Japan — loathed by the critics, loved by teenage girls — fought like demons to get anywhere, and when they got there and actually became good, Sylvian broke it up. He hated being "the most beautiful man in pop", hated touring, hated having hit records. Not a great career choice, then. He chucked it in, scrubbed off the make-up and became a troubled recluse, a spiritual seeker, and re-emerged as a serious, complex solo artist with links to the art, jazz and avant-garde worlds. A musicians’ musician (counting among his fans, friends and/or collaborators Holger Czukay, Robert Fripp, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jon Hassell, Bill Nelson, Kenny Wheeler, Marc Ribot, classical composer John Tavener, artist Russell Mills) and critic’s fave. From no cred to total cred. Cf. Scott Walker.

Walker and Sylvian, oddly, once planned to collaborate. It was 1990, Sylvian had sent him a song he’d written "that I thought would suit his voice. He asked to meet up. We chatted and he said he didn’t want to record just the one song, how about recording an album together as two vocalists? It didn’t strike me as a wonderful idea and I didn’t think either of us believed for one second that anything was going to happen, and it didn’t. We tried. But Scott’s so evasive. After being in touch for a number of months I decided to get on with other work…I think we have very different mind-sets," he uses, gazing at the birds swooping down into the valley. "But we’re probably both damaged goods."

HE WAS BORN DAVID ALAN BATT ON FEBRUARY 23, 1958 IN Beckenham, Kent, the second of three children. His brother, Steven, came along the following year. Their father, according to Japan’s former manager, Simon Napier-Bell, worked for Rentokil. "When you had rats he went and plastered up the holes. It was a background David certainly wanted to get away from."

"I was overly sensitive," David says, approaching the past with discomfort. "I found the environment rather brutal. I wanted to protect myself from it. I was and am very shy — cripplingly shy as a child — so I’d spend a lot of time alone. Drawing and painting were my outlet at the time. We didn’t listen to much music in the house. We didn’t have a stereo. My dad used to repair this one wireless we had — once a year it used to work for 24 hours then break down again, but I remember music coming out of that old radio: ‘Ticket To Ride’, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, the first things that hit me as being just an amazing sound.

"My brother and I had these little toy guitars when we were around five or six and I would play them until I had blisters on my fingers. I just loved music, even though I really had no introduction to it. The next step in my musical education was when my sister, who’s three years older, started bringing Motown records home. Then, when I was around 12, I got a guitar. That was it for me. Straight away I started writing my own songs — pretty folky, all strummed on two chords. Steve was getting into music too, percussion, so we’d play together, non-stop."

At Catford Boys School, David hung out with Anthony Michaelides (Mick Karn) — a virtuoso bassoonist until skinheads stole his bassoon and he switched to bass. They bonded over music — glam for the most part; the first record David bought was T.Rex’s ‘Telegram Sam’. Aged 14, David, Mick and Steve dyed their hair and turned up to school in make-up. Their classmates promptly beat the shit out of them.

"It was a disguise, a mask to hide behind," says David, overlooking the possibility that camping it up in a south-east London comprehensive is more like hiding behind a target. "It was never an expression of who I was. The mask was pretty dense in the early days and the whole life of Japan could be seen as a process of me stripping it away. But it’s very unhealthy — a means of survival only, which is no way to live. The music was a mask as well. It says nothing about how I was, other than I was hiding, trying desperately to be anything but myself. Just because I thought that was the only way I could survive."

The school finally suggested David might want to leave and so he did, at 16, with no qualifications and "no other option" than music. By that time the three masked men had morphed into a band, with Mick, the most musically proficient, as frontman. ‘We would spend days and days rehearsing my songs," David recalls. "We had a place above a shop we’d go to every night. We were committed. And it was the only open door on the horizon — I knew that I had to get out of that environment and that creating music was my only means of escape. Which is no good reason for making music — there aren’t that many noble ideas in a young boy’s mind, ha ha — but at that time it didn’t matter."

They looked like a Lewisham New York Dolls (long dyed hair, dodgy trousers, leopard-skin jackets) and sounded somewhere between Bowie, Roxy and Sweet. "We didn’t hide our influences," David explains. "Maybe we didn’t digest them enough before they surfaced in our own work. But we were all self-taught — though that’s also the strength of the band, a greater desire to experiment to overcome one’s personal limitations as musicians." By the end of their first public appearance — at a wedding — Mick had stepped down as singer and Avid had the job. "When we got there he was too afraid to stand up front and sing. I was completely afraid; I didn’t think I could do it. But they were my sons — I knew them, so I started singing."

The trio expanded to a five-piece the following year after running into old schoolmate Richard Barbieri and finding lead guitarist Rob Dean through an ad in Melody Maker. Their name supposedly came from a travel brochure found on the bus on the way to their first gig. David hates it. But then, he seems to hate almost everything about Japan. "I don’t know why David wants to reject his past," says Simon Napier-Bell, "though there are so many artist that do — look at [later client] George Michael and Wham! They have to pretend it was all awful and childish. But Japan was a fantastic group and it was a fantastic time." They found Napier-bell through another MM classified ad.

"He walked down Wigmore Street," Napier-Bell recalls of the first meeting, ‘and I thought, What a fantastic looking guy. Half Marilyn Monroe, half Mick Jagger. He wasn’t at all effeminate — he was really rather chunky-limbed, he just managed to make himself look very pretty. I’d been in Spain and France for years so I didn’t realise the rest of teenage London didn’t look like that. I took him into the studio and he sang some songs and I said, Brilliant, I’ll sign him. Then he said, ‘I’ve got a group and my brother’s in it and Mick’s waiting downstairs’ — Mick looked almost identical, both had orange hair down to their waist. You couldn’t meet the others and not want to sign the group."

Their early shows "were really not good. David’s songs rambled and got nowhere. I decided the only way they’d ever get an audience was if they compromised and played other people’s songs too. We put together a 40-minute set — ‘This Old Heart Of Mine’, then one of David’s, ‘I Shot The Sheriff’, one of David’s. It was sensational — in those days David had his Road Stewart voice, his first-album voice, and they did these other numbers with fantastic style."

The record companies didn’t agree and the band stayed deal-less. Until Hansa — the German stable that gave us Boney M — set up shop in London; you might recall all those billboards proclaiming their arrival. Hansa held a win-a-deal talent contest. According to legend, The Cure won but scared the label off with the first song they recorded on their demo money, ‘Killing An Arab’, Enter Japan. Prior to singing (part two of the "mask") the three core members changed their names to Karn, Jansen and Sylvian (the last two allegedly not inspired by the Dolls’ Johansen and Sylvain). Japan’s early demos were a dense brew of turgid heavy rock and funk. Hansa gave them staff producer Steve Roland (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich) who gave them female backing singers. They were swiftly ousted, as was Roland, replaced by Ray Singer (The Easybeats).

"They had a really good feel," says Singer. "I tried to record what they were doing live in rehearsals — very much a rock band with that great bass sound of Mick’s; I think because his background was Greek Cyrpiot or something, you get this weird wnnn wnnn wnnn in the bass-playing — a real oriental sound, unlike anything I’d heard before. Those sessions were lots of fun — they had a great sense of humour." Something you might not expect from their poker-faced public image, but Napier-Bell concurs: "In 35 years I’ve never managed anyone who so amused me — intimately friendly with each other and so much laughing. But David had this image for Japan that was not what they were about. He would not let them be fun in front of people or on-stage or in interviews. He was a real dictator."

