David Sylvian 2009

On the subject of Punkt and Died in the Wool

Why did you agree to appear at the PUNKT-Festivalen?

Jan and Erik have been gracious enough to invite my participation in Punkt on an almost annual basis but this was the first year when the possibility of contributing to the festival in some fashion seemed a reality plus, I like what Jan and Erik have been doing with over the years and wanted to lend some support with my efforts. 

What expectations do you have to your stay?

I don't come with expectations, it's not knowing exactly what to expect that's exciting to me. 

What do you know about the Norwegian music scene?

I appear to have a connection with an aspect of it in the form of some of my collaborative partners, a tenuous but respectful exchange with Rune Kristofferson, backed by a general knowledge of the key players past and present. 

What is your experience of Jan Bang and Erik Honore as working partners?

Generous, gracious, sensitive, and fully engaged. They seem to have an understanding of my aesthetic, and I something of theirs. 

In what direction do your interests as a musician lie at the moment?

I seem to be open to a variety of possibilities at this moment in time. In the short term I anticipate a return to slightly more formal structures than in the recent past but I intend to pursue multiple directions simultaneously. 

How did you manage to get Derek Bailey on board the Blemish project?

It wasn't that difficult. I spoke to him for about 15 mins on the phone after which he was onboard. I told him I wanted to be challenged as a vocalist and he said 'that I can do for you'. 

How did you come up with the idea of singing along to Bailey´s improvisational music? I know you did something similar with Keith Tippett in the 90s.

It was a matter of timing, maturity and the right material. When I first heard Derek back in the 80's I thought 'I'd love to work with this guy' but it wasn't until I was contemplating Blemish that this notion became for me a reality. During this gestation period for Blemish, Derek's was the only music I could listen to and so there formed a bond in my mind between his work and the project I was about to embark on. After working on Blemish for a couple of weeks I was certain Derek had to be a part of it hence the call. 

How did Derek Bailey rate the finished product. He wasn´t in the habit of playing with vocalists.

I can't say with any certainty. What someone may tell you in person may not be the most frank opinion although, Derek had no difficulty with being blunt. He told me some months later, at tea at his home in London, that he thought the pieces worked. He felt his role was accompanist to my lead (whether this was a good or a bad thing or just an observation I can't say). It would've been interesting to work with Derek again in a different context but, alas, that wasn't to be. 

Why did you choose to remix such a perfect album as Blemish?

Because the pieces lent themselves to reinterpretation. I also used the remixes as a mean of testing the water for potential future collaborators. 

In which musical tradition would you say you are working in 2011?

I follow the arc of my life without regard for tradition. That isn't to say I have a disregard for it, on the contrary, I have great respect for the traditions of others, but I've never personally felt rooted in any particular tradition or genre. One might view things differently from a more objective perspective. I don't adhere to any philosophy other than my own. I think of myself as following my instincts on the periphery, on the boundaries between, this and that tradition all the while carrying the weight of my own baggage. I'm a recording artist, a pop musician, with only a few fixed points of reference. My approach has nothing in common with a form of dilettantism. I'm rooted firmly within and what I try to manufacture through the work is a kind of poetry of the self, its inner workings, weaknesses, self-betrayals, epiphanies and disillusionment. I study the work and its context of those musicians I'm fortunate enough to collaborate with so as to get to the heart of the matter as rapidly as possible. They're hand picked due to some specific attributes they possess which helps shorten the process of unearthing the desired material/direction, of finding common ground. 

At the end of the day, when the work is complete, I couldn't tell you if those with which I worked liked, respected, or otherwise, the material I produced but frankly, that's not the point. I'm attempting to create a work that speaks for itself and that will eventually, hopefully, find its audience.

What artistic qualities permeate your career?

I'm an intuitive individual. I intuit something about the direction and the nature of the work I should be pursuing and adhere to that sense of 'rightness'. It's a little like taking a country walk and finding yourself slightly ill at ease at a fork in the road, which direction to take? The instinctual is something I have more faith in than anything of a cerebral nature. I get myself into a lot of hot water as a result. I'm stubborn, idealistic, uncompromising. There's an underlying aesthetic at work that's been my guiding principle for many a decade but it evolves, matures, it becomes more refined as time goes by.  

An artist, of course, should change, should evolve. It's unreasonable of us to ask otherwise. 

What qualities must be present to make you satisfied with your music?

It must mirror back to me the impetus, the preverbal cluster of qualities that brought it into being in the first place. It must embody that. That being the case it can stand on it's own feet, find its way in the world. 

What do you in order to rejuvenate and keep you music alive? Miles Davis played with an ever-changing roster of musicians whom he found interesting. Jan Garbarek says that the essential things in his music were already in place from the beginning.

I allow myself to fall silent, forgetting what came before. I'm the eternal amateur, I have no idea how to make anything until I start over. 

What has establishing Samadhisound meant to you?

It's given me a personal sense of liberty and community although that community is spread around the globe. 

Can we dream of you singing live on stage with musicians like Keith Rowe and Polwechsel?

It would be nice to think so. Everyone's aware of how difficult it is to make touring work these days. I've been struggling with the practicalities of how to perform my recent work live given the ever narrowing parameters of what's possible in that context. There's also the matter of the nature of the material itself. What was born of improvisation has evolved into composition. One can only walk so far back in the opposite direction before reaching a point where deconstruction undoes the stitching that held the elements together. 

Has singing with these musicians given you a new form of expressive freedom?

Certainly, as a writer, yes. 

What importance does the visual aspect of your work have?

It comes as something of a relief to move from a project where the focus belongs entirely to the world of sound to that of sight. I don't necessarily feel the different areas of my work feed off of one another but they allow me to shift focus and emphasis in manner I find beneficial. I remember reading something by Nietzsche when I was young that was a critique of specialists. That one man becomes nothing but a enormous ear, another, a nose etc. That one sense is doted on at the expense of others. These activities relieve me of that monogamous or monocultural relationship to sound. It broadens my sensory experience of the world. 

As far as I´ve understood, you lived alone in the woods of New England after 2005. You have expressed that you found it difficult to get used to play in the front of audiences again. What is the situation like today?

It's very much the same as it was. I've grown accustomed to my isolation. It gets increasingly difficult to contemplate breaking with it. 

Was your sojourn in the woods of New England in any way inspired by Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau and Emily Dickinson?

In many ways I sought out a contemplative life, something in the way of a spiritual aspirant, though it'd be equally true to say that this was simply where I found myself after taking numerous forks in the road in the journey of my life. However, there's always been something of the renunciate in me that yearned for retreat. I imagine it found me long before I knew I was ready, was foisted upon me and, as a result, I walked a long, inarticulate path wearing a partial blindfold that hindered progress but which I've since removed. Now that inarticulacy is giving way to something other, a fluency perhaps, and the difficulties of a solitary life, such as they are, are greatly diminished. 

