Alphabet Angel

‘unconditional love’

At the peak of Japan’s popularity in 1982, David Sylvian was posed a question during an interview with The Face: ‘Do you like children?’ The 24-year old’s response was: ‘I hate children. Children in airplanes is my biggest hate, I just cannot stand having children in such close contact and not being able to get away from them.’ Whilst some might sympathise regarding experiences when flying, Sylvian’s outspokenness reminds me how young he and his fellow band-members were at the height of their success, and how they had existed within a relatively insular world to that point.

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Wasn’t I Joe? – I’m Too Mad to Let You Know (Sign the Papers)

‘the ghosts of who we used to be’

The news that David Sylvian would be touring the Blemish album came as a complete surprise to me. Live performance had often been decried by the singer as a far less fulfilling activity than time in studio, albeit his early ’90s work with Robert Fripp hread shifted this perspective somewhat. The 2001/2002 Everything and Nothing shows were still recent memories and with the move away from a major label, the financing required to make touring viable seemed a remote possibility – it had been borderline before with losses accumulated from the US shows in 2002.

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