Sylvian’s memories are of feeling "very lost. We’d been signed about a year and hadn’t been given the freedom to make a record. We’d been demoing away, trying to please everybody else with what kind of music we should be making and it would change on a weekly basis — whatever was happening. Nobody was happy with anything — we weren’t, the record label weren’t. it was atrocious. When we finally were allowed to make a record, we just had this pile of material that had been kicking around for years and a lot of the good stuff had been dropped along the way because it supposedly wasn’t commercial enough. The first album ended up a mishmash, a caricature of whatever and whomever."

Napier-Bell, meanwhile, was pulling out the stops to get the band press. He tried the lot: Oriental name angle (sumo wrestler cabs around to the rock mags delivering sake); androgynous image angle (the ad where David pulled open his jacket to reveal fake breasts); the gorgeous bloke angle. After a three-month campaign, the Japanese bit, the group were stars in their namesake country, with 30,000 girls in their fan club before the first album was even released.

A first single appeared in early ’78, a few weeks after David’s 20th birthday: a cover of Barbra Streisand’s ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade’, performed in the style of punks with PMT. It died horribly — not a great precursor for debut album Adolescent Sex, which died too. But then the competition had been fierce: The Clash’s debut and the Pistols’ Never Mind The Bollocks to name just two. Critics slammed them. All "paint, powder and poofy hairdos", said Melody Maker. "The make-up," says Napier-Bell, "really only started a year and a half into my managing them. I think their girlfriends taught them. Before that it was just a bit of a game — slap on a bit here and there and they’d look like clowns. I took that as David just not being able to wait to be a star — putting on lipstick and eye-shadow because if you get on the train from Lewisham covered in make-up, everyone’s going to look at you."

Booed off stage on their UK tour, bottled off opening for Blue Oyster Cult, they left for the States — where they were ignored. I met David there for the first time, 20 years ago, interviewing Japan by the roof-top pool of the Los Angeles Hyatt House — Sunset Strip’s legendary ‘Riot House’ rock’n’roll hotel. Following David’s directive to the letter, they sat far apart on separate sunloungers, exuding ennui and disdain. David looked particularly unhappy. He didn’t like America. He was already beginning to dislike touring. His white make-up was starting to run in the heat.

A follow-up, Obscure Alternatives, was released at the end of the year. "The second album, I was trying to make sense of the first album," says David, who by now had begun writing on keyboards. "Both of them were miserable failures artistically and we were just lost. We didn’t know which way to turn. That’s when we first began to think maybe we should just call it quits, because something had gone terribly wrong and we didn’t know how to put it to rights.

"There was a lot more hard rock in the beginning — I think that was Rob Dean’s influence which we just got caught up in. Richard and I were totally into electronics."

Ray Singer: "On the second album what David wanted was something much more electronic — this was before samples and emulators and all that. He’d heard Bowie and wanted that sound. But I was going more fore the real sound they were making at the time, which was a rock band. I think that pissed him off. I don’t think they’d really found their own direction. They were still looking for it."

Huge in Japan, though. "They were mobbed," says Napier-Bell. "Thirteen-year-old girls mostly, though they kept that audience for five or six years until those girls grew up, which is unusual. But, amazingly, the band stayed incredibly ordinary. They didn’t really go for the hedonistic pleasures of pop stardom at all. I suppose there was the odd drug here and there, but they stayed very down-to-earth."

Sylvian: "The first time going to Japan and experiencing that rush as a 20-year-old guy was a lot of fun. The second time, it wore off. But it was the only place paying the bills. We could play there and eat for the rest of the year. If it wasn’t for Japan we would have broken up." The groupies?" "I’ve never done that. I’ve always been too shy." Coming back from a Japanese tour in ’79 he "holed up in an apartment with Richard and played around with electronics, programming synths for hours on end just to see what would happen, seeing where we could go with the next album. Because we knew that the shift had to take place if we wanted to stay together."

Meanwhile, Hansa had come up with the idea that they meet disco producer/writer Giorgio Moroder, and David flew to LA with the demos for album number three. "I thought, Why not? We nicknamed him Clouseau because he had that [Pink Panther] persona about him. We knocked ‘Life In Tokyo’ off in a day." The single, a change in direction, came out in May ’79 on rising-sun red vinyl — and flopped.

Exit Singer; enter Bryan Ferry’s producer John Punter. With the band now dropped by their US label, Napier-Bell was seriously in debt. The band, perversely, were quite chipper as they set to work on Quiet Life. "A turning point for the band" says David. "I took control. The doors were closed in the studio, nobody was allowed to listen to what we were doing. We were isolated — and much happier with the results. At the same time, I was feeling more comfortable, allowing more of myself to show through in the music. I don’t think we should have released those first two albums. It’s unfortunate you grow up in public." The album flirted with the Top 50, but the band were still losing money and Hansa was quibbling about a fourth album.

Meanwhile, the band appeared live with their new image — smart togs, super-styled hair. Virgin Records, who must have thought they’d nabbed the queens of the budding New Romantic scene, signed them. The elegant Gentlemen Take Polaroids marked the first collaboration (‘Taking Islands In Africa’) between David and Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Ryuichi Sakamoto, who’d first met when the latter interviewed the former in Tokyo for a Japanese magazine. Ryuichi: "We became like longtime friends in five minutes. David is delicate, patient, deep-thinking and strong."

At last a Top 50 album act, for the first time Japan looked less alone, with glam synth-pop bands sprouting up everywhere. Duran Duran asked Sylvian to produce their album; he declined. Determined to stay an outsider, he also distanced Japan from the New Romantics, with whom they shared a love of new technology, Berlin-era Bowie, emotional detachment and a mix of minimalism and melodrama. Meanwhile, the World’s Most Beautiful Man press campaign was launched. And the album was big in Japan.

Suddenly, in 1981, they had a Top 20 single — a remixed old Hansa song, ‘Quiet Life’. Japan found themselves on Top Of The Pops, and career schizophrenia set in. From the summer on, Japan had a string of hits — alternate Hansa and Virgin releases. "It all charted in a mismatched, non-consecutive fashion," sighs Sylvian. "It was awful. You felt you’d left something behind and suddenly it was doing better in the charts than the thing you were working on." That thing was fifth album Tin Drum. Produced by Penguin Café Orchestra’s Steve Nye, it heralded a new direction with its world music influences and hypnotic orchestration. The strange, beautiful ‘Ghosts’ went Top 5. The album went gold. But by this time the band didn’t care.

"The year we were the most successful we’d broken up. By the time Tin Drum was released, the decision to stop had more or less been made. There was a lot of animosity. No official announcement had been made — we’d just get together for the odd TV or photo shoot. It was very…" he reaches for the right word, "…odd. I think just about all of us would have been happy to just walk away from the whole thing." Rob Dean had already quit over "musical differences"; there wasn’t much room now for a lead guitar.

"I REALLY DON’T WANT TO BE A STAR. I WANT TO BE like a Left Bank French poet in the ‘50s. I want to be a respected maker of music," Napier-Bell recalls Sylvian saying. "I said, It’s very difficult to manage somebody like that because there’s no income for it, plus it’s difficult to reduce somebody from where they’ve got to. But when he went solo I think that’s what he set out to be. Plus, there was friction when they were recording, because David was very dominant and, of course, Mick was very musical, so there was always going to be compromise. David definitely wanted it to be what he wanted it to be. The only problem was he wasn’t always sure what he wanted it to be, and one of his guides was if everyone said, ‘That’s wonderful’, he’d worry that it was too poppy and throw it out. Eventually you’d have to arrange it so if you heard something you like, everyone would frown and go, ‘Don’t like that much.’"