How does age relate to what you are doing at the moment? (I am older than you!)

Age has as much to do with the nature of the work as anything else. How could it not? Whether in acceptance or denial every aspect of our lives influences the decisions we make. See also the mention of the word 'maturity' in an earlier response. I don't equate maturity with respectability, the genteel, the tasteful. I tend to equate it with knowing what the crux of the matter is and having the wherewithal to make a beeline for it. This might give the work a harder surface appearance, an abrasiveness perhaps, accompanied by an economy of means and, if we're fortunate, a greater eloquence, but I'm convinced that ultimately the rewards are greater for this 'caution to the wind' approach. With age there should come a sort of recklessness, don't you think? A certain immunity to the fear of failure because you know who you are and what you're attempting to unearth in the writing. You become less and less an independent part of the process, you're immersed in it. You're down in the engine room trying to get the vessel to unmoor itself and move out into deeper waters. It's about setting something down, getting it right. Doesn't have to be overly serious, it depends entirely where your focus lies. There's a responsibility to try, to make an attempt, to aim high... if not, then fail, fail better, or fall into a welcoming silence. 

Is there anything else you would like to say, that have not been touched upon by the above questions?

No... thanks for the interest. 

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 03:05 PM | Permalink

Is It hard to avoid public life as an artist?

Well, on the one hand it’s impossible to avoid to some extent because it’s important to let the world know that the work exists so a certain amount of exposure seems inevitable. On the other, with so much emphasis increasingly placed on electronic media and communications, it’s possible to remain somewhat concealed whilst taking care of the business of publicity and promotion. This is an evolution that greatly suits many an artist, myself included.

You seems to live a quiet life?

I do. After I moved to the US we found ourselves, as an expanding family, increasingly moving away from the center of things. We started out in cities and, as we travelled around the country, moving from middle America to the West Coast and finally to the East, we found ourselves more and more isolated. It’s something we acclimatised to incrementally. Initially we were never that far from a major city that we couldn’t fulfill our cultural needs but as time’s gone on those needs have diminished and greater isolation ensued. The internet became a means of staying in touch with the world around us. I think this notion of one’s culture being what one finds on one’s doorstep no longer holds sway. We’re now, in large part, global citizens and continue to absorb aspects of culture and news from around the world. Much of the work I do is with individuals from all over. We speak via electronic media and exchange files in much the same way when working together. This flexibility, this immediacy and availability in our interactions is something that will only increase with time and the development of more capable technologies.

Are you a person that attends football matches?

I’m afraid I’ve no interest in sport although, having said that, my daughter took up basketball last season and I was throughly gripped watching her games. A good friend took me to some Dodgers games in LA. I don’t think there’s any danger of an abiding interest on my part but I found the experience fascinating and pleasurable.

A lot of people find your music very dark, I on the other hand find the music simply beautiful, are you a melancholy as a person?

I’ve never really warmed to the term melancholy. Some might apply it to me I suppose but maybe they’d be surprised by how easily I laugh? How much of my interaction with my children is based on a shared sense of humour etc. I’m not subject to violent mood swings although they’re not unfamiliar to me, but there are certainly lighter sides to my personality that balance the darker which I’m more likely to keep to myself.

My impression is that you like to spend time alone with yourself, thinking and try to get to learn more about yourself, am I totally wrong?

I do spend a lot of time alone. Most of the time this is a welcome isolation, sometimes the isolation can become overly intense and lead to loneliness. Much is dependent upon a healthy body and state of mind. I do enjoy the company of loved ones but I have a limited capacity where the company of others is concerned. They say there are two kinds of people, ones that fuel their internal batteries by being in the company of others and a second group who fuel those batteries by being alone. I belong to the latter camp. On a busy schdule, as little as 15mins alone can recharge me for the remainder of the day ahead.

What makes you laugh?

I guess I would say the British sense of self-deprecating humour. Quick-wittedness. Word play. Good company. Time spent in the company of my daughters.

What would you say inspires you? Japan had hit singles, do you miss the chart success?

Are there such things as charts any longer? I’m afraid I don’t keep abreast. Do I miss chart success? Not in the least. Inspiration comes from many sources, mainly from the experience of one’s own life, one’s own psychological and emotional life, plus the writings and recordings of a small number of artists perhaps. But what makes a work authentic is its emotional and philosophical truth so whatever one feeds on, in the cultrual sense, must be fully digested to the point where one isn’t able to recognise the influence in one’s own work, that it becomes part of one’s own vocabulary.

When you compose are you avoiding some music that comes to you, say If there was a huge hit in your mind, would you release the song or do you erase the inspiration for it?

That’s not the way it works. I have aims and goals when writing and I move towards them. The chances that I’ll be knocked sideways by an idea for what might be a hit single is somewhat slim but it depends on the context of the project, who I’m working with. In general I tend to think hit singles, if there are still such things, and chart success, is for a younger generation. It is their playground.

What fascinates you about improv music?

I’ve been listening to improvised music for many decades. In those early years it was the pleasure of absorbing myself in the work of others completely divorced from my own in most respects, attempting to comprehend it. As time went on I became increasingly curious whether it was possible for me to (convincingly) dip my toe in that particular musical stream. It took me some time, a couple of decades perhaps, to work out how that might be possible. What drew me to it were the freedoms it potentially offered me as a composer.

What significance does the word Manafon have?

I came across the word in relation to the life and work of R. S. Thomas. It was the location of his first parish (a small village in Wales) and the place where he wrote his first three volumes of poetry. Over time the word became for me a metaphor for the poetic imagination, the creative mind or wellspring, hence the cover art of the cd ‘Manafon’ which depicts an implausible idyll if you will. A place where the intuitive mind taps into the stream of the unconscious. 

When do you compose, in the morning or at night?

Afternoon through to night.

You have worked with Stina Nordenstam, do you keep in touch with her?

Not often enough. She’s an enormously talented and remarkable individual. I greatly enjoyed working with her.

Any new collaboration with her planned?

Not at this time.

Can you give an example of how eastern culture has affected you as a human being?

I think it affected me in ways that have been so completely absorbed and assimilated that it’s hard for me to comprehend the degree to which I’ve been influenced by my engagement with eastern culture. I might point to the influence of zen buddhism and, to a lesser extent, shintoism and the guiding roles they’ve played in my personal evolution. The beautiful artifice of popular culture and the mutability of persona. The embrace of one’s masculinity and feminity on equal terms, without conflict. Then there are the friendships which grew overtime with Japanese artists, musicians, composers, all of whom hold an important place in my heart. Musicians and collaborators such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Toru Takemitsu, Otomo Yoshihide, Toshimaru Nakamura and, more recently, Dai Fujikura. Visual artists such as Shinro Ohtake, Shinya Fujiwara and Atsushi Fukui. I found a compatible aesthetic in many aspects of their work, particularly with Ryuichi, which reflected my own. I found a community of contemporaries in Japan which I failed to find in my own homeland.

