In Praise of...David Sylvian "Brilliant Trees"

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Sylvian's "Blemish" takes the avant side even further, which he's able to do because his voice is so lush and sensual. I think only Scott Walker has done anything similar, but Walker's work terrifies and impresses without touching the kind of domestic emotions Sylvian can: regret, nostalgia, melancholy, love.

I can still listen to "Brilliant Trees" with pleasure. I think it's stood the test of time very well.

"Nostalgia" is my favorite solo Sylvian.

This record was a big influence on early solo Momus. I think it was historically very important in the sense that it signposted a way some of us could go after the collapse of synthpop. That destination was an experimental singersongwriter music which returned to acoustic textures (stand-up bass and acoustic guitar) but mixed them with avant garde sounds (prepared piano, Fluxus-style radio and tape interventions) and ambient electronics (the synth as church organ on Side 2). While people like The Lilac Time later captured the pastoral and retro end, very few artists mixed avant touches with the emotional power of traditional instruments in quite this way.
Sylvian's "Blemish" takes the avant side even further, which he's able to do because his voice is so lush and sensual. I think only Scott Walker has done anything similar, but Walker's work terrifies and impresses without touching the kind of domestic emotions Sylvian can: regret, nostalgia, melancholy, love.

I can still listen to "Brilliant Trees" with pleasure. I think it's stood the test of time very well.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, September 23, 2006 3:47 AM (8 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, very smart post. i miss momus, except for the part of him that liked to troll ILE threads.

btw has anyone on ILX ever had less to say and spent more time saying it than ned raggett? i guess the answer to that question is "geir hongro."

Thanks for bumping this thread, I hadn't seen that Momus post, very otm. This album still has great power after all these years, and I hope David's recent comments about "maybe I won't sing again" aren't true.

Did Ned spit in your coffee or something?

*scratches head*

has sylvian lost some of his vocal power? is that why he's chosen (for the moment, I hope) not to sing?

*scratches butt*

This was Sylvian's cocaine album wasn't it?

Danny Thompson's 1980s output is slim but worthwhile - Sylvian, Kate Bush, Talk Talk

listening to this at work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JQUid76k-U

i don't think it's an insult to say this stuff makes decent semi-background ("ambient"?) music.

Secrets of the Beehive still my favorite

the string arrangement on "waterfront" is rather fetching, isn't it?

This was Sylvian's cocaine album wasn't it?

Funnily enough -- UK writer Chris Roberts just posted this on his FB feed half an hour back:

Researching for a piece I'm writing on (the band) Japan, I find a 2003 interview I did with Sylvian, wherein he tells me to my dismay and disbelief that Brilliant Trees was a "cocaine album". What?? I splutter, it's, like, the least cocaine-y album of all time! "Imagine", he says, arching a marvellous eyebrow, "what it would have been like without."

he does have marvelous eyebrows.

haha that quote is a riot

yeah, wow, "cocaine" does not immediately come to mind when i listen to that album, except perhaps on the first track.

the string arrangement on "waterfront" is rather fetching, isn't it?

― I dunno. (amateurist),

It's in conflict with that placid vocal melody and the piano tinkle; if the track were any longer the tension would be unbearable.

yeah but the conflict is... tangy

oh yeah this is praise!

the string arrangement was kind of stuck in my head as i was trying to fall asleep last night.

I get the guitar in "Nostalgia" stuck in mine every couple months.

My version of the album has Words With the Shaman.

I remember that interview

from a 2005 interview:

JC: Did the life of a pop star never appeal to you – the celebrity, adulation, the money, the girls?

DS: I rarely partied hard. My sexual partners were few. During this period I remember spending much of my time alone whether at home, in various modes of transport, or in hotel rooms around the globe. Even in a crowd I was relatively isolated. Not an altogether undesirable state as far as I was concerned. I did have a problem with drugs during the period of the break-up of Japan, with cocaine. But that was more to do with my psychological problems than with any rock star excesses. I had a sleeping disorder whereby I couldn’t stay conscious for more than four hours at a time, and I was looking for some medication to help with that. This went on for months, and that’s when I became cocaine-dependent. In the end, I reached such a low with the drug that I knew I had to stop or face the consequences.

Laughingstock: studio full of total tweakers
Gastr del Sol: out of their minds on sherm

if there's a post-rock band that was on drugs, i would have expected it to be woo.