But the biggie was the Yoko Factor. "Mick was living with [Japanese photographer] Yuka," says Napier-Bell, "and one day he wakes up and she’s across the road sleeping with David."

"It has absolutely nothing to do with that," says Sylvian, more weary than angry. "Her relationship with Mick was already over. We were recording Tin Drum and Mick just wasn’t turning up for those sessions — he was demo’ing work for a solo career, which was OK but we hadn’t talked it over as a band. We had this common agreement that we’d put all our energies into the group, so I gave Mick the ultimatum: if you want a solo career, let’s break the band up. He said, ‘I’d like to keep the group going as well’ — a safety net, and that didn’t feel right.

"I’d written ‘Ghosts’, which signalled a path for me, but that kind of material didn’t interest the band, with the exception of Richard. Steve and Mick wanted to work with more uptempo pieces. So I thought, I’m ready to move on, Mick’s ready to do his solo work, why not stop? Japan was a burden. There was this constant pressure on me to write a new album, I didn’t want to tour — the band loved touring. I thought I could live without all of this and just see what happens. I was quite resigned to the fact that I might stop making music completely."

It was, says Napier-Bell, "devastating. After six years I’d finally broken this group — and they’re breaking up. I called them together and said that if they all wanted solo careers the best way of doing it was as a member of a group, and not to say they were breaking up. After six months of not recording since they were not talking, I persuaded them — I suppose because they’d run out of money — to do one more tour and they agreed. I was convinced that if they did the tour the music and the original companionship would have a stronger hold than the fight, and they’d come back together again. The tour sold out. On the opening night I went backstage and David had brought Yuka into the dressing room. And I thought, That really is a way of saying I don’t want to go on. Yet they played fantastically, better than ever — even up ‘til the last night I thought, They can’t break up, it has to go on. The last show in Japan [December ‘82] we even dropped pingpong balls on the stage in the last number — the opposite to anything David would ever accept — but he laughed and smiled. It was extraordinary."

Thus Japan — a band whose career was never so becoming as when they knocked it on the head.

THE LAST TRACES OF THE SUNSET have gone and we’re sitting in the dark. Sylvian looks blurry around the edges, as though the questions had worn a bit of him away. He seems to think of Japan as a necessary step between a childhood desperation to escape and what he considers his "real work". When Japan was over David felt "enormous relief. This big burden just lefted from my shoulders. There was downside — I missed the camaraderie, and I lost a lot of friends through my relationship with Yuka — people thought we’d done this despicable thing moving in together and that was why the band had broken up. It was a very difficult first year, but we came through it. I know I made the right decision and I would never go back on it." (As for the rest of Japan, no comment. According to their management, "Steve, Richard and Mick, rather than dwelling on the past, prefer to look to the present and future and concentrate on their own projects.")

This was when the Sylvian Becomes Recluse stories began. With Japan still in the news in ’83 (Virgin and Hansa continued to release records), Sylvian found his face blazed over The Sun after a minor car accident with the headline, "World’s Most Lovely Man In Scar Horror". The real reason for the low profile was a necessary period of artistic hibernation: "I was trying to find a means of writing that was more direct, less coded, and that took a while. After ‘Ghosts’ I didn’t want to hide behind anything anymore, but it didn’t come naturally to open up and make myself that vulnerable. So I was writing and abandoning material for a year or so." Then Ryuichi Sakamoto sent him some film music he’d written for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence that needed lyrics. "It opened a door. I thought OK, I’m ready, and I started writing Brilliant Trees."

Released in June 1984 (and later to go Top 5), this accomplished, lovely album featured former Stockhausen student/Can member Holger Czukay, double-bassist Danny Thompson, Jon Hassell and Kenny Wheeler — not names you’d expect in a pop pin-up’s address book. "I was kind of naive. I just didn’t want to work with session pros who spend their life giving rather sterile performances and I thought the only solution was to draw on the references from my own listening pleasure. When I wrote Brilliant Trees I heard Jon’s trumpet in there so it was, Can somebody contact Jon Hassell and ask if he would do that? And he said yes." The jazz input was Yuka’s influence. "She had an enormous collection. It opened my eyes and became an obsession."

Holger Czukay didn’t know much about Sylvian when he got his call. "I thought Japan was a group of beauties searching for a hit by fashionable hairstyles. Wasn’t too much of a fascination at the beginning, I must admit. I preferred them later. They seemed to prefer playing in an integrative way and not so much as solo heroes, allowing the music to develop its secrets." He was intrigued enough to participate. "The more I worked with David the more I found out I had a real versatile artist as a partner, and on top of it one with true human character."

"I wasn’t looking for credibility through working with these musicians or trying to live off the glory of their names," says Sylvian. He continued to collaborate — with Ryuichi, Czukay, Wheeler, Jansen and Robert Fripp on a documentary soundtrack, Steel Cathedrals; with Czukay, Hassell, Jansen and Percy Jones on Alchemy: An Index of Possibilities; with Hassell under the title Words With The Shanman, hypnotic, experimental music, not made for burning up the charts. But Sylvian liked experimenting.

Czukay recalls working on David’s second album, Gone To Earth. "We were in Pete Townshend’s studio, and I set up my ‘dictatorphone’, an old humming IBM device from the ‘50s. David and the engineer were sitting for about one hour in the control room — silent. I tried to get that machine to work properly but didn’t succeed. At the end I said, I think we should change my instrument, and over the intercom they said, ‘No, Holger, we want that.’ They were not only British gentlemen, they even understood the quality of garbage in a digital age."

After two more solo albums in a similar vein, Sylvian stopped. "In 1988 I started having some problems that took me away from music. I lost my focus. I stopped writing. I’d never really suffered from depression, but I found myself in a trough — the ending of certain relationships in my life, the beginning of new ones — and it took me a long time to see my way out. I threw myself into collaboration to get a different perspective. I went through analysis as well — something I had to be talked into, but it really did help. Everything began to fall into place." Collaborations during the next three years included singles/EPs with Ryuichi, Robert Fripp, Virginia Astley and, somewhat surprisingly, Mick Karn, music for the ballet The Stigma Of Childhood (Kin), plus two albums with Czukay, and with Russell Mills, the artist-musician he first met in ’83.

Mills, who’d done sleeves for Eno and Harold Budd, recalls dragging an apprehensive-looking Sylvian down to his local ("You have to remember he’d been in a pop band since he was about 15 and had subsequently led a relatively sheltered, unreal life") and discussing cultural favourites over a pint, "Seamus Heaney, Joseph Beuys, Kurosawa, Arvo Part, Beckett, Eno, Jan Garbarek, Kenny Wheeler, etc." Ember Glance, an art installation, was staged in a huge Tokyo warehouse. "The build-up to it was an incredibly intense period. For David, who was also going through some major personal sea-changes in his life, I guess it almost became an avenue of therapy which was brutally self-analytical. David recorded a beautiful soundpiece for it, which we later released. He was a very meticulous but simultaneously open artist, self-critical, capable of great humour and totally honest."

Then Sylvian decided to collaborate with his old band. He talked of an "improvised project", and — maybe since none had made a fortune on solo projects, or maybe they were intrigued — Japan (minus Dean) reunited. "I was thinking about putting together a group for improvisation with a flexible line-up that would change from album to album. As time went on it seemed natural to ask the guys from Japan — because they were great players, and because I’d written for them for years. You get used to framing your pieces around the musicians who are going to perform them, and you can never really regain that with other people that you haven’t grown up with. I know I never have. So we spent a few months hanging out — we’d only talk about the work indirectly — and went into the studio cold. We hadn’t played together since the last Japan tour. Spirits were high. It was a really good time, so much laughter." Meditative, beautifully played, it was the best album Japan had made. Only David (who took it off by himself to remix it) decided the band would be called Rain Tree Crow. Reduced sales maybe, but you can see his point (even if his former bandmates didn’t): "There is no continuity between that band and what it embodied and what Rain Tree Crow did, so to call it a Japan album would have been cynical. You can’t escape your past. But you can live with a certain integrity now."