Would you say that you believe in spirituality and in religion?

There’s a strong anti-religious streak in me probably as a result of living in the US where religion attempts to play its part in the moral lives of its people regardless of faith or personal belief. I’m wary of institutions of all kinds but particularly religious ones. Spirituality need have little to do with organised religion per se. To talk about spirituality is increasingly difficulty because the language, which was always somewhat inadequate, has been hijacked and unfortunate associations abound. We do need new terminology to enable us to discuss this issue more effectively. Spirit is essentially what we are, is as much a part of us as our flesh, blood, etc. only more so. We can tap into it in numerous ways. Some might find it best to work with or through organised religion. Others may find it in/through contact with the natural world and still others through their creative lives which are inextricably linked to matters of spirit. The number of diverse paths available that lead to access to, or the blossoming of, one’s own spirit/spirtuality are countless.

Are you composing some new material at the moment?

I’m working on what might be described as an orchestral version of Manafon.

When will you come to Sweden and play?

I’d first have to decide that touring is an ongoing option for me and I’ve not yet made that call.

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 02:56 PM | Permalink

Your latest compilation Sleepwalkers is an album of collaborations. Do you find working with another person easy? Does not having total control over the evolution of a song bother you?

Not if you've chosen your collaborators well. With most I do have final say on the direction a piece might ultimately take but there are individuals I've been working with for a long time now and with those you tend to know what they're capable of producing and consequently you're able to be a little more hands off. Having said that even when working with a long established partner such as Ryuichi, there might be a number of files exchanged, false starts, before we reach common ground. The genesis for a piece such as 'World Citizen' might be something as simple as the loop piano which is the basis for the track and which is what I wrote and recorded the vocals to so, again, the structure becomes determined by the architecture of the vocal melody, its duration etc. and Ryuichi then arranges or orchestrates the work around it. 

But I have, and continue to, produce my own material so there's no need to want to control the outcome of every collaborative effort. Collaboration, when it's right is a challenge and a delight, a real conversation, a generous give and take with, by and large, everyone involved collectively satisfied with the outcome.

Many artists seem to be very reluctant to reassess their past work. When it’s done it’s done. Someone like Scott Walker, I’ve read, will record an album and then never listen to it again. You however seem to enjoy remixing and tinkering and returning to your work, the new Sleepwalkers album features a host of remixes and you’ve just announced Manafon is to be radically re-worked with Dai Fujikura. Are you someone who struggles to be satisfied with their work?

Actually, once I've personally finished with the work I consider it done, I have no desire to look back, rarely a desire to even perform the work so, in that respect, I share more in common with Scott than maybe apparent. However, where the solo work is concerned it can, very occasionally, be interesting to get someone else's take on the material. This doesn't take extensive involvement on my part other than to select the artists involved, give occasional direction and compile the work. I didn't have plans to rework Manafon, it was Dai that requested if he might have a crack at one or two of the pieces and, as these things have a habit of doing,  it's evolved into something 'other'. Also, the remix work is generally completed while the original is still in my system. Not a vast amount of time lapses between the completion of the original and starting on interpretations. In fact Dai had already made a start on his interpretations before I'd completed the mixing process of the original. As for the collaborative work, if I'm ever afforded the opportunity to remix the work to my liking, and this might only mean very subtle changes from the original, I tend to take it. I can then leave it behind me knowing I gave it my best.

The sound of Manafon is very sparse and brittle, your voice is often the only line of melody, with the music being improvised. Is your re-working of this album with Dai an attempt to make the work more accessible? Is the accessibility of music to the listener something that is important to you? Or do you believe that it is the responsibility of the listener to work to understand, if the meaning and sensibility of a song is not presented sugar coated in rich melody, but is hidden deeper? Or is it the responsibility of the singer to satisfy his audience?

It's the responsibility of the artist to be true to the work whilst at the same time attempting to make it as accessible, as comprehensible, as one can. Depending on the nature of the work there's sometimes only so much you can do regarding its accessibility. With both Blemish and Manafon I was moving into uncharted waters therefore it wasn't going to be easy for the general audience to accompany me all the way and I was obviously aware of that fact while the work was being created. To have attempted to have made the material anymore accessible would've been to dilute the material's purpose and potency but, I don't believe this marks a disrespect for the listening audience, on the contrary, it's a attempt to offer something of significance. It's relatively easy to repeat the past, it's a far harder, more heartfelt effort, to imagine the future. 

Working with Orchestration, fleshing out the melodic content inherent in the vocal lines, tends to make the compositions more accessible, yes. People tend to have a more immediate access to, and appreciation for, the melodies etc. But Dai is a fascinatingly original and protean composer, so whilst the work might ultimately be more accessible, it'll lose none of its complexity, in fact it seems to take on a richer complexity but, to Dai's credit, that doesn't hinder the immediacy of the finished piece. We're working counter to my original intentions for the compositions in a similar way that my vocal contributions on the original worked counter to the intentions of the improvisations.

Are you ever worried that an album like Manafon is simply too dense, two impenetrable for your audience. Do you ever think well maybe I’ve gone too far with this one, maybe I should offer something more conventional out of fear of being alienating.

I simply do whatever it is I'm driven to at the time of creating a work. My desire is to communicate not alienate but I can't pander to the taste of one particular audience or a particular faction of that audience. This would only end in the failure of both the artistic and commercial merits of the material. 

If an audience thinks I've gone too far and refuse to believe in what I'm producing as relevant or worth the effort, I'll not attempt to persuade them otherwise, but I'll continue to give everything of myself to the material regardless until I have to shut down the computer, put the guitar in the case for the last time and start looking at the want ads in the local paper. I've not divorced myself from more accessible work, as I hope the compilation indicates, and there's no reason to believe that later solo works will move increasingly left of field. But I do choose to follow the path in which my instincts lead me. I have to trust in them as there's nothing else I can rely on.

Was Dead Bees on a Cake a turning point for you? Your solo work since has been in a completely different vein, it’s almost as if you have put the idea of the pop song to bed and moved on to higher pastures ?

Dead Bees was something like a summation of all the solo material that went before it. I knew when I'd finished it I wouldn't be returning to quite the same waters again but I had no idea what that meant at the time in terms of direction. Blemish was the turning point as it gave me an entirely new process with which to work which is something of a gift at this stage in life. It's a mistake to look at the last two solo albums and believe that this is the only kind of material the process is capable of producing as it can potentially produce a wide range of results. Having said that I have returned to more traditional forms of songwriting of late because it felt fresh for me to do so. I won't discard one process for the sake of another. I like having the luxury of choice in that respect. I do love the notion of the pop song, the limitations and challenges it imposes etc. but this is generally the territory of the young or, increasingly, the craftsman, the professional songwriters and producers. Older generations of artists should clear the path, get out of the way and create new territories for themselves, stop attempting to repeat previous career highs. It would, in my opinion, make for a more inventive and varied contribution to the world of song. Then again, Money for All, Wonderful world, to name but two, are pop songs written within  the last five years or so...  there's really very few parameters that define what a pop song can and can't be, after all songs such as Ghosts and Oh Superman were top five material and, in essence, the pop song is a seductive proposition..  no wonder people return to these forms again and again.

