In the months that followed the autumn 1987 release of David Sylvian’s Secrets of the Beehive, listeners came to recognise its restraint and sensitivity as marks of a very special album. The nine tracks from ‘September’ to ‘Waterfront’ took only around 35 minutes to experience. There was not a spare musical gesture throughout the running order, all that was present was what was necessary to give expression to the compositions that had come so naturally and unexpectedly to the songwriter as his Gone to Earth press tour had come to an end.
I think the first time I discovered that the album may not be exactly what Sylvian had envisaged was a 1988 interview with guitarist David Torn in which he discussed his involvement with Secrets... ‘He was that man that rang me,’ said Torn of first contacts, expanding on the recording at Miraval Studios in the South of France: ‘I really was left this wild card position where he didn’t know what he wanted me to do before I started reacting to the tracks. So we did a solo on ‘The Boy with the Gun’ and I played my koto guitar on ‘Maria’.
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