The year of its release David got a tape in the post from singer/actress Ingrid Chavez, a Prince associate (the "love interest" in Graffiti Bridge, also renowned for her successful lawsuit against Lenny Kravitz over authorship of Madonna’s ‘Justify My Love’). Impressed, he went to the States to meet her and in two months they were married, with David moving to Soul City, Minneapolis. In September ’93 Sylvian became a father, and began "the most eventful and enriching period of my life." A second daughter followed in ’96. The family travelled round the States following various "saints and holy people"; current guru and Napa resident Shree Maa is their reason for moving West.

LIFE THESE DAYS, SYLVIAN SMILES, IS "VERY NICE. I SIT AT home and paint. We do it as a family." He and Ingrid have a home studio, where, after 12 long years, his fourth solo album began taking shape. A lushly textured, sensual, almost devotional work, Sylvian calls Dead Bees On A Cake his "most complete" record. "The other albums aren’t. I never got to finish them; the money would run out and I’d be left with whatever was to hand. Brilliant Trees was none or less there; Gone To Earth, I was working on four different projects simultaneously and ended up with all this disparate material. Beehive I did start with one vision, but the album remains incomplete. So this album, Rain Tree Crow, Brilliant Trees, that’s three complete records."

An employee comes over to tell us it’s time to go home. "Three albums," David chuckles softly. "Not too bad."

DAVID SYLVIAN HAIRSTYLE

2008-06-12T06:19:00.000-07:00

source

The swinging professor swiped at my knuckles with his clear plastic shatterproof ruler: "You're essay is late. TOO LATE!" Before tossing it cruelly in the bin. Finney and Reynolds were smarming away at the front. Finney's desk is SO tidy, he has a dedicated metal tin for his pencil shavings. I was ordered out of class, shutting the mottled glass door behind me. Luka was in the hallway. I can't stand that kid. We're both losers, but hanging out with him just because everyone else hates us, mmm, doesn't seem right. By the way he ignores me I know he's thinking the same thing. What's he doing out here? Only bought in a whole load of larvae in a tobacco tin! The prof shouted, "I told you not to bring bugs to school", Luka cried, he said but they're a beautiful emerald green sir. They'd hate my essay on David Sylvian anyway. No Deleuze and Guitarry. I'd be sent in front of the head Dr. Penman. The Punman, as he's called round the playground. He'd make me stand there, not talk, get his fit secretary to set me some Post-Structural shit to read. Damn those books are hard. It's a shame, cos it was a good piece, well grounded in a thorough understanding of New-Wave History and the relevant philosophical currents. I liked it...

1.Quiet Life.

Early shag. Image of late Bolan or Jagger. Moneyed rock. Tremendous body and bounce. Good platinum bleach, no roots visible.

2.Gentlemen prefer Polaroids.

That heavy fringe, ooh la la! Once again lovely body. Must be using a nice conditioner, perhaps Paul Mitchell. Strong right to left combing. A stylistic negotiation of Haircut 100, punk tonsure and glam. Possible mop-top revival with a twist. Good thorough bleach.

3.Later Japan.

A "confessional" hair-cut. Less Glam than Jeff Lynne. A real low-point. Possibly too much Flux and Mutability. You need a new look David!

4.Ghosts.

Light from above for a superb contrast. Roots showing. More unkempt, possibly been thinned out a bit for that "just-got-out-of-bed" look. Ooh don't smoke David, it does terrible things to your hair...

5.Brilliant Trees.

...like this. Very bad split ends. The difference between the "just-got-out-of-bed" look and looking like you just got out of bed. Possibly keen to let the roots grow out a bit. A new look in the works? Been advised of the damage long-term peroxide application can cause?

6.Secrets of the Beehive.

The first signs of the natural brunette look. Hair tucked neatly behind the ears in a business-like manner. The artist.

7.Dead Bees on a Cake.

Out of the blue a Jimmy Page lord of darkness look. Grunge revivalism. Possibly not washed recently. Crude but effective.

8.Everything and Nothing.

Back to basics again, phew! More of a shear than a cut. You've got to let that thick hair free!

9.Blemish.

Cobain meets suburban hip-hop and........a hat? Grey hairs? Widow's peak peaking?

So there you have it. David Sylvian's entire career in a nutshell. There are the records, but ultimately I believe this to be a more illuminating exercise, above all those LP titles refer to the cuts not the agenda. Just call me Raymonde!

Fresh bamboo for supper?

2008-06-12T06:15:00.001-07:00

Posted by Sheryl Julian May 22, 2008 12:12 PM on Boston Dot Com

Boing Boing TV is a daily internet video program that decided to celebrate its 150th episode by showing how to harvest young bamboo shoots. The video was done by Joi Ito (original music by Ryuichi Sakamoto). Ito is in his "backyard" in Japan -- it looks like a bamboo forest, with his partner, Mizuka.

Click on the 7-minute video above for a fascinating look at this Japanese spring ritual, which includes a cooking lesson. Ito uses his grandmother's recipe to boil the shoots, then peels off the outer layers (this process has an artichoke stripping quality) until he gets to the center. The video will make you want to run out and find fresh shoots on a menu.

Food section contributor Deb Samuels, our authority on Japanese food, says fresh bamboo shoots are very big in Japan, something everybody waits for, and any good Japanese restaurant should have them.

THE OPIATES

2008-06-12T06:11:00.000-07:00

SOURCE

CD Review: ‘The Opiates’, Thomas Feiner; Anywhen
June 9th, 2008 at 14:00 by C J Davies

Talk about your long gestation periods - The Opiates, the third and final album from Swedish collective Anywhen - was originally recorded in 2001, and subject to an extremely limited release in February of that year.

So why are we mentioning it now? Well, The Opiates has aged sufficently enough to reach ‘lost classic’ status, and - following a rediscovery by ex-Japan mastermind David Sylvian - is all set for an updated and expanded re-release, courtesy of some reworking by vocalist Thomas Feiner.

Please. Stay where you are. We know the connotations that the term ‘lost classic’ has - you probably can’t help thinking of some scratchy Bob Dylan bootleg heralded as ‘the ultimate live experience’ or thirty-seven minutes of Syd Barrett farting that some wag has labelled ‘a transcendent psychedelic journey lost for several decades’.

The thing is: The Opiates actually deserves the revival. Is it a ‘classic’? Who knows? Such terms are so vague as to be infuriating anyway. Let hecklerspray tell you what The Opiates is, then: it’s a dark, epic, grandiose and orchestral collection of songs that will strike a chord with anyone who’s a fan of Tindersticks, Nick Cave, Scott Walker or even the solo work of Sylvian himself.

Bizarrely - for an album whose original recording has just passed its seventh birthday - something like The Opiates couldn’t be better timed. In an era of Doherty-influenced haircut-rock bands (admit it, people: The Libertines just weren’t very good) a sweeping overblown record like this feels like a conscious kickback to an irony-heavy, diluted modern era.

Make no mistake: The Opiates doesn’t do things by halves. Strings build and vocals yearn. If you want a soundtrack for summer-day strutting, you’d better look elsewhere. If you want a slow-burning, carefully-structured and altogether cinematic album that may or may not sound better after a few glasses of wine and some ’special’ cigarettes, The Opiates has your number, baby. Play it on rotation with Isobel Campbell And Mark Lanegan’s Sunday At Devil Dirt - another contender for Album Of The Year thus far - and don’t be surprised if you start eschewing the sunshine in favour of turning into a brooding character from a Godard movie.