How did you go about creating the sound heard on Blemish and Manafon? What were your influences? Blemish seems to have been created on a kind of Miles Davis, improvise and see what happens basis, was Derek Bailey in particular and his free improvisation crucial to this? And how was this developed on Manafon?

I think it was a combination of my wanting to create something with an urgency to it, that would be rapidly completed and left in its natural state, rather than producing something over deliberated and refined. We'd started work on what was to become 'snow borne sorrow' and the speed of production was reliably slow and, due to my emotional state, I knew this process wasn't going to cut it for me at that moment in time. There was this sense of trauma that needed addressing, that wanted out, so we took six weeks away from that project and I started recording Blemish. I couldn't tell you who or what was crucial in terms of influence outside of the circumstances of my public and private lives. It was part of a personal evolution whose time had come, where things would shift for me in a quietly dramatic way. I knew Derek bore some relation to the material because his was the only music I could listen to leading up to the recording itself. At that time I didn't know how I was going to approach the work or what it might sound like so it was not a conscious absorbing of his influence or anything obvious of that nature. It was simply an intuited connection. Two thirds of the way into recording Blemish I felt I needed a counterpoint to my own approach to guitar improvisation and Derek was the first to come to mind. No one else was considered. 

I felt my response to Derek's contribution had worked well enough that the desire arose to attempt work, in a similar fashion, with larger ensembles. To be honest, it was a slightly unnerving proposition to enter a given situation with some of the best in their field with nothing concrete to offer but my assurance, guidance and intuition. Mercifully some, if not all, were familiar enough with Blemish to allow them to give me the benefit of the doubt. All were open minded and generous in their willingness to participate, give of themselves, and in allowing me to do as I wished with the resulting recordings. So, once I had the material in hand, the process of responding to it was remarkably similar to how I'd worked on Blemish, particularly where Derek was concerned, which was a concentrated process of automatic writing and recording executed within a matter of hours. There might've been a 12 month delay between the recording of the music and my response to it but it was, nevertheless, what came to mind in the moment I sat with it for the first time, based on what was suggested melodically and where that led me lyrically although this would also be heavily influenced by the subject matter I knew needed addressing and my state of mind at the time. Essentially, despite the seemingly random nature of the entire enterprise, I had a sense of what it was I was looking for and, over time and through active engagement, worked out how to go about accomplishing my goals.

Your complete artistic revolution on Blemish was also twinned with the breakdown of your marriage, as a particularly private person was it difficult to delve so deep into your emotional state and then put those songs up for public consumption? Did you feel overexposed? I would imagine that as an artist, the only way through a situation like that would be self-expression, but was there a part of you which wanted to keep the results of that self-expression private? If so what ultimately persuaded you to put the record out?

When I was working on the material I wasn't thinking about the public's reception of it or the degree to which I might be exposing intimate aspects of my life. Despite the themes that drive the material, I found myself excited by what I was hearing at the end of any given day in that it sounded unlike anything I'd produced until that time, unlike anything I heard before. As far as the content goes; I was in an emotionally fragile state due to the breakdown of my marriage, I used the emotions that I experienced at the time to push further into the darker recesses of my own mind to see how far I could go, to see what I'd find there and if and how I could give it voice. They weren't safe places to explore in 'life' but in the work I was able to experience them without any negative repercussions for myself and those around me. To make it clear, while the emotions that surrounded the breakdown of the marriage were obviously the impetus for the work, I went a lot further internally with those when writing. It remains a portrait of someone in crisis but I didn't feel I was exposing anyone but myself in the work. Did I feel overexposed? Yes, most certainly, but if I worried about such things or tried to second guess myself in that regard I could do what it is I do. I'd undercut any potential value the songs might have. 

There was recently a release of some of the work you wrote and recorded with your former wife Ingrid Chavez, Little Girls With 99 Lives. It’s a very beautiful and fragile collection of work. Would you say there is a different energy, a more productive creative atmosphere when you are recording music with a person you are in love with? Can that be captured in the music, the connection between two people, in the same way that Blemish captures the heartbreak when that connection breaks down?

I think that depends on the individuals in question. Ingrid and I didn't happen to have a productive working relationship. There's multiple reasons for this and I'd prefer Ingrid explain rather than I, but it comes down to a chemistry of sorts that might work in some aspects of a shared life but not in others. Ingrid's really creative under pressure, all-cards-on-the-table, all-hands-on-deck, kind of scenarios which was the inverse of what we had going on. 

You are pretty rare in the music sphere as man who has both chart success to his name and some albums of extremely creative, innovative, experimental music. What was the hardest to write and record, a song like Ghosts or a song like Emily Dickinson? And do you feel that you could not have written and recorded one without the other?

There has to be a starting point and in a way Ghosts represents that for me. There's a chronology, an irregular linearity if that's an acceptable oxymoron, in that one idea gives birth to another. There are instances of exception where a kind of personal 'evolutionary' leap takes place but otherwise you're able to find signs of the present indicated in the immediate past. Neither Ghosts nor Emily Dickinson were problematic for me as composer. The most marked difference between the two is that with Ghosts the concept for the electronic arrangement came after the act of composition whereas with Emily Dickinson I'd put all the pieces of the puzzle together prior to writing the lyric and melody. 

I have mentioned your influences while creating your more recent work, but who were your first influences when you were a young man setting off with Japan in the early 80’s? I would imagine they were not the same people who were influencing some of the other leading lights of the pop scene then. For example you seemed to have been very influenced by later Dirk Bogarde, thinking of Nightporter of course and you recorded a piece called Steel Cathedrals which is also the name of a poem Dirk wrote. He seemed to have been particularly inspirational to people who were grouped under the New Romantics label, people like Bryan Ferry and Morrissey also name him as a key figure. Would you agree? And do you look back particularly fondly on your 80’s image/persona?!

Least favorite question so far. I have a poor memory for such things to be honest. For example, I wouldn't have remembered an interest in Bogarde were it not for the fact that his biographer got in touch recently to ask about the obvious references. I was quite taken aback that Steel Cathedrals was a poem by Bogarde, I simply wouldn't have known that to be the case, but I must've read it and it lodged itself in the back of my mind. However, I clearly remember being in a car on the road from Yokohama to Tokyo speeding past all of these factories that were beautifully lit up at night, looking quite otherworldly, like some colonial outpost on a distant planet, and thinking to myself 'these resemble something like steel cathedrals, inspiring a similar kind of devotion perhaps amongst those that work within their walls'..(until the economic recession hit Japan, individuals tended to devote their entire lives to the one company or corporation) and, as I happened to be working on both the music and the film at the time, the title stayed with me. How does that work? I read the book in '78, the composition was made in '85. No matter how I personally feel about the source of the title I have to believe there's a debt to be acknowledged there. I become the unreliable narrator of my own story. 

