David Sylvian’s World, Post-Japan

In late 1982, Japan – the innovative English new wave band fronted by David Sylvian – announced their split at the peak of their creative and commercial success. They began as a Bowie and Bolan-obsessed South London three-piece back in 1974, with Sylvian joined by his brother Steve Jansen (bass) and Mick Karn (bass). The following year, the schoolfriends were joined by Richard Barbieri (keyboards) and Rob Dean (guitar) and before long, their snarling glam-punk caused enough of a stir to earn a record deal.

Over five albums, 1978’s Adolescent Sex to 1981’s Tin Drum, Japan evolved from agitated new wave upstarts to icy synth minimalists. Their music became refined and cerebral, while Sylvian grew into a fascinating frontman, an androgynous and intellectual aesthete with a smooth, baritone croon. Their greatest moment, the poignant “Ghosts” even reached No 5 in the UK singles chart in April 1982, but by this point, the band had already decided to go their separate ways. They played their final show – fittingly, in Nagoya, Japan – in December 1982.

Once the dust settled, Sylvian faced a dilemma. He had become increasingly insular as Japan became more successful and struggled to conceive of forming another band to work on his solo material. Equally, the songs he was working on were of such importance to him that he was reluctant to use session musicians, imagining that to them, recording would represent little more than a paycheck. He hit upon the answer while working on a home demo of what would become the title track of his stunning solo debut, 1984’s Brilliant Trees.

“As I began to elaborate on the arrangement, I came up with a sound reminiscent of Jon’s [Hassell] trumpet on a Prophet 5 synthesiser and the connection was made,” Sylvian told Fourth Door Review in 2005. “It occurred to me that if I was able to draw a line between a particular composition of mine and a body of work by another artist would they not be able to do likewise? I continued to arrange the material for the entire album and as I did, certain connections continued to be made between given compositions and a musical ‘voice’… These were musicians whose work I was very familiar with. Once it was obvious to me who these musicians should be, we tracked them down and asked if they’d be willing to give the material a go. They heard nothing in advance of the sessions, most of the participants had never heard of me. It was due to their generosity and sense of adventure that the sessions happened at all. Not one of the musicians invited declined the offer.”

Following this revelation, collaboration became intrinsic to Sylvian’s work. “Collaboration, when it’s right, is a challenge and a delight, a real conversation,” he told Flux magazine in 2010, “a generous give and take with, by and large, everyone involved collectively satisfied with the outcome.” Here we explore some of the most significant of Sylvian’s many musical relationships.

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RYUICHI SAKAMOTO

One of Sylvian’s most enduring and consequential collaborations was with Ryuichi Sakamoto, the celebrated Japanese keyboardist, composer, producer and former member of Yellow Magic Orchestra. The pair first met when they interviewed one another for the Japanese magazine Music Life in 1980. That summer, Japan were recording their fourth studio album Gentlemen Take Polaroids at Air Studios, North London, at the same time as Sakamoto was working on his second solo album, B-2 Unit. Sakamoto joined Japan in the studio, laying down track after track on the Prophet 5 synthesizer while his new English friends looked on in awe. Sylvian took the tape home to work on a melody; the next day the exquisite “Taking Islands In Africa” was complete – it still sounds like the future.

They next worked together in early 1982, when Sakamoto returned to Air Studios to work on his wife Akiko Yano’s electro-pop gem Ai Ga Nakucha Ne (featuring guest appearances from Sylvian, Jenson and Kan). Once those sessions wrapped, Sakamoto joined Sylvian and Jenson at Genetic Studios, Berkshire, where they recorded the sparse and percussive synth-funk single “Bamboo Houses,” which became Sylvian’s first solo release.

The following year, Sakamoto both starred in and composed the score for the Japanese prisoner of war film Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (also starring David Bowie). Sakamoto decided to record a vocal version of the movie’s all-time classic instrumental theme and called on Sylvian. The result was the moving “Forbidden Love.” “It opened the doors for me a little bit,” Sylvian told Uncut in 2012. “Suddenly the flow of writing began to really just open up and new material began arriving.”