If that sounds good to you, check it out.

The Opiates is released via Samadhisound in the UK on July 7th and the US on July 29th.

RYUICHI SAKAMOTO - WIKIPEDIA

2008-06-11T08:42:00.001-07:00

Ryūichi Sakamoto (坂本龍一 Sakamoto Ryūichi, born January 17, 1952, Nakano, Tokyo, Japan) is an Academy Award-winning, Grammy-winning, Golden Globe-winning Japanese musician, composer, producer and actor, based in New York and Tokyo.

He was ranked at number 59 in a list of the top 100 most influential musicians compiled by HMV. [1]

Biography

Early years and Yellow Magic Orchestra

Sakamoto attended the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he earned a B.A. in music composition and an M.A. with special emphasis on both electronic and ethnic music.

After working as a session musician, he formed the internationally successful synthpop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra, with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi.

Solo career

Sakamoto released his first solo album, The Thousand Knives of Ryūichi Sakamoto, in 1978. The album includes the songs "Thousand Knives" and "The End of Asia."

Following the disbanding of Yellow Magic Orchestra, Sakamoto released a number of solo albums in the 1980s. While primarily focused on the piano and synthesizer, this series of albums boasted a roster of collaborators that included David Sylvian, David Byrne, Thomas Dolby, Nam June Paik, and Iggy Pop, among others. Sakamoto would alternate between exploring a variety of musical styles, ideas, and genres - captured most notably in his groundbreaking 1983 album Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia - and focusing on a specific subject or theme, such as the Italian Futurism movement in Futurista (1986). At times, Sakamoto would also present varying interpretations of technology's intersection with music: he would present some pieces, such as "Replica," with Kraftwerkian rigidity and order, while he would infuse humanity and humor into others - "Broadway Boogie Woogie," for example, liberally lifts samples from Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner and pairs them with a raucous, sax-driven techno-pop backdrop.

As his solo career began to extend outside Japan in the late 1980s, Sakamoto's explorations, influences, and collaborators followed suit. Beauty (1989) boasted a tracklist that combined pop and traditional Japanese and Okinawan songs, yet featured guest appearances by Jill Jones, Brian Wilson, and Robbie Robertson. Heartbeat (1991) and Sweet Revenge (1994), meanwhile, looked to international horizons and worked with a global range of artists such as Dee Dee Brave, Marco Prince, Arto Lindsay, Youssou N'Dour, David Sylvian, and Ingrid Chavez. 1996 saw the appearance of two notable albums: Smoochy, which fused pop and electronica with bossanova and other South American forms, and 1996, which featured a number of previously released pieces arranged for solo piano, accompanied with violin and cello.

Following 1996, Sakamoto simultaneously delved into the classical and "post-techno" genres with Discord (1998), an hour-long orchestral work in four parts. Here he evoked the melodic qualities of his film score work, imbued with the influence of 20th century classical composers and spoken word. The Sony Classical release also featured an interactive CD-ROM component and website that complemented the work. Shortly thereafter, the Ninja Tune record label released a series of remixes of various sections, produced by a number of prominent electronica artists, including Amon Tobin, Talvin Singh and DJ Spooky.

The next album, BTTB (1998) - an acronym for "Back to the Basics" - was a fairly opaque reaction to the prior year's multilayered, lushly orchestrated Discord. The album comprised a series of original pieces on solo piano, including "Energy Flow" (a major hit in Japan) and a frenetic, four-hand arrangement of the Yellow Magic Orchestra classic "Tong Poo." On the BTTB U.S. tour, he opened the show performing a brief avant-garde DJ set under the stage name DJ Lovegroove.

1999 saw the long-awaited release of Sakamoto's 'opera' entitled "LIFE." It premiered with seven sold-out performances in Tokyo and Osaka. This ambitious multi-genre multi-media project featured contributions by over 100 performers, including Pina Bausch, Bernardo Bertolucci, José Carreras, His Holiness The Dalai Lama and Salman Rushdie.

Sakamoto later teamed with cellist Jaques Morelenbaum (a member of his 1996 trio), and Morelenbaum's wife, Paula, on a pair of albums celebrating the work of jazz pioneer Antonio Carlos Jobim. They recorded their first album, Casa (2001), mostly in Jobim's home studio in Rio de Janeiro, with Sakamoto performing on the late Jobim's grand piano. The album was well received, having been included in the list of New York Times's top albums of 2002.

Recently, Sakamoto collaborated with Alva Noto (an alias of Carsten Nicolai) to release Vrioon, an album of Sakamoto's piano clusters treated by Nicolai's unique style of digital manipulation, involving the creation of "micro-loops" and minimal percussion. The two produced this work by passing the pieces back and forth until both were satisfied with the result. This debut, released on German label Raster-Noton, was voted record of the year 2004 in the electronica category by British magazine The Wire. They later released Insen (2005) - while produced in a similar manner to Vrioon, this album is somewhat more restrained and minimalist.

Meanwhile, Sakamoto continues to craft music to suit any context: in 2005, Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia hired Sakamoto to compose ring and alert tones for their high-end phone, the Nokia 8800. A recent reunion with YMO pals Hosono and Takahashi also caused a stir in the Japanese press. They released a single "Rescue" in 2007 and a DVD "HAS/YMO" in 2008.

Film composer and actor

Moviegoers may recognize Sakamoto primarily through his score work on two films: Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), including the duet "Forbidden Colours" with David Sylvian, and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), the latter of which earned him the Academy Award with fellow composers David Byrne and Cong Su. In that same year he composed the score to the cult-classic anime: Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise.
Frequent collaborator David Sylvian contributed lead vocals to "Forbidden Colours" - the main theme to Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence - which became a minor hit. Sixteen years later, the piece resurfaced as a popular dance track called "Heart of Asia" (by the group Watergate).
Other films scored by Sakamoto include Pedro Almodóvar's Tacones lejanos (1992); Bertolucci's The Little Buddha (1993); Oliver Stone's Wild Palms (1993); John Maybury's Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998); Brian De Palma's Snake Eyes (1998) and Femme Fatale (2002), and Oshima's Gohatto (1999). He also composed the score of the opening ceremony for the 1992 Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, telecast live to an audience of over a billion viewers.

Several tracks from Sakamoto's earlier solo albums have also appeared in film soundtracks. In particular, variations of "Chinsagu No Hana" (from Beauty) and "Bibo No Aozora" (from 1996) provide the poignant closing pieces for Sue Brooks's Japanese Story (2003) and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel (2006), respectively.

Sakamoto has also acted in several films: perhaps his most notable performance was as the conflicted Captain Yonoi in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, alongside Takeshi Kitano and British rock singer David Bowie. He also played small roles in The Last Emperor and Madonna's "Rain" music video.

MTV Award

The music video for "Risky", written and directed by Meiert Avis, won the first ever MTV "Breakthrough Video Award". The ground breaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's (Persian: فریدون اسفندیاری) ideas of "Nostalgia for the Future", in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting "Puberty", and Roland Barthes " Death of the Author". The surrealist black and white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis shot Sakamoto while at work on the score for "The Last Emperor" in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on "Risky", chose not appear to in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot.