Some things I remember clearly, the genesis of an idea, the details of the recording process etc. but there's whole periods of my life, particularly my mid teens to early twenties, where I have few memories or fragments to pull from. This might be the result of not looking back, taking stock etc. When that period of my life ended, I think it's fair to say, it was no longer of interest to me. It was shed like a skin and I've honestly not dwelt on it since. 

But I did enjoy Bogarde's mid to late period. It was good to be reminded of this. His best films don't seem to have appeared on DVD even though they were by celebrated directors such as Renais and Fassbinder. I think my take on them would be very different now but it was an interesting and brave career move for Bogarde to choose to make. The word I would choose to use is 'necessity' as that's how I saw it from my own experience. It was a matter of self respect of allowing the inner self room to breathe. Not to have done so would've resulted in self destructive tendencies. When it's a matter of necessity is it right to call the move a 'brave' or 'courageous' one? Probably not. 

Do I look back fondly? I don't look back. 

Do you see a similarity between Bogarde’s career and yours? From popular success to art house recognition? I suppose the comparison again could also be made with Scott Walker. Did you always intend it to be that way?

It was an evolution, growing up in public etc. By the time I'd come to my senses I'd realised what it was I didn't want and what it was I was going to have to sacrifice to do differently. I daresay there aren't that many of us that have taken this particular divergent path away from the spotlight to the periphery but I'm certain that in most cases it's a matter of personal necessity as described above. Survival wouldn't be too strong a word to use, certainly in someone like Scott's case. The spotlight was ill-fitting. 

You have described yourself as “crippling shy” when you were young and still I imagine, would never describe yourself as an extrovert. Shyness has its downsides obviously, but it allows you to accept solitude more easily and it’s only really with some element of solitude that you can learn about yourself, read, discover music, become to whatever degree a “thinker” rather than someone who does not break through the surface levels of their own mind. Has shyness in a way saved you? Had you been extroverted and outgoing in South London in your youth, do you think you would have been eaten up by the city, married early, with kids, chained to a suburban routine? Do you think shyness protected you from that and allowed you to develop more individually, to think more individually? Or do you see it instead as something that has restricted you?

I wouldn't wish shyness upon anyone. In society at large as well as family, it's a crippling form of impotency. You're acquainted with an internal suffering very early on in life and I guess this promotes the building of a healthy (or unhealthy) inner life that sustains you. Aside from the matter of shyness I was an uncompromising child when it came to the things I valued, and loved, really quite stubborn and sure of myself, and there was nothing about life as it was lived around me that I wished to emulate so I don't believe the script would've been radically re-written had things started out differently. Without the shyness attached I might've benefited from a greater clarity of purpose, who's to say? As it was there was a need to conceal as well as to express. A need for physical isolation too, an escape of sorts, or maybe 'control' is a better word. I don't think it's possible to produce good work from such a defensive position but first I needed to build the walls of my fortress before I was able to think more clearly. That would've been around the time the band came to an end. Money gave me the luxury of choosing how to exist in the world, to afford isolation, this is what I'd worked towards, to be in control as to how much I could take onboard at any one time and the freedom (though not without consequences) to step away when overwhelmed and it was awfully easy for me to be overwhelmed by social situations.

"My nature is orderly and observant and scrupulous  and deeply introverted, so life wherever I attempt it turns out to be claustral" Joyce Carol Oates

 I have read a few interviews with you and the subject has turned to the Internet and how you often communicate with people only via the net, you’ve mentioned people that you have collaborated with musically who you have never actually sat in a room with. You have said “I'm fascinated by that: How organic a piece of music can sound and feel even though these musicians were never in the same space at the same time.” Is this still the case? Music lends itself to collective experience, how does that separation lend itself to creativity? And do you think that relying on the Internet for communication could allow us to be lulled into a comfort zone that we could become a little too used to?

On the latter issue, sure, it can be a potential problem especially for young people who believe they've a social life whereas, in reality, they're completely isolated and protected from revealing anything of themselves they might find unpalatable (or, again, the reverse.. let the inner demons out in a safe environment with no consequences of any significance). But most adults have lives that bring them into full engagement with the world at large and the personas/personalities with which to carry them through. The same can't be said for younger people. School and college gets them out into the world but the ego isn't fully formed, the sense of self, personal identity, isn't fixed, is still very malleable and the social pressures intense, unforgiving, often openly hostile. But maybe you're suggesting that the isolation could lead to an artistic comfort zone? Which seems to have worked in the reverse in my case as, whatever else I'm doing, I'm not making myself comfortable.

Regarding communications in general, sometimes the only options available are a phone call or an email. Working long distance with people in different time zones results in email being the preferred means of communication. It's all about the music in the end not the social interaction. You speak, you engage, through the body of work. That is so much more intimate than many people I've spoken with seem to imagine. 

Regarding the making of music; if you've engaged with other musicians in a live setting frequently enough then, as in all things, you've gained enough experience to know how things work. There's no right or wrong way of going about this. There is your intuition, the nature of the work at hand, and the limitations and the opportunities you're presented with. You make the most of these. If you're 18, working a day job and by night making music on a sampler with an HD recorder you know what your limitations are and you pull out all the stops to make something that satisfies you and that has every chance of being as relevant, as groundbreaking, as that multi platinum band recording in a room together in the Bahamas. If working in partnership, you choose your collaborators with careful precision and half the work is done for you whether you're recording together live or sending files across the internet. When I send a composition to Jan Bang or Arve Henriksen in Norway I know, without doubt, they will give 100% of themselves to producing what is asked of them and I hope they feel they can rely on me to do the same. Most musicians will give you multiple takes with which to work so the element of creative choice remains. Editing, placement, treatments and processing are a creative part of the work too. You might love a particular phrase as played but if you wish to change one note in the scale, you're able to do this. I've recorded live in the studio with Arve and we've exchanged files on numerous occasions. I have no preference where the results are concerned only the nature of the work dictates which route has to be taken. Sometimes, file exchanges aren't going to cut it, you have to be present, you have to give clear indication and guidance to a group of musicians who'll be recording together because there's something imperative about the nature, the essence of the work, that demands it. If working on more traditional material it's imperative that certain elements be recorded in person. If you're working with drums and bass for example, getting the feel of the track for something pre-composed, you're not going to leave that to chance and interpretation, that's going to be a booked session. 

Let's also not forget that, for the past three decades or so, in the world of popular music, there's rarely been a group of musicians in a room together performing live. More often, with the possible exception of the basic rhythm track, the music was created one on one; producer, artist, and guest musician, the results of which were often radically edited and refined. Nothing wrong with this approach either in my opinion. 

