Tag: Steve Jansen

Avalon Sutra – Perhaps

‘from the resonant heart of a soulful man’

As David Sylvian’s In Praise of Shamans tour reached the West Coast in April 1988, he was interviewed for a piece in the Los Angeles Times. It was put to him that the ‘New Age tag has cropped up frequently’ in connection with his music. ‘It’s a very easy category to throw me into,’ Sylvian observed. ‘The music generally isn’t aggressive and therefore they define it as easy-listening, and they think I could belong to that category. And also some of the philosophies of life that I speak about they think may bear some resemblance to New Age.

‘I find that generally, what New Age set out to achieve… in that the work should have a specific function and induce a certain state of mind in the listener, I tend to think that it fails, quite badly… They approach the work on the intellectual level rather than the creative level. I think that somebody like Brian Eno and people that have worked with him for some time – Harold Budd, Michael Brook, Jon Hassell – in many ways achieve the aims of the New Age group far more profoundly than New Age itself.

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Still Life in Mobile Homes

‘the importance of individual personality’

The opening track to Side 2 of Japan’s iconic final studio album, Tin Drum, sequenced between the China-influenced ‘Canton’ and ‘Visions of China’, stands alone in the construction of its rhythm track, pointing forward to new ways of working for the band’s drummer, Steve Jansen. ‘Still Life in Mobile Homes’, Steve said, was ‘the only drum track recorded piecemeal on that album.’ (2015)

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World Citizen – The Only Daughter (remixed by Ryoji Ikeda)

elaborating upon the emotional heart of the work

Early in January this year I made my way along The Strand in central London to 180 Studios, very much within my old stomping ground as a mid-80s student. Entering the basement down the black-walled staircase, I was led to a darkened space where bean bags were laid out on the ground in a circle, each visitor invited to recline and turn their attention to the ceiling above, which was in fact taken up by a huge LED screen.

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Nostalgia

painting an audio picture

When the sessions for Brilliant Trees reconvened in London, following the initial gathering at Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin, the location was JAM studios situated in Tollington Park, North London. Joining co-producer Steve Nye for this stint was engineer Peter Williams. ‘JAM was owned by two brothers, the Nordmarks, Swedes, and their sister Lena ran the whole place. It was the old Decca 4 studio and became JAM. We used that a lot because it was a reasonable price, the quality of the equipment was good, and so we did a number of things there,’ Peter told me. ‘JAM, from memory, was a Harrison desk, Studer 24 track and Studer ½” 30 inch per second mastering, and a pair of big Urei speakers, 513s or whatever they are called, a bunch of amps etc.’

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Weathered Wall

‘native to no one involved’

‘When I recorded Brilliant Trees, I started the album in Berlin, out of necessity, out of a low budget and it being the cheapest studio I could find, but I found that going to a strange place, meeting in a strange place — all these musicians for the first time, some of them I’d never even spoken to prior to meeting them — created a sense of adventure about the whole project,’ recalled David Sylvian. ‘I didn’t just feel it, I noticed it in the other musicians, and that they would give more of themselves in that environment rather than in their natural environment, their home town or whatever.’ (1991)

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