Japan – Vista

Life Without Buildings

‘an exciting shift’

‘One of the main influences for me is travelling. I really enjoy travelling and it stimulates the imagination,’ shared Mick Karn in a 1996 interview with Anil Prasad for his Innerviews website. ‘I think a lot of the way I write is actually to think of a place and to imagine that place, what pictures come up. It’s an old trick that we used to use a lot in Japan actually, where we would just give each other a name of a country and we would all go away and think about this country and then get together and try and write a piece.’

Nightporter

‘influenced by something relatively untouched’

Teenage musical memories often take hold for a lifetime. Early in the ’80s a friend of mine held a party at his family’s home. These were always good nights, an opportunity to spend time with friends outside of sixth form classes and the common room at school. A time to enjoy the music that was in and around the charts, and favourite past tracks from Bowie and others. At the end of the evening, most people having by now drifted away, someone took out the vinyl of Gentlemen Take Polaroids and dropped the needle mid-way through side B for ‘Nightporter’. I knew the song, of course, but here it was being played on a quality sound system and at a volume that wouldn’t have been possible back at home. The person who selected it then sat cross-legged on the floor, head bowed, eyes closed, transfixed by the music.

The Other Side of Life

‘a new high mark of maturity’

There were fundamental differences in band preparations for Japan’s third LP. The material for the first two albums, Steve Jansen explained, ‘was performed extensively live before we had the opportunity to record it. Therefore, those albums serve more as a document of what we’d learnt as a group performing together. There was very little recording craft involved, just a lot of energy and influences from an eclectic mix of styles, which were all a part of our early teenage years onwards.

Ghosts

‘adventurous and strange’

‘New means change the method; new methods change the experience, and new experiences change man. Whenever we hear sounds we are changed: we are no longer the same after hearing certain sounds, and this is the more the case when we hear organised sounds, sounds organised by another human being: music.’ So said the ground-breaking composer of electronic music, Karlheinz Stockhausen, during a lecture given in London in 1971.

Ghosts – live

‘some sense of nostalgia’

Sometimes it’s difficult to remember why you made a particular decision. Especially one that you wish you could change afterwards… It was late 1982 and I was in the final year at school. Important exams were looming the following year which would determine whether I would achieve my ambition of going to university, and if so, which one I might attend. My fascination with Japan had developed in the preceding months as the singles ‘Ghosts’ and ‘Cantonese Boy’ had been lifted from Tin Drum, catching my attention and drawing me to the album. The plethora of Hansa singles had got me exploring the back catalogue, and I was guided through by an enthusiastic friend.

REPRESS OF COLOURED VINYLS

OUT NOW FROM LUCRECIA DALT feat. DAVID SYLVIAN

Lucrecia’s new album A Danger to Ourselves is out now. All tracks produced by Lucrecia Dalt & David Sylvian, mixed by David Sylvian.

Sylvian also contributes vocal and feedback guitar to ‘Cosa Rara’ and electric guitar solo for ‘Covenstead Blues’:

Second edition repress of ‘Cosa Rara (feat. David Sylvian)’ with alternative artwork. Note that this vinyl also contains an extended mix of the ‘dopamine dub’ by Matias Aguayo, featuring David Sylvian (i.e. a different version from the first single release):