The short answer would be anything goes. It simply depends on what your needs, priorities and limitations are for any given project. In the traditional sense music lends itself to communal activity but there's plenty of material of that nature out there. Music also lends itself to the solitary, the introspective, the cerebral and the emotional. You might choose to watch a movie in the presence of others in a cinema because that was once considered a communal experience and many still prefer that experience over a solitary one but increasingly we seem to choose to watch a movie in a home setting, in HD, or on our laptops. We forego the communal aspect for something more intimate. Really depends on the material, the individual etc. There are many variations at work here, many choices we're capable of making both as creators and consumers. As far as musicians go I would say that this development has been revolutionary, liberating. It's made possible that which would otherwise be impossible. If you know what you're doing, it won't necessarily be clear to the listening public how the work was created. The question shouldn't even arise. They should just be engaged, immersed in the results.

Are you starting to feel the kind of resolution that comes with (or so I hear!) getting older. Perhaps a better question would be is did you ever feel mentally young? Did you ever feel at ease as a young man? Have you settled more into your skin with age?

Bergman said " I myself never felt young, only immature." There's something in that sentence that resonates. I didn't feel at ease when young, but then I don't feel at ease now for entirely different reasons. I am surer of myself. I know what I've got to offer. Wisdom is hard won.

Spirituality and religion are obviously extremely important to you, if you follow the path of your music you have written about Buddhism, Christianity you have considered the work of  R.S Thomas on Manafon, is this a continuing journey? And what would you say is the bigger force in your life, music or spirituality, or are the two intertwined?

Being, with a capital 'B' is the biggest force in life. Learning how to simply Be in the world. Music is born out of that experience, spirituality underlines or defines it either by its presence or absence. 

Does anything inspire you about the state of music in the 21st century?

Yes, plenty. So many individuals producing good work. Some of it is rightly acknowledged and highly appreciated, from arcade fire to radiohead, but most artists that I enjoy listening to repeatedly couldn't get arrested. 

Will you ever perform live again and did you ever feel comfortable with the experience when you did?

I have felt comfortable onstage, yes. Live performance has never been a priority of mine but that doesn't mean it hasn't been valuable, education on many levels, and rewarding. I don't attend live shows myself, or at least, very rarely. If I'm in a city and a friend is performing I'll likely see them. If there's a comparatively rare opportunity to see a performer whom I've long admired who's either semi retired or no longer tours that often I might take it in but more often than not, I won't. Most of my greatest musical experiences, outside of creating it, tend to be in relation to recorded work. But there have been notable exceptions. 

And finally, I've read that someone like Bob Dylan will only ever record music after 2am in the morning. As a writer and musician what is more convivial to creativity? A summer’s day or a dark winter’s night?

A bright winter's day. 

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 02:48 PM | Permalink

Zero Music Magazine (Sweden)
Journalist: Hans-Olof Svensson

On the subject of Sleepwalkers:

Sleepwalkers - Selecting Tracks

How did you decide which tracks should go on the album? What were the selection criteria? What tracks were considered for inclusion but then left off, and why? ‘Linoleum’, for instance, is a personal favourite of mine.

The process of selection comes down to personal preference and availability of the material. For example, I’d have liked to have reworked the theme for the manga series ‘Monster’ entitled ‘For the love of life’ and Blonde Redhead’s ‘The messenger’ but for various reasons this wasn’t possible.

What kind of dynamic were you trying to create in assembling these particular tracks in this particular order? Can a piece of music in some way be altered simply by taking it out of one context and placing it in another context and another dynamic, and if so, can you give specific examples of this?

Firstly there’s the issue of continuity. When compositions come together that weren’t intended to be heard in the same context you might find some interesting contrasts and a certain amount of friction. Of course, listening to a particular piece in a fresh context can change our response to, or perspective on it. Take a piece such as ‘Transit’ which, when heard in the context of Christian’s original ‘Venice’ cd has a sonic continuity with the pieces which surround it but in the context of ‘Sleepwalkers’ the introduction to Christian’s sonic palette can be quite startling which, to my mind, is a desirable result. I enjoy hearing dramatic contrasts in a body of work as much as I enjoy something that was designed with a more conceptual uniformity.

Sleepwalkers - Specific Tracks

Are you the kind of artist who feels comfortable explaining what individual tracks are ‘about’, or do you feel that an explanation from the artist somehow diminishes the music and/or lyrics by limiting the interpretations open to the listener? Personally, for instance, I’m curious as to who the ‘fucking sleepwalkers’ of the title track might be.

I feel no need to pin down the meaning behind the lyrics of a particular song.

We’re all blind-eyed, dull-witted sleepwalkers for the most part. It takes an enormous effort of will to change this involving a recognition of the condition and the prescribed antidote to be administered. You can take a simple test as outlined by Ouspenksy, illuminated by Gurdjieff, but what is after all a basic component of Buddhist practice. Sit and practice conscious awareness. I am here, now. I am awake in this moment now, awake to the stimuli around me, not lost in thought, reflection, projections into the future, waking dream states etc. Once you’ve awoken to this awareness, recognised not just the sense of clarity but that it’s an altogether different state of mind than one predominantly finds oneself, see how long it is before you once again come back to that state and acknowledge it as in ‘I am here now’. For some it’s a matter of seconds perhaps depending on the distractions around you at that moment in time. For others minutes, hours, even months might pass before we wake to the present moment again. Whatever the distance travelled that is how long you were asleep and so on throughout your lifetime.

That’s one possible interpretation of the line you’re curious about. There are others that are equally valid related to cultural consumerism and our addiction to the things that keep us asleep as opposed to challenging us to wake up in the 21st century. Culture as comfort food.

This interview is aimed at Swedish and Scandinavian readers, who might be particularly interested in your collaboration with Stina Nordenstam on “Wonderful World”. What can you tell us about that collaboration: how it came about, the creative process, personal chemistry between the individuals involved, anecdotes from the recording session…? Basically whatever occurs to you in summing the collaboration up.

While writing the lyric to ‘Wonderful World’ it occurred to me that the chorus should be sung by a female voice. I knew Stina’s work well and felt, rightly or wrongly, that I could hear overt references to my work in her own. Regardless, I felt she was the right person for this particular track so we made contact and eventually flew over to Stockholm to work with her. One of the first things she told me as she sat in the hotel lobby with a beat up guitar missing about three strings, was that my music had been an influence of some kind in her life, I’ve no idea to what degree, and so I immediately felt we were intuitively on common ground. Steve, Stina and myself spent a wonderful evening together walking Stockholm, talking about everything under the sun. The next day we recorded and rapidly covered all the ground necessary. Stina had, overnight, composed a couple of verses for another piece we were working on and we had time to lay that track down also. She knows her instrument exceptionally well, how to get the most out of that beautiful, seemingly fragile, voice. It might sound odd to say it but the experience of meeting and working with Stina was something akin to reconnecting with a long absented but loved sibling.

