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Died In The Wool Review

Ever since Blemish (Samadhi Sound, 2003), Sylvian has been commissioning sister records for his "regular" output that consist either of remixes, alternate takes and/or unreleased material which stand on their own as cohesive work. Died In The Wool is the sister album of Manafon (Samadhi Sound, 2009), a simultaneously brilliant and difficult record, where again he eschewed the pop sound he was first associated with.

For the previous two sister records, The Good Son (Samadhi Sound, 2003) and Money For All (Samadhi Sound, 2007), he engaged musicians on the cutting edge of the electronic scene, and employed state of the art studio technology to reshape the material . In the same manner, he here employs the services of Dai Fujikura, a Japanese-born, London-based composer of contemporary classical music, as well as Jan Bang and Erik Honoré, who are two of the most prolific mavericks and soundsmiths of contemporary electronic music, with rich sonic vocabularies.

These artists reroute the music of Manafon through a micro-engineered forcefield awash with crisp and bristling activity and strings washes. Consequently, Died In The Wool is an intriguing, drifting and sometimes accelerating sonic affair. It is intensely moving because of the complexity of emotions it invokes. The contributors provide cinematoscopic features that replace the eeriness of the original material with a distinct feeling of warmth. The sound textures slide in and around each other, and sounds loom and roll ominously past as ghost objects. There is a flurry of activity around Sylvian's voice,with atonal flourishes and clusters that suggest an inscrutable logic of their own.

Over those thick patches of strings and ambient sounds, Sylvian sings the songs in a way that manages persuasively to convey shades of melancholic and desolate emotions. Bang and Honore contribute remixes to two tracks, "Emily Dickinson" and "Died In The Wool," and they contribute to two new tracks, "I Should Not Dare" and "A Certain Slant of Light." These tracks were constructed from live performances and studio experiments.

The second disc comprises a single track titled "When we Return You Won't Recognize Us," an audio installation commissioned by Biennial of Canarie 2008-2009. The piece was informed by a maverick production and collective improvisation approach, as heard on Manafon (and the pairing of improvisers such as John Butcher, Arve Henriksen, Günter Müller, Toshimaru Nakamura, and Eddie Prévost with a string sextet directed by Fujikura), which has resulted in a composition deftly carved out of an improvisation that reconciles apparently irreconcilable soundworlds.

The textures and timbres pervading these pieces might belong to the soundworld of electronic music, but beyond that there is a sense of broad sonic inclusiveness. Died In The Wool is a curious album, where every sound and nuance is laden with significance. Despite the number of cooks, the broth is not spoiled by the numbers, but works as a cohesive sound unit with thoroughly enjoyable music.

NENAD GEORGIEVSKI

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More information on the musicians involved in this series of performances along with a personal message from David will follow in due course at his various websites and other online outlets.

tour.davidsylvian.com

Click here to purchase David Sylvian's "Implausible Beauty" 2012 calendar.

Manofan (2009) is characteristically stark. There is so much negative space, it weighs down on everything else. The terse contributions of Christian Fennesz, John Tilbury, Evan Parker, Otomo Yoshihide and members of Polwechsel (among others) practically fight the silence to be heard. Sylvian’s subtly melodic and lucid voice becomes the breath of each track. When he goes silent for too long, you gasp for a personal connection. An album of variations is almost counterintuitive: by filling the negative space, the whole affect is lost. Died in the Wool, however, succeeds. By giving some of the original players the opportunity to react to the written material rather than the reverse, an entirely new sound emerges.

Manofan impresses despite a lack of graspable music thanks to Sylvian’s poetic imagery. He is a masterful and patient lyricist. On Died in the Wool, the music has a chance to be empathetic to this imagery. Manofan‘s opener, “Small Metal Gods,” is an exhausted plea for mental independence, underpinned by shallow guitar plucks and midnight ambience. It takes on more exact meaning with the accompaniment of composer Dai Fujikura. Died in the Wool‘s variation begins yearning, if not hopeful, thanks to deftly swooning chamber strings. When Sylvian’s lyrics turn bitter, though (“I’ve placed the gods in a zip-lock bag / I’ve put them in a drawer / They’ve refused my prayers for the umpteenth time / So, I’m evening up the score”), so do the strings. Descending disharmonies give the poem a sourness and disgust that the original version never quite reached.

Fujikura is prevalent throughout the album, and his presence is compelling. The chamber strings return on “The Last Days of December.” They don’t quite circle and echo the lyrical sentiments as they did on “Small Metal Gods,” but instead work as a tension between the melodic vocals and the bleak lyrics. During a rework of “Snow White in Appalacia,” Fujikura composes a skipping, fluttering, harmonically complex backdrop for Sylvian. He also gives “Random Acts of Senseless Violence” the unpredictably dreadful accompaniment it deserves. The potent lyrics (“The targets hit will be nonspecific / We’ll roll the numbers, play with chance / All suitable locations and planned in advance / Someone’s back kitchen / Stacked like a factory with improvised devices”) become all the more unsettling.

