Wonderful World

‘how beautiful life is’

The US leg of the Everything and Nothing tour wound to a close with a show at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles on 14 May 2002. It wasn’t long before David Sylvian’s attention turned towards new work after an extended period compiling and completing material from the preceding 20 years, firstly for the excellent vocal cd set which gave the tour its name and then for its instrumental companion, Camphor, which came out a couple of weeks after the LA gig.

Immediately following the tour, Sylvian’s brother, Steve Jansen, who had performed as drummer and percussionist in the stage band, took up residence at the New Hampshire property that was home to Sylvian, his wife Ingrid Chavez and their young family. ‘God, it gets increasingly difficult to place events firmly in time,’ wrote Sylvian later when the Nine Horses record – a trio with Jansen and Burnt Friedman – was released in 2005. ‘I’m trying to recall how this project got started. I’m not entirely convinced of the dates nor of the intervals between, but it seems that Steve and I started writing together in the late summer or fall of 2002, at least that’s what the dates on the digital photographs appear to tell me.’

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The Day the Earth Stole Heaven

a ‘kind of playful love song’

The first fruits of David Sylvian’s collaboration with Burnt Friedman were heard on a 2005 three-track vinyl ep entitled Out in The Sticks, in a line-up that also headlined ex-CAN drummer and past collaborator, Jaki Liebezeit. Sylvian appeared on only one of the cuts, contributing vocals to the original version of ‘The Librarian’ (see here for a discussion with Burnt themed around that track).

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A History of Holes

The stories we create to tell ourselves

Snow Borne Sorrow by Nine Horses is an album that emerged from a strange origin of creative alchemy. Two projects were underway: collaborations between David Sylvian and Steve Jansen, and between Sylvian and the German composer/programmer Burnt Friedman (initially featuring Jaki Liebezeit). Nine Horses arrived in 2005 but the Jansen/Sylvian collaboration began much earlier, indeed some pieces pre-dated Sylvian’s startling 2003 solo album Blemish. The latter exhibited a quite different approach to the material under development with Jansen, displaying a pared back approach to instrumentation and with improvisation at its heart in both music and lyrics.

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