Selected discography

Solo
Thousand Knives (1978)
Summer Nerves (1979)
B2-Unit (1980)
Left-Handed Dream (1981)
Ongakuzukan (1984)
Esperanto (1985)
Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia (international version of Ongakuzukan, above) (1986)
Futurista (1986)
Coda (1986)
Neo Geo (1987)
Tokyo Joe (1988)
Beauty (1990)
Heartbeat (1991)
Sweet Revenge (1994)
Smoochy (1995)
1996 (1996)
Discord (1997)
BTTB (1998)
Cinemage (1999)
Intimate (1999, with Keizo Inoue)
L I F E (2000)
Zero Landmine (2001)
Comica (2002)
Elephantism (2002)
Love (2003)
Vrioon (2003, with Alva Noto)
World Citizen (2003, with David Sylvian)
Chasm (2004)
Moto.tronic (2003, Compilation of tracks recorded between 1983 & 2003)
Insen (2005, with Alva Noto)
Sala Santa Cecilia (2005, live EP with Fennesz)
Cantus omnibus unus; for mixed or equal choir (2005)
Bricolages (2006)
Cendre (2007, with Fennesz)
Ocean Fire (2007, with Christopher Willits)

As Morelenbaum2/Sakamoto

Casa (2001) & A Day in New York (2003)

Film and event scores

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)
Ôritsu uchûgun Oneamisu no tsubasa - Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (1987)
The Last Emperor (1988)
The Sheltering Sky (1990)
The Handmaid's Tale (1990)
High Heels (1992)
Wuthering Heights (1992)
El Mar Mediterrani - Barcelona Olympics opening ceremony (1992)
Wild Palms (1993)
Little Buddha (1993)
Stalker (1997)
Snake Eyes (1998)
Love Is The Devil (1998)
Gohatto (1999)
Lack of Love - Dreamcast Game (2000)
Minha Vida Como Un Filme (2002)
Femme Fatale (2002)
Derrida (2003)
Shining Boy & Little Randy (2005)
Tony Takitani (2005)
Silk (2007)

Personal life

Sakamoto was married to Japanese pianist and singer Akiko Yano: he collaborated with her on some of her recordings, and she was also a regular touring member of Yellow Magic Orchestra. They finally divorced in August 2006, 14 years after a mutual decision to live separately. They had one daughter, j-pop singer Miu Sakamoto.

In 1998, Italian ethnomusicologist Massimo Milano published Ryuichi Sakamoto. Conversazioni, a collection of essays and conversations.

He is also known as a critic of copyright law, arguing that it is antiquated in the information age

The official Ryūichi Sakamoto web site
Raster-Noton site
Huge discography on a fan website
Fan Website

^ 音楽情報ニュース/100人の偉大なアーティスト - No. 59/HMV

DAVID SYLVIAN - WIKIPEDIA

2008-06-11T08:42:00.000-07:00

David Sylvian (born David Alan Batt, 23 February 1958, in Beckenham, Kent, UK) is an English singer, musician and composer who first gained attention as the lead vocalist and main songwriter in the band Japan. His subsequent solo career has been influenced by a variety of musical styles and genres, including jazz, ambient, electronic, and progressive rock.

Japan

The band Japan, whose other members included bassist Mick Karn, guitarist Rob Dean, keyboardist Richard Barbieri and Sylvian's brother Steve Jansen on drums, began as a group of friends who grew up together. As youngsters they played music as a means of escape, playing Sylvian's two-chord numbers – sometimes with Karn as the frontman, sometimes with Sylvian at the fore.

Eventually, they christened themselves Japan in 1974, signed a recording contract with Hansa, and became an alternative glam rock outfit in the mold of David Bowie, T.Rex and The New York Dolls. Over a period of a few short years, however, their music became more sophisticated – drawing initially on the art rock stylings of Roxy Music. Their visual image also evolved and the band was tagged with the New Romantic label. Indeed, it could be argued that Japan were at the forefront of the entire New Romantic movement, even though the band never associated themselves with it. Japan recorded five studio albums between March 1978 and November 1981. In 1980, the band signed with Virgin Records, where Sylvian remained as a recording artist for the next twenty years.

The usual recounting of the band's demise in December 1982 has to do with various interpersonal relationships, tensions therein including Sylvian linking with Yuka Fujii, a photographer, artist and designer who also happened to be Mick Karn's former girlfriend. Fujii quickly became an influential figure in Sylvian's life. She was the first person to seriously introduce Sylvian to jazz, which in turn inspired him to follow musical avenues that were not always open to him. Yuka also influenced Sylvian to incorporate spiritual discipline into his daily routine. Throughout David's solo career, Fujii had also maintained a large role in the design of David's album artwork, which lead to the couple forming Opium (Arts) to manage Sylvian's interests.

In 1982, Sylvian released his first collaborative effort with Ryuichi Sakamoto titled "Bamboo Houses/Bamboo Music". He also worked with Sakamoto on the song "Forbidden Colours" for the 1983 Nagisa Oshima film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.

Exorcising Ghosts

Sylvian's debut solo album, Brilliant Trees (1984), met with critical acclaim and functioned well as a bridge between the musical sounds he had created with Japan and the more challenging directions he was to pursue in his future work. Sylvian intentionally placed the more accessible tracks on side one of the record, while utilizing the second side for songs of a slightly more experimental nature. The album included contributions from Ryuichi Sakamoto, trumpeter Jon Hassell and former Can bassist Holger Czukay. These three musicians also figured prominently upon the writing and recording sessions which resulted in Sylvian's second release, the entirely instrumental Alchemy: An Index of Possibilities (1985). Imbued with a 'Fourth-World' influence, the album signalled Sylvian's decisive move away from the mainstream.

The next release was the ambitious two-record set, Gone to Earth (1986), which further flouted conventional and commercial wisdom by featuring one record of atmospheric vocal tracks and a second record consisting of ambient instrumentals. The album contained significant contributions from noted guitarists Bill Nelson of BeBop Deluxe and Robert Fripp of King Crimson. On a majority of the songs, Fripp laid a foundation with his patented system of tape delay loops, known as Frippertronics, which gave the album a distinctly vast and spacious sound.
Secrets of the Beehive (1987) made greater use of acoustic instruments and was musically oriented towards somber, emotive ballads laced with shimmering string arrangements by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Brian Gascoigne. The album yielded one of Sylvian's most well-received songs, "Orpheus", and was later supported by his first solo tour, 1988's 'In Praise of Shamans'. Sylvian's touring band included ex-Japan bandmates Jansen and Barbieri along with trumpeter Mark Isham, bassist Ian Maidman and guitarists David Torn and Robbie Aceto.

Thoroughly Lost To Logic
Never one to conform to commercial expectations, Sylvian then collaborated with Holger Czukay to produce a pair of instrumental albums focusing on random chance, found samples and group improvisation. Plight And Premonition, issued in 1988, and Flux + Mutability, recorded and released the following year, also included contributions from Can members Jaki Liebezeit and Michael Karoli. These two albums were released on a Virgin subsidiary called Venture Records, which had been created in 1987 for some of the more experimental artists on their roster.
Virgin then decided to close out the Eighties with the release of Weatherbox, an elaborate boxed-set compilation consisting of Sylvian's four previous solo albums. To accompany this release, the label had requested that Sylvian produce a new song in a more 'pop-oriented vein' which could be released as a single to promote the compilation. Sylvian obliged them with the track "Pop Song", which was anything but aptly described. Essentially the track was an atonal diatribe on the machinations of the music industry, equating the creation of modern music for mass consumption to that of everyday factory work. Yet Virgin CEO Simon Draper admirably continued the support of Sylvian's career no matter how far from the mainstream he was determined to drift.