Having provided Sylvian with inspiration, Sakamoto went on to play a key role in the singer’s solo career. Sakamoto’s piano helps “Red Guitar” (Brilliant Trees, 1984) find its groove and his free jazz solo adds a thrilling sense of adventure. The eerie and exploratory music that scored the 20-minute film soundtrack “Steel Cathedrals” (Alchemy – An Index Of Possibilities, 1984) was composed by Sakamoto. On the autumnal masterpiece Secrets Of The Beehive (1987) Sakamoto pulls multiple shifts, contributing sweeping and cinematic string arrangements, swathes of warm organ and nimble piano.

The pair reunited in 2003 for “World Citizen,” a dignified and outspoken protest song in the light of the US invasion of Iraq, and again, for “Life, Life” from Sakamoto’s 2017 album async, a beautiful spoken word piece that adapted a poem by Russian poet Arseny Tarvosky, father of the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. In 2022, with Sakamoto fighting cancer, Sylvian recorded a meditative version of his friend’s “Grains (Sweet Paulownia Wood)” for A Tribute To Ryuichi Sakamoto – To The Moon And Back. And on Sakamoto’s death in 2023, Sylvian publicly celebrated his musical comrade’s life with a three-part post on his social media channels. The first featured the lines, “I believe Icarus was not falling as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph,” from the poem Failing And Flying by American poet Jack Gilbert; next was an elegant shot of the back of Sakamoto’s head; and finally the dates “January 17 1952 – March 28 2023.”

In A Solitary Life, an interview on Sylvian’s website, the singer spoke about the influence of Sakamoto and Eastern culture on his work: “I think it affected me in ways that have been so completely absorbed and assimilated that it’s hard for me to comprehend the degree to which I’ve been influenced by my engagement with eastern culture. I might point to the influence of Zen Buddhism and, to a lesser extent, shintoism and the guiding roles they’ve played in my personal evolution. The beautiful artifice of popular culture and the mutability of persona. The embrace of one’s masculinity and femininity on equal terms, without conflict. Then there are the friendships which grew overtime with Japanese artists, musicians, composers, all of whom hold an important place in my heart… I found a compatible aesthetic in many aspects of their work, particularly with Ryuichi, which reflected my own. I found a community of contemporaries in Japan which I failed to find in my own homeland.”

HOLGER CZUKAY

By the time Sylvian and Holger Czukay met, the German multi-instrumentalist’s place in musical history was already secure. Czukay was born in 1938, was leading his own jazz quintet by the late ’50s and studied under the pioneering avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne from 1963-66. In 1968, he co-founded the endlessly influential experimental pop band Can, whose radical approach to composition – collectively improvising at length, after which Czukay edited the tapes to produce ‘songs’ – resulted in a decade of groundbreaking albums and a live archive of magical jams that are still being discovered.

Despite this, it was Czukay’s dazzling 1979 solo album Movies, a sample-heavy collage of experimental and witty art-pop – which caught Sylvian’s attention and led to their first collaboration, on Brilliant Trees. “I wanted one wild card, something unpredictable, and Holger Czukay was that person for me,” Sylvian told Uncut in 2012. “I really adored what he had done with Movies. I still think that it’s a work of genius… an utterly stunning record. I just said, ‘Come along and we’ll see what happens.’”

Czukay was credited on Brilliant Trees with “dictaphone, guitar, French horn, voice.” Speaking to Electronic Sound in 2018, Sylvian emphasized the impact of Czukay’s sampling wizardry, “He brought with him two large, antiquated IBM machines that he’d discovered dumped outside an office building in Köln. He recognized their potential and, back at the studio, started to explore the possibilities they presented. As he said, ‘I’ve so much more flexibility with these machines than any sampler on the market’ and, in general, this was the case.

“He’d improvise with samples, running the playback head of the dictaphone over a broad expanse of tape which he’d prepared with all manner of samples and sounds, many taken from his own studio environment, incorporating the use of the varispeed function which, as far as I’m aware, was the only other speed that the dictaphones had. It proved to be enough, in terms of flexibility, to produce sounds from which one frequently couldn’t determine the original source.” Czukay’s flair for tape manipulation and intuitive sense of musicality resulted in soundbeds of uncanny beauty that complemented Sylvian’s material perfectly (see “Weathered Wall,” “Pulling Punches,” and Brilliant Trees’ title track).