Producers Jan Bang and Erik Honoré similarly rework “Emily Dickinson” and “The Greatest Living Englishman” for a more concise and organic listen, scrapping the minimal post-jazz setting of Manofan for 21st century chamber pieces. They also work with Sylvian to put two of Dickinson’s own poems to music. “I Should Not Dare” stands out for its relatively buoyant pace and warm melodies. Christian Fennesz contributes expanding pockets of Jonny Greenwood-esque soundwaves, while Evan Parker gives it one final accent of nocturnal glow. “A Certain Slant of Light” is equally accessible. The pensive four-stanza poem is given a suitably poignant backdrop that takes on an almost cinematic quality.

Sylvian combines all these elements for the title track (which comes way too early in the track listing). Striking lyrics about a woman found dead (“The weight of her body impresses the ground / softened by rainfall, soaked right through / the lightening sky and the darkening blue”) are trapped by a swarm of Fujikura’s unrecognizable clarinets. Intertwined samples of a live concert by Bang and Honoré provide an unpredictable percussive element. The final sound, anchored by Sylvian’s melancholy vocals, is tense, seductive and disturbing. Few musicians could create such a balance, nonetheless for two equally enticing albums.

MICHAEL ARDAIOLO

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På Died in the wool samarbeider han med samtidskomponisten Dai Fujikura, samt produsentene og elektronikaartistene Jan Bang og Erik Honoré.

Seks av tretten låttitler er hentet fra Manafon, men sangene er gjenfødt og lyssatt med blendende effekt. David Sylvian videreutvikler ideene han sådde med Blemish, fra 2003, og lar improvisasjonsmusikere og nykompositorisk metode møte popteft og bredt låtskrivertalent.

«I Should Not Dare» og «A Certain Slant Of Light» er nye sanger, der Jan Bang og Erik Honoré står sentralt i utsmykningen. At en av populærkulturens 80-tallshelter leder fortroppene i godt moden alder, er gledelig sensasjonelt.

ARILD R. ANDERSEN

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For more information on the organization, to make donations, and to access uniquely interesting artist contributions please follow the links below.

kizuna world

Only half the tracks are actually re-jiggered Manafon cuts, and most of those are drastically different, and arguably improved by replacing the original ultra-minimal/barely musical settings with young Japanese modernist composer Dai Fujikura's arch-but-melodic avant-chamber orchestrations. The new material includes both Manafon outtakes and pieces that build on the ideas explored on the earlier record, sometimes sounding like a more austere cousin of Tim Buckley's Lorca/Starsailor explorations, or even King Crimson's Islands-era chamber-rock ballads (Sylvian has, after all, collaborated extensively with KC mainman Robert Fripp). Died in the Wool isn't for Sylvian beginners, but fans needn't fear it.

JIM ALLEN

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Re-workings of five Manafon tracks (Small Metal Gods, Random Acts of Senseless Violence, Snow White in Appalachia, Emily Dickinson and The Greatest Living Englishman) are included. There is also a version of an outtake from the original Manafon sessions (Anomaly At Taw Head (A Haunting)) and new pieces The Last Days of December, and Died In The Wool - all three of which are Fujikura collaborations. Producers and electronics artists Jan Bang and Erik Honoré are the other significant contributors here, providing the remixes of Manafon and Emily Dickinson as well as two tracks of new material, in which the poet Dickinson's works are set to music (I Should not Dare, A Certain Slant Of Light).

For anyone familiar with the sparse originals, where the silences seemed heavy with every bit as much significance as the improvised sounds between them, Fujikura's often quite lush instrumentation will initially come as something of a shock. Small Metal Gods, in its new setting, sounds frequently dramatic, sometimes even playful with the strings full and rich or pizzicato. The line "Where's my Queen of Hearts" now sounds more conventionally "romantic" and the shock of the suicide reference is somehow lessened. Here also, the Random Acts of Senseless Violence, so persuasively described, are over-emphasised, rather than played down. Placing these tracks (these words and vocal melodies) in such different settings seems to brings a different emphasis to them, forcing a re-evaluation by the listener.

Sylvian's ever-striking vocal combines beautifully, on occasion, with the arrangements. On I Should Not Dare and A Certain Slant Of Light, in particular, there is depth, humanity and a curiously old-fashioned kind of glamour to the singing, all framed in the warm accompaniment of strummed acoustic guitars, piano and little flecks of brass. Sylvian himself claims of this album: "I don’t think I’ve produced work of a more intensely emotional nature than that of the past eight years or so", and the emotion indeed can be clearly felt.

A second disk provides the first stereo CD version of Sylvian's audio installation When We Return You Won't Recognise Us, produced in 2008 for the Biennial of Canaries. Inspired by the genetics and lineage of the descendents of the original Spanish settlers in the Canary Islands, this improvised work features John Butcher, Arve Henriksen, Günter Müller, Toshimaru Nakamura and Eddie Prévost and a string sextet directed by Fujikura. The resulting 18 minute piece feels very much "of a part" with the preceding album, seemingly created in a similar spirit and resulting in a thoughtful longer but comparably instrumented and atmospheric piece of work.

JUDE CLARKE

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