In 1990, Sylvian collaborated with artists Russell Mills and Ian Walton on the elaborate multi-media installation using sculpture, sound and light titled Ember Glance - The Permanence of Memory. The exhibition was staged at the Temporary Museum on Tokyo Bay, Shinagawa. The music which accompanied the exhibit was an extended improvisation between Sylvian and percussionist Frank Perry.

Rain Tree Crow

Also in 1990, Sylvian reunited with the former members of Japan for a new project. Yet unlike their past work, Sylvian had decided to utilize methods of improvisation like that which he explored in his work with Czukay. This proposal held great appeal to his former bandmates and the initial results were extremely promising. Guitarists Bill Nelson, Phil Palmer and Michael Brook were each brought in at various times to augment the quartet for the recording of the album. In an effort to distance the project even more from the sound and atmosphere that surrounded Japan in the early-1980s, but to the dismay of both Virgin and his former bandmates, Sylvian insisted on releasing the project under the name Rain Tree Crow. As the group went forward with recording, production costs started mounting and in order for the label to advance more money, Virgin had suggested that the project be released under the name Japan. Sylvian turned down such an offer of compromise and instead paid any subsequent costs out of his own pocket. Further recording sessions grew increasingly acrimonious as Sylvian reportedly assumed a controlling temperament over the proceedings. Once the time came to mix and master the tapes, Sylvian had completely shut out the other musicians from the process and all decisions regarding the final product were his own. When the album was released in 1991, Karn, Barbieri and Jansen were no longer communicating verbally with Sylvian, though many harsh criticisms regarding his demeanor during the sessions were exchanged in print interviews conducted at the time.

In an effort to divert his attention away from the rancorous aftermath of Rain Tree Crow, Sylvian took up an offer from Hector Zazou to participate in a musical tribute to the work of the 19th Century French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Sylvian was originally slated to read text to one of the pieces. Sakamoto and Fujii also took part in these recording sessions and gradually Sylvian's involvement grew to further vocal, guitar and keyboard contributions, as well as composing brand new material for the project. Zazou and his record label, Made To Measure, then made the strange decision to list Sylvian under the pseudonym of 'Mr. X', rather than requesting the necessary permission from Virgin to use Sylvian's extensive contributions. When the album, titled Sahara Blue, was finally released in 1992, Virgin filed a cease-and-desist case against the Made To Measure label, resulting in the exclusion of two tracks that featured Sylvian's vocal from any subsequent copies of the album that would be produced.

Sylvian and Fujii separated shortly after the sessions for Sahara Blue. Around the same time, Ingrid Chavez, an artist signed to Prince's Paisley Park Records, sent Sylvian a copy of her first album. He liked what he heard and thought her voice would fit well with some material that Ryuichi Sakamoto and he were working on for a new Sakamoto release. Chavez and Sylvian quickly developed a bond and decided to travel together throughout the UK and the USA, where they eventually settled after marrying in 1992.

The Fripp Trip

In late 1991, Fripp had approached Sylvian with the offer to be the vocalist in a new lineup of King Crimson. Sylvian declined the invitation due to the turmoil that had often plagued the band in the past and instead suggested they collaborate on a future project. With frequent Fripp associate Trey Gunn on Chapman Stick, and performing a set of newly composed material, the trio performed throughout Japan and Italy during the spring of 1992 on 'The First Day' tour. With the addition of Jerry Marotta on drums and Marc Anderson on percussion, the group went into the studio in late 1992 to document the material they had written together.
In July of 1993, Sylvian startled many of his long-term fans with the album The First Day, which melded Sylvian's philosophical lyrics to funk workouts and aggressive rock stylings very much in the mold of Fripp's King Crimson. To capitalize on the album's success, the musicians went back out on the road in the autumn of 1993. Sylvian, Fripp and Gunn were joined by Michael Brook and ex-Mr Mister drummer Pat Mastelotto for what they dubbed 'The Road To Graceland' tour. A live recording, called Damage and released in 1994, was culled from the final shows of the tour.
Sylvian and Fripp's final collaboration was the installation Redemption – Approaching Silence. The exhibition was held at the P3 Art and Environment Center in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo and ran from August 30 to September 18, 1994. The accompanying music was composed by Sylvian, with text written and recited by Fripp.

In the late summer of 1995, Sylvian undertook a one-man solo tour of which he called 'Slow Fire - A Personal Retrospective'. Performing either on an acoustic guitar or on keyboards, Sylvian drew largely upon his solo catalog for song selection, in turn scaling each tune down to its most basic form. He also included a few rearrangements of tracks from his recordings with Japan, Rain Tree Crow and Robert Fripp. The 'Slow Fire' tour marked the end of a highly productive four years.

Everything And Nothing

A period of relative musical inactivity followed, during which Sylvian and Ingrid Chavez moved from Minnesota to the Napa Valley. Chavez had given birth to two daughters and pursued her interest in photography and music. During this time, Sylvian aided Chavez in composing and recording some new material for a possible solo work Little Girls With 99 Lives. Copies of the demo were sent to select friends and distributed to record labels, who were not interested.
In 1999, Sylvian released Dead Bees on a Cake, his first solo album since Secrets of the Beehive twelve years earlier. The disc gathered from the most eclectic influences of all his recordings, ranging from soul music to jazz fusion to blues to Eastern-inflected spiritual chants, and most of the songs' lyrics reflected the now 41-year-old Sylvian's inner peace from his marriage, family and beliefs. Guest musicians included longtime friend Ryuichi Sakamoto, classically-trained tabla player Talvin Singh, avant-garde guitarist Marc Ribot, jazz trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and contemporary jazz guitarist Bill Frisell.

Following Dead Bees, Sylvian released a pair of compilation albums through Virgin, a two-disc retrospective Everything and Nothing and an instrumental collection Camphor. Both albums contained previously released material, some re-mixes, and several new or previously unreleased tracks which Sylvian finished especially for the projects. In 2001, Sylvian made an effort to promote the compilations with the 'Everything and Nothing' tour. Sylvian travelled the world with a band that included his brother back on drums, Tim Young on guitar, Keith Lowe on bass, and Matt Cooper on keyboards. The US leg of the tour took place in 2002 and was shortened due to poor ticket sales.

Samadhi Sound

Sylvian parted ways with Virgin and launched his own independent label, Samadhi Sound. The first proposed project was a collaboration with his brother Steve, and work had begun in the Autumn of 2002. Bassist Keith Lowe had been retained from the previous tour to help out during the initial writing and recording sessions but the process was slow going and Sylvian did not yet feel fully connected to the project. During a break in the proceedings, Sylvian

experimented on his own with treated sounds made from his guitar and computer. The results were recorded during February of 2003. A few months later, he released the album blemish. The disc was shockingly stark in its sound and content, partially spurred by the involvement of experimental guitarists Derek Bailey and Christian Fennesz. The lyrical subject matter dealt primarily with the impending dissolution of Sylvian's marriage. With the collaborative effort now put on hold due to the strong reception for the new solo album, Sylvian and Jansen headed out to promote blemish with visual artist/musician Masakatsu Takagi for the 'Fire In The Forest' tour.
Sylvian surprised his fans by lending his vocals to a commercial advertisement for TIAA-CREF. The track was a sixty-second rendition of "Somewhere" written by Leonard Bernstein and the spot ran various times during the course of the 2004 Summer Olympics. Also somewhat out of character, Sylvian commissioned an album of remixes of tracks from blemish, titled The Good Son vs. The Only Daughter, which was released in early 2005. He also wrote an original song entitled "For the Love of Life" for the anime adaptation of Naoki Urasawa's Monster, which would become the ending theme for the first half of the series.