Sylvian’s “wild card” had paid off, with Czukay’s use of analog sampling bringing a welcome element of chance to the intricately crafted material. The pair began an ongoing collaboration that went on to yield some magnificent music. The following year, Czukay brought his samplers to London to work on Sylvian’s ambitious instrumental, “Words With The Shamen” suite (Alchemy – An Index Of Possibilities). “He brought a handful of cassettes he’d taken from the radio,” Sylvian told Electronics & Music Maker in 1986. “He’d suggest a cassette for what we were listening to, and say we’d leave the cassette running while we recorded. There are things that would fall into place, and anything that didn’t would be spooled back in to the right place. I find that a very interesting way of working – leaving things to chance.”

In the winter of 1986, Czukay asked Sylvian to record a vocal for “Music In The Air,” destined for his Rome Remains Rome album. Sylvian travelled to the Can Studio (previously named Inner Space) in Köln, the former cinema that Czukay had customised, where he promptly forgot about the vocal and spent a couple of nights working on musical ideas with Czukay and DJ Karl Lippegaus. Czukay worked on the improvisations to form the album Plight & Premonition (1988), on which spectral, drawn-out drones on harmonium and synth provide a backdrop for flurries of electronic noise, snatches of piano and guitar melodies and disorientating pieces of found sound to create a transcendent listening experience. It provided the blueprint for the ambient adventures of the following year’s Flux & Mutability, which also featured Can’s Jaki Liebezeit (percussion and flute) and Michael Karoli (guitar).

Czukay died aged 79 in September 2017. The following year, Sylvian wrote of his fondness for his former partner for The Quietus, “There’s few people I loved more than Holger and I’m not talking about his role in my life as musician or collaborator. He blossomed with an attentive audience and I was a good listener. The stories came fast and furious. Some involving the supernatural, others, his time in Can and, in particular, the period post Can where he’d suffered something akin to a nervous breakdown which eventually led to his rebirth as the man we remember today. I’ve never liked the ‘mad genius’ tags attached to him. He played up the buffoonish image for reasons of entertainment and self-amusement but there was an acute sensibility at work as sober as any I’ve witnessed… The degree of insightfulness, musical knowledge, and hours of labour that went into creating the material was downplayed.”

JON HASSELL

The Memphis-born trumpet player and composer who provided Sylvian with his eureka moment didn’t let him down, performing on and co-writing two tracks (“Weathered Wall” and the title track) on Brilliant Trees. For Jon Hassell, it provided an opportunity for a reunion with Holger Czukay, with whom he’d studied under Stockhausen. On returning to the US, Hassell threw himself into New York’s avant-garde scene, working with Terry Riley and Le Monte Young, before embarking on a pilgrimage to India to play alongside the singer Pandit Pran Nath. The innovative blend of raga-inspired trumpet and field recordings of his debut album, Vernal Equinox (1977), made Brian Eno a fan, which led to Hassell’s cameo on Talking Heads’ “Houses In Motion.” Eno and Hassell began a collaboration that included Fourth World, Vol 1: Possible Musics (1980) and Ambient 4: On Land (1982), albums that were critical to establishing Hassell’s mission to create ‘Fourth World’ music, which he described as “a unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques.”

Despite Hassell and Czukay’s connection, Sylvian noticed drastic differences between the approaches of the two musicians during the recording of Brilliant Trees. “There was a brief catch up, social interaction between them though no musical performance. Jon’s intensity was refreshing. There was thoroughness, a rigour, that didn’t allow for compromise but instead demanded a clarity of purpose, of intent. Holger’s approach was the antithesis of Jon’s. Joyful enthusiasm, wild invention, much paint thrown at the canvas to see what sticks, manipulation of the results.”

Hassell’s breathy trumpet adds an eastern feel to Weathered Wall, though when Sylvian asked him to contribute to the title track, he was reluctant. “He was intimating that, as ‘Brilliant Trees’ asked that he play in the western tradition, ‘steps’ as he describes it, he didn’t see how his performance could be incorporated into the title track,” Sylvian wrote in 2012. “I persevered. He returned to his hotel room that evening to work on it and, overnight, came up with something so beautiful and complementary to the piece, that moved away from raga (outside of the coda), and gave us one of the rare, if not unique recordings, of Jon playing in the western tradition.” Hassell’s recording was a revelation, making it difficult to imagine the song without him. Hassell died in June 2021 at 84 years old, having made an unforgettable contribution to music the world over.