By the way, obviously ‘Ballad of a Deadman’ is very firmly planted in a certain musical tradition, but more specifically it reminds me of ‘Work Song’ by Oscar Brown Jr and Nat Adderley. Can you hear that similarity too, and if so, was it intentional?

I didn’t compose the music for ‘Deadman’, my brother did. You’d have to ask him about specific musical references although I’d imagine the impetus was simultaneously something more contemporary and more rootsy than either of the gentlemen mentioned above. From my standpoint, I simply responded to what I heard. The lyric is very loosely based on Joan Didion’s book on the settling of California, ‘where I’m from’. I’d lived there for a number of years and knew the landscape of which she wrote. Love Didion, love California, this was a tribute to both.

Musical Development

This record charts the last decade. What have been the most creatively rewarding moments during this period for you? Can you name times and places (and people) where something clicked and things fell into place?

Outside of the material on this album I was primarily focused on recording my solo work. I reached a turning point working on both the title track for ‘Blemish’ and ‘The only daughter’. I worked on these pieces alone but both tracks really opened things up for me regarding the process in which they were made and the depth of the emotions experienced/expressed. On a later occasion I remember everything coming into focus at a session in Vienna with Keith Rowe, Michael Moser and Werner Dafeldecker, that justified a particular approach I had chosen to take and which confirmed the direction of my work for the next few years. There were many moments on the Nine Horses project where things really came together beautifully, notably writing the tracks ‘Wonderful world’ and ‘Atom and Cell’ with my brother. At the end of the Blemish tour in ’04, I wrote the lyric for ‘A history of holes’ in a hotel in Köln prior to a meeting with Burnt Friedman which marked the beginning of our creative involvement together. Later that evening I attended the Erstwhile festival where I would meet many of my future collaborators (Otomo, Nakamura, Sachiko, Rowe, Müller ) for the first time. Thinking specifically of material related to this album, Ryuchi asked me to contribute to a commission he’d received but had yet to find a direction for. He sent me some musical references and occasional sketches but nothing clicked with me until I heard the piano loop for what was to become ‘world citizen’. I played the loop on a four hour drive to NY. By the time I arrived everything was in place. I’m still quite fond of that lyric. Whilst Steve was working on Slope I’d been assigned to find suitable vocalists for each track he’d send my way. Late one evening, after a day’s work on Manafon, I found an audio file waiting for me from Steve. As I played the file back I found I had a melody for the piece and quickly scribbled down some lyrics, recorded the results into a portable digital recorder and mailed the results back to him with notes as to who should sing it before sinking deeply into sleep. That piece had a very simple sense of rightness about it. Steve eventually asked me to record a version of my own which is how two versions of ‘Playground Martyrs’ ended up on his album.

The majority of the tracks on ‘Sleepwalkers’ were written in isolation. The only exception is ‘Wonderful world’ where Steve and I were working in the same location.

For a long period you appeared to be moving away from song-based ‘pop’ structures to a looser form of experimentation, but you have also said that recently you have been returning to songs. Where along that line are you right now?

I suspect I’ll always be moving back and forth between the two, occasionally occupying space in the middle ground.

Surface / depth is a dichotomy that springs to mind here. Are song-based structures somehow by their very nature more superficial, or can the restrictions of working within a defined frame or format produce depth in other ways? Is this a balance you try to address at all as you work, or do you simply let the chips fall where they may?

I believe depth and superficiality are not determined or defined by form but rather by intention. Working within a given form or limiting oneself by other means often produces the more interesting results. Even the material I was working with on Manafon presented me with a serious set of limitations. I’d also given myself certain rules to adhere to such as not to edit the recordings themselves, as in cutting into the body of an improvisation, which meant there were plenty of creative obstacles to be overcome.

The seemingly simplest of pop/folk/rock songs can hit a common chord in the hearts of many, can run as deep as other form of music. One thinks of Nick Drake, Dylan, Lennon, Caetano Veloso, John Martyn, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, Jeff Buckely, Lou Reed + VU, Joni Mitchell, to name but a few.

Thoughts on the Interview Process

How do you feel about the interview process? Can it produce worthwhile results, is it a necessary evil or just a chore?

Depending on frame of mind, all of the above. On the completion of new work it can be instructive to be in the position of trying to explain one’s reasoning as clear logic rarely comes into the creative process as such. It’s like being present at the scene of a fire, a baby thrown from the third floor window of a blazing building which, without knowing quite how or why, you mange to catch. The reporter asks, ‘so what were you thinking when you saw the baby falling..’. There’s no satisfying answer to that question, just an ineloquent recounting of fact. You can’t speak of impulse and intuition, you tend to talk around it with metaphors, analogies. You intuit something of which the mind has only the slightest inkling.

Your personality seems to be somewhat introverted or introspective. (I feel uncomfortable making this kind of assumption or statement about someone I have never talked to, and whom I am only writing to now, but I suppose it’s a necessary concession to the limitations of the interview process.) Would you agree that this trait makes for better personal insight, but a reluctance to actually share it, i.e. you’ve got something to say but don’t really feel like saying it, whereas many musicians and ‘celebrities’ are the opposite? (I do realise that I’m making the classic error of asking a ‘yes/no’ question here…)

Well, I’d agree that introspection leads to a greater clarity of insight which is something we’re all the better for. To be somewhat introspective does tend to make one wish for a more or less private existence but, as a writer, simultaneous with that desire, is another that intends to share work which one feels might be of interest or beneficial in some capacity or another. I suppose that comes down to a simple inclination to be of service, to live a life in which one gives back. In other words one’s own personal needs don’t take precedence, or at least a compromise has to be reached in life and not elsewhere. For the writing to have any kind of value, certainly in my case, entails a good deal of self-revelation in that I don’t stand in its way but follow where it leads. The ‘confessional’ isn’t where the intrinsic value lies, as in it isn’t merely confessional for the voyeuristically inclined but the work has to be rooted in some kind of exposure of an aspect of the human condition. The best material has something of a specific or personal nature that can be applied generally. Without the general application the material is virtually worthless.

You’ve said you never look back. Can you shut retrospection off at will, or does the fact of compiling a record like this, and then being interviewed about it, force you to look back anyway? If so, can it be useful or is it merely mental ‘debris’ that you need to ‘detox’ yourself of afterwards?

I don’t have any personal desire or need to look back. I carry within me what I need to move forward. “.. I never reread what I’ve written. I’m far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I’ve done.” Jorge Luis Borges

We inevitably fall short of our self-made goals and so, as Beckett might say, we go on.

Do you sometimes find yourself being amused by pretentious journalists tying themselves in knots to interpret your music and sometimes trying too hard? Have there been any interpretations that you recall as being particularly wide of the mark? (Without naming and shaming anyone, of course.)

