Cancelled Pieces – Playground Martyrs (reprise)

Injecting creativity

Anja Garbarek’s 2001 album Smiling & Waving is notable for a number of reasons. Firstly, two tracks are produced by Mark Hollis of Talk Talk: an extremely rare foray into music after his self-titled album, released in 1998, signalled a retreat from public to private life. That album had been playing in a London record store when Anja visited whilst preparing for the recording of Smiling & Waving. ‘I heard the most beautiful music,’ she told Anil Prasad in an interview for his Innerviews site. ‘It had the same spirit I wanted to achieve with the music I was currently working on. It turned out to be Mark Hollis’ solo album. I went straight home and called the record company and asked them what my chances were of working with Mark. I presumed he was still active, but they told me that he had retired from the music industry after releasing his solo album. Somehow, they managed to set up a meeting with him and we got on really well.’ (2019)

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Playground Martyrs

‘Childhood trauma’

Steve Jansen was a part of samadhisound from the start. He helped to develop the new label’s studio after David Sylvian relocated from California to the mountains of New Hampshire. Together the brothers explored the possibilities of the latest recording technology and in 2002 they began to fashion compositions that would ultimately be part of the Nine Horses release. Steve even relocated for a year with his family to the remote former ashram site that was now home to Sylvian, his wife Ingrid Chavez and their children. As Sylvian took a six-week break to record Blemish, Jansen turned his attentions to evolving material for a debut release under his own name.

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