ROBERT FRIPP

Not content with being the driving force behind prog rock founding fathers King Crimson, Robert Fripp has an impressive resume as a collaborator, adding wildly inventive guitar lives (and ‘Frippertronics’, his distinctive analog looping technique) to pivotal works by David Bowie (“Heroes”, 1977; Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), 1980), Brian Eno (No Pussyfooting, 1973; Here Come The Warm Jets, 1974; Another Green World, 1975); Talking Heads (Fear Of Music, 1979) and countless more.

Sylvian called on Fripp to add atmospheric guitar to the 1985 epic “Steel Cathedrals” and the guitarist played a pivotal role in the making of the following year’s Gone To Earth, playing on seven tracks, three of which were co-written with Sylvian. The two men had plenty in common – back in 1974 a disillusioned Fripp disbanded King Crimson and spent a year studying on a residential course at the International Academy for Continuous Education, a school devoted to the work of the late British psychology and spirituality academic John G Bennett. In Anthony Reynolds’ 2019 book of interviews, Cries & Whispers, Sylvian recalled, “Of course, on meeting Robert for the first time I spent far more time inquiring of Mr and Mrs Bennett and their teachings than recording. Actually, Robert set up a number of Frippertronics loops, so we put the machines into record and left them to it, allowing us to take tea and talk whilst simultaneously working.”

Gone To Earth’s title track, co-written with Fripp, proves that the pair did plenty more than talk philosophy. It’s effectively a duet between Sylvian’s vocal and Fripp’s expressive guitar parts, which flit between passages of industrial, churning chords and moments of harmonic luminescence. “I just sat down with a guitar, sang the song to him and said, ‘What would you do?’, Sylvian later recalled. “He responded by saying, ‘Ah! I would do something like this’, and that’s how it all started. He recorded the guitar parts all in the first take and the whole thing was spontaneous. I liked his aggressive approach, it was something that I wanted to do. The way that Robert reacted to the song was totally in keeping with what I wanted.”

Working relationship established, Fripp asked Sylvian to join King Crimson as a vocalist in 1991. The singer declined but agreed to a tour of Japan and Italy, with the pair joined by drummer Trey Gunn. “I had no desire to work at that period in time,” Sylvian told The Quietus in 2012. “Robert was really tugging at my sleeve saying, ‘Let’s do something, let’s do something,’ so… why not?” Inevitably, the shows led to new material, which in turn led to an album, The First Day, recorded between December 1992 and March 1993 at studios in New York and New Orleans. The energy of the live performances translated into the studio for some of Sylvian’s hardest-hitting, rockiest performances. Tracks such as “Firepower” and “20th Century Dreaming” found Fripp channelling the raw, cathartic sound of grunge while “God’s Monkey” and the 18-minute “Darshan” (later remixed by electronic dance act The Grid) were supple and funky, think Happy Mondays featuring Scott Walker. Sylvian and Fripp toured the album in late 1993 – a pair of shows at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in December were recorded for the following year’s Damage: Live, essential listening thanks to the mesmerizing and emotionally draining “Damage,” which has never been released elsewhere.

CHRISTIAN FENNESZ

In the early 2000s, the Austrian composer, guitarist and producer Christian Fennesz was one of the hottest names in electronic music. Fennesz spent his formative years making experimental rock music in bands before a late ’90s left-turn into solo electronica, dealing in glitchy beats and distortion. His breakthrough came with 2001’s essential Endless Summer, which added lush, symphonic soundscapes and radiant melodies to the mix.

Unusually for Sylvian, who had always sought out collaborators, Fennesz made the first move. The Austrian had been a fan since Brilliant Trees and asked his label to contact Sylvian in the hope of securing guest vocals for his Endless Summer follow-up, Venice. Sylvian agreed, but on the condition that Fennesz returned the favour on his then-current work-in-progress, which would end up becoming 2004’s Blemish. Unbeknownst to Fennesz, Sylvian had been looking for a collaborator to help realize his new direction. “I was listening to a lot of digital cut-up electronic music,” Sylvian explained, “and feeling that was certainly a sonic territory that I would like to tap into for my album, but I hadn’t made a commitment to a particular artist.”