With the conclusion of the 'Fire In The Forest' tour in 2004, work resumed on the joint project between Sylvian and Jansen. Participants in the sessions included the ever present Ryuichi Sakamoto, vocalist Stina Nordenstam, and trumpeter Arve Henriksen. Yet the course of the album took on a completely new tone after Sylvian's decision to add keyboardist/programmer Burnt Friedman to the proceedings through the technology of file sharing. Friedman brought along with him a large roster of musicians from around the globe and a breadth of musical ideas that Sylvian utilized as foundations for new compositions. Due to his extensive contribution to the project, Friedman was then granted equal partnership with Sylvian and Jansen. The band name Nine Horses was adopted and their first cd, titled Snow Borne Sorrow, was released in October 2005. The album successfully fused together elements of pop, avant-garde jazz, folk and electronica, creating an overall sound that seemed like a logical path for Sylvian to follow.
In January 2007, Nine Horses released a follow-up EP, Money For All, which included new material as well as remixes of selected songs from their first cd. Also in 2007, Sylvian issued When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima, an environmental piece which was commissioned by the Fukutake Art Museum Foundation for the 2006 Standard Festival held on the island of Naoshima. The seventy minute track, which was intended to give the aural sensation of walking around the island during the wintry month of February, included contributions from guitarist Christian Fennesz, trumpeter Arve Henriksen, flautist Clive Bell and samples by Akira Rabelais.
Though he had claimed in recent interviews that he no longer had any particular interest in performing live, Sylvian took to the road once again in September of 2007 for 'The World Is Everything' tour. The lineup Sylvian assembled to accompany him included Takuma Watanabe on keyboards, Keith Lowe on bass and Steve Jansen on drums. Nine Horses contributors Theo Travis and Hayden Chisholm also joined the quartet on stage at various shows during the tour. A fusion of styles, including jazz and electronica, the tour enabled Sylvian to perform music from the Nine Horses project, a selection of his solo work, the Japan song 'Ghosts' and material from the new album from Steve Jansen. In an explanation as to why he opted to tour once again, Sylvian wrote, 'This tour is in part a means of putting earlier chapters of my working life behind me...of embracing the work that was done and, with a sense of finality, cutting the ties that bind me to it as a body, an entity.'

A New Offering

David Sylvian is currently in the studio finishing up a new solo album for release in late 2008. Contributors involved with the project include innovative guitarists such as Keith Rowe, Burkhard Stangl, and Christian Fennesz, as well as free-jazz saxophonist Evan Parker, bassist Werner Dafeldecker and drummer/percussionist Martin Brandlmayr.

Discography

Japan
(March 1978) Adolescent Sex
(October 1978) Obscure Alternatives
(December 1979) Quiet Life
(November 1980) Gentlemen Take Polaroids
(September 1981) Assemblage - compilation
(November 1981) Tin Drum
(June 1983) Oil On Canvas - live album
(July 1984) Exorcising Ghosts - compilation
(April 1991) Rain Tree Crow - same line-up as Japan
(2006) The Very Best of Japan - compilation

Solo & Collaborations
(1984) Brilliant Trees
(1985) Alchemy: An Index of Possibilities
(1986) Gone to Earth
(1987) Secrets of the Beehive
(1988) Plight and Premonition - with Holger Czukay
(1989) Flux and Mutability - with Holger Czukay
(1989) Weatherbox
(1991) Ember Glance : The Permanence Of Memory - with Russell Mills
(1991) Rain Tree Crow - with Steve Jansen, Richard Barbieri, & Mick Karn
(1993) The First Day - with Robert Fripp
(1994) Damage: Live - with Robert Fripp - Re-released in 2001
(1999) Dead Bees on a Cake
(1999) Approaching Silence
(2000) Everything and Nothing
(2002) Camphor
(2003) Blemish
(2005) The Good Son vs. The Only Daughter - Blemish remixes
(2005) Snow Borne Sorrow by Nine Horses - with Steve Jansen & Burnt Friedman
(2007) Money For All by Nine Horses - with Steve Jansen & Burnt Friedman
(2007) When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima

Contributions
(1982) "Good Night" on Ai Ga Nakucha Ne by Akiko Yano
(1983) "Forbidden Colours" on Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Shinichi Tanaka and Seigen Ono
(1986) "Some Small Hope" on Hope In A Darkened Heart by Virginia Astley
(1987) "Buoy" and "When Love Walks In" on Dreams Of Reason Produce Monsters by Mick Karn
(1991) "Heartbeat (Returning To The Womb)" and "Cloud #9" on Heartbeat by Ryuichi Sakamoto
(1992) "To A Reason" and "Victim Of Stars" on Sahara Blue by Hector Zazou
(1995) "Come Morning", "The Golden Way" and "Maya" on Marco Polo by Nicola Alesini & Pier Luigi Andreoni
(1995) "Ti Ho Aspettato (I Have Waited For You)" on L'Albero Pazzo by Andrea Chimenti
(1996) "How Safe Is Deep?" on Undark:Strange Familiar by Russell Mills
(1999) "Rooms Of Sixteen Shimmers" on Pearl And Umbra by Russell Mills
(2000) "Forbidden Colours" on Cinemage by Ryuichi Sakamoto
(2001) "Zero Landmine" on Zero Landmine by No More Landmine featuring Ryuichi Sakamoto and Various Artists
(2001) "Sugarfuel" on Bold by Readymade FC
(2001) "Linoleum" on The Attraction to All Things Uncertain by Tweaker
(2004) "World Citizen (I Won't Be Disappointed)" on Chasm by Ryuichi Sakamoto
(2004) "Transit" on Venice by Fennesz
(2004) "Pure Genius" on 2 AM Wake Up Call by Tweaker
(2004) "Exit/Delete" on Coieda by Takagi Masakatsu
(2005) "The Librarian" on Out In The Sticks by Burnt Friedman & Jaki Liebezeit
(2005) "Messenger" on The Secret Society Of Butterflies by Blonde Redhead
(2005) "A Fire In The Forest" (Remix) on Babilonia by Readymade FC
(2006) "Angels" on Crime Scenes by Punkt
(2007) "Playground Martyrs" and "Ballad Of A Deadman" on Slope by Steve Jansen
(2008) "Before and Afterlife" from Visionaire Magazine
(2008) "Honor Wishes" on To Survive by Joan As Police Woman
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David Sylvian.com - The official David Sylvian website, also the official Samadhi Sound website.
David Sylvian Radio Interview With Chris Comer
David Sylvian Radio Interview on "Blemish" with Chris Comer
Nine Horses - The Banality of Evil / Hello Neighbour (B-Film remix of Burnt Friedman's remix)
interview with ascent magazine

HELLO TO ALL SYLVIANIANS

2008-06-06T23:42:00.000-07:00

I've been toying with the idea to open up a blog on Japan, David Sylvian & Ryuichi Sakamoto. Initially, I thought of moving all the information in myspace.com/japansylvian but I suddenly thought? Why duplicate?

So, this is a totally fresh/new blog. You are free to post any news, send nice pics (so that I can include in a photo gallery that I'm currently working on but make sure it's about Japan, David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto. You can also post creative and artistic works as well - poetry, poem, work of art - anything.

It's open to all Sylvianians and Sakamotoans alike but mind you I practice a certain degree of censorship as my last wish is getting a lawsuit from Mr. Sylvian and Mr. Sakamoto - I hope you understand. (Please refer to disclaimer in http://myspace.com/japansylvian.

I might also 'hire' co-moderators which I'm going to decide soon.

Welcome ALL.

Nik @ myspace.com/japansylvian

Nik @ myspace.com/niksylvian