I’ve heard one or two things that’s surprised me over the years, not from journalists but from listeners who were projecting their own neuroses onto me or the material but it doesn’t really matter unless the projection is seen as justifying something of a harmful nature, self or otherwise. I’m happy that listeners find themselves reflected in the compositions, that’s as it should be. Reviews are something other. Whether positive or negative they’re nearly always off the mark regarding where the value or the faults of the material lie.

Literature and Current Influences

As I write this I hear on the radio that the Swedish Academy has announced this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa. How do you feel about their decision?

Ambivalent.

What books are you currently reading, and what are you getting from them? Assuming one can make sense of a learning process while it’s still going on. Perhaps I should rephrase that question and ask about books from your recent past. Which works of art, cinema or music have you been influenced (for want of a better word) by recently? (I do know that this is one of the most trite and unoriginal questions one can ask, but there is always the hope that the response will be interesting nonetheless.)

To answer the above; I don’t believe inspiration comes from books, films and the like. I tend to feel that one knows when something needs to be addressed internally, intuitively, but one doesn’t always know what that might be or how to approach it, but by a timely crossing of paths with a particular book or film or whatever, the vessel filled to brimming is uncorked and the work begins to flow.

Present and Future

Assuming this record is a way of putting your recent work behind you, in what direction(s) will you be moving in the near future?

I wouldn’t classify this project as a kind of fork in the road. It’s simply material that I’ve produced outside of the solo albums that I wanted to gather up and put under one roof for easy access. It’s been on the cards for sometime. I’m still putting together an alternate take on Manafon which incorporates new compositions as well as new orchestral arrangements of some of the pieces from that project. That should be wrapped up by the end of the month after which I’ll have a number of alternate projects on the table from which to choose. I’m not entirely certain at this juncture which will claim my attention first. I do tend to enjoy working on multiple projects simultaneously so that’ll likely be the approach I’ll take. In terms of direction, the projects all potentially point in differing directions from the electronic to the orchestral to more traditional forms of song writing. A couple of the projects demand long-term commitment regarding the amount of work and time involved but I don’t feel I’m in any kind of rush, it’s more an issue of wanting to be certain I’m not covering ground that I’ve been over once before.

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 02:35 PM | Permalink

Question for Intoxicate magazine on the subject of Sleepwalkers.

From where did the idea of this compilation came from and why now?

After leaving Virgin Records and starting my own label, samadhisound, I found more offers for collaborative work started coming in. Virgin used to limit my involvement with other labels and musicians or put unreasonable demands upon the artist/labels in question so maybe when that situation changed it opened me up to a greater number of offers? But I also relished my new found freedom and began to initiate communications with a variety of musicians to see where they might lead. Many of my collaborators have worked with me in one form or another outside of the examples collected here. Takagi –san provided visuals for my 2003/04 tour for ‘Blemish’. Burnt Friedman had previously provided me with remixes of my work. My brother Steve, and good friend Ryuichi have been at my side for decades now and so on.

I decided to release the compilation now because there was a body of work building up which extended beyond the confines of one album. I wanted to present the best of them under one umbrella, that of my name, so that people would now how and where to seek these pieces out.

What was the criteria of the selection of the tunes?

It was a matter of how much I related to the material itself. How proud I was of the result.

How do you place these collaborative works in your creative career? I assume you would not consider it merely a as a side-project.In another words, in what way is it important that you continuously keep collaborating with others. How does it affect your own music.

Collaborations happen for all kinds of reasons. I personally take on a collaborative project if it fits one of the following criteria:

a) takes me to a place musically I’ve not been before or would not think of going outside of this particular invitation to collaborate.

b) I have an interest in the work in general of the a artist in question so the first collaboration is a means of testing the water in the hope that more will follow.

c) The collaborator is a long-term friend whom I trust completely and will therefore not question the notion of the collaboration itself only the motivation or the direction etc.

d) A debt of gratitude for services rendered to me on a previous occasion.

Since these collaborative works are not always under your total control, I assume that it may occur sometimes that the outcome of the work would be different than what you have expected and may not match with your aesthetics. does that kind of thing happen sometimes and if it does, how would you react to that?

It happens sometimes but quite rarely. With anyone I have a longstanding relationship with it’s not an issue. When it does happens it tends to be an offer that comes to me out of the blue and over which I extend little, or no personal control (with many collaborations there’s often a courtesy given of allowing your collaborator to hear the final results for comment prior to completion).

In such cases I react with mild disappointment but it’s the collaborator’s aesthetic that guides the work and that ultimately has to be satisfied. (this is a little more like being employed as a vocalist rather than a full bloodied collaborator. I’ve avoided this kind of work for almost a decade now as it basically doesn’t interest me on any level).

Although the songs that you have selected here seems quite varied in terms of sounds and musical background of the participating musicians, the album seems to have a unity as a whole. Was it difficult for you to put these varied pieces and put them in a sequence? did you have any particular idea or image of how you put them together?

It wasn’t a difficult album to sequence. I had more than enough material to play with and those pieces that were sonically a little difficult to place, I remixed.

According to the question above, why did you decide to name this album Sleepwalkers.

Because that’s how I felt regarding the tracks in question, that they were sleepers, tracks many people didn’t know existed. My orphans, lost, used and abused. It was time to take them in and care for them. Let them get to know one another.

It’s also the title of my favourite track on the cd itself.

Can you describe about the visual image of the album jacket? whos work is it and, why did you choose it.

The work is by the young woman featured in the images. Her name is Kristamas Klousch and these are a selection of some of her many self portraits which is what she specializes in. Choosing a cover image is an intuitive process for the most part. I see something and it resonates with me. For some reason she epitomized the title of the album for me. A gorgeous, beautiful, exotic, erotic, orphaned creature who was playfully reinventing herself with each image but which also reflected a familiarity with the darker aspects of life, of being.. There’s trouble and complexity beneath the surface of beauty.

In these ten years in which these songs are recorded what was the biggest event that affected your music. And how did it change you.

I’d have to say it was the end of my marriage that had the most profound affect on me. It changed me in every way imaginable but not all for the worst. No, not at all.

Do you have anyone in particular in mind that you wish to collaborate in the future?

I’m currently producing new work with Dai Fujikura who’s enormously talented and a great pleasure to work with. I’d also like to write some more with Martin Brandlmayr with whom I wrote the title track.

Thank you

David

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 02:25 PM | Permalink

"See clearly how a man is doing a thing. You will then be in the position to see what he is really trying to do. If you merely ask him, or enquire of committed expert, you deserve all you get." (Idries Shah)

"Someone somewhere wants to see you
Someone's traveling towards us all"
(David Sylvian)

NK: Your output seems to be a continuous exercise in sharpening the senses - your own and, by extension, those of your audience. A microscope, if you will, revealing a universe that's not there for the naked eye. You express yourself very strongly, but with incredible restraint, with subtle touches. This plenty in scarcity's clothing is a life-time strategy of hiding, it seems. And at the same time hoping dearly that someone will