When Sylvian heard Fennesz’s music, he was immediately drawn to it and the two artists began a remote collaboration, working by sending one another audio files. The song Sylvian sent was the whimsical and melodically direct ballad “A Fire In The Forest,” an outlier among the material he was working on. “It was overly melodic and overly sentimental,” said Sylvian. “It was a lullaby for neurotics, and it needed to be made a little bit stranger, more disturbing, to balance out the sweetness of the melody and the simplicity of the lyric. So I sent it to Christian precisely because I wanted him to screw with it.” After initially hesitating, Fennesz deconstructed the song, setting it to a whirring electronic backdrop flecked with distortion. Sylvian loved it and reciprocated with a vocal of rare gravitas on Fennesz’s song, “Transit.”

Fennesz went on to play as part of the ensemble on 2007’s “When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima,” a single 70-minute piece of improvised musique concrète. He also took a central role in the recording of 2001’s spare and revelatory Manafon, playing guitar and laptop as part of the core four-piece ensemble whose improvisations were directed by Sylvian, and returned for 2014’s 65-minute spoken word album There’s a Light That Enters Houses with No Other House in Sight, featuring poet Franz Wright.

BURNT FRIEDMAN

Released in 2005, The Good Son Vs The Only Daughter was a reworking of Blemish with some of the tracks remixed, others re-recorded with new musicians. Burnt Friedman, a well-respected figure in German electronica whom Sylvian had long admired from afar, did the honors on “Late Night Shopping” after the pair met at Sylvian’s 2003 Köln show. Friedman stripped the track back and added mournful horns and backing vocals, while mischievously bleeping the word “shopping,” creating a welcome sense of ambiguity.

Friedman was then brought on board as part of a new trio, Nine Horses, with Sylvian’s former Japan bandmate (and brother) Steve Jansen. The siblings had started working on material together back in 2002, though Sylvian felt it missed a spark. When Friedman sent Sylvian five songs that he’d been working on with Jaki Liebezeit, the singer added his vocals, but when the mixes were returned he was surprised by how stark they were. Friedman allowed Sylvian to remix the Liebezeit tracks, eventually replacing the drum parts with new tracks by Jansen. Sylvian then hit upon the idea of amalgamating both sets of tracks and Nine Horses were born. Amazingly, considering its convoluted beginnings, the resultant album, Snow Borne Sorrow is one of the most direct albums of Sylvian’s post-Japan career, a mature pop album featuring striking cameos from Sakamoto and a pair of Norwegian guests – singer Stina Nordenstem and trumpeter Arve Henriksen.

DAI FUJIKURA

Another collaboration emphasized the respect in which a new generation of composers held Sylvian. “I’ve loved David Sylvian since middle school,” wrote the Japanese-born, London-based composer Dai Fujikura in his book, Too Early for an Autobiography. ‘After entering high school in England I bought everything I could find in small CD shops in rural towns. I must have had everything that was on regular release.” When Fujikura was approached in early 2008 by the Southbank Centre, London, to work on a concept combining contemporary classical with beat boxing, he was sceptical and made an off-hand comment that to be interested in taking part, he’d have to collaborate with an artist of the stature of David Sylvian. By chance, Sylvian had a meeting scheduled with the Southbank Centre about another proposed project and it was suggested he also meet with Fujikura. The composer seized his chance and took the meeting, where he handed Sylvian a CD-R of his work and suggested they work together. Sylvian was so impressed by Fujikura’s music that he sent him tracks from his upcoming album Manafon to orchestrate. Eventually, they decided on the New York-based string quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and Fujikura flew to Manhattan to meet Sylvian and oversee the sessions.

When it came to making the final call on Manafon however, Sylvian decided the string parts didn’t work. Fujikura was shocked but respected Sylvian’s decision, still, once he was sent the ProTools files of the sessions, the composer couldn’t resist remixing them. Fujikura’s daring treatment of “Random Acts Of Senseless Violence” convinced Sylvian to include it as a bonus track on the Japanese release of Manafon. He then gave the composer the go-ahead to book another session with ICE and rework the whole album, plus a new composition, the haunting “The Last Days Of December” and adding the 18-minute sound installation “When We Return You Won’t Recognise Us” on a second disc. On the release of Fujikura’s version of the album, Died In The Wool, Sylvian was typically generous in his praise: “‘Dai is a fascinatingly original and protean composer, so whilst the work might ultimately be more accessible, it’ll lose none of its complexity, in fact it seems to take on a richer complexity but, to Dai’s credit, that doesn’t hinder the immediacy of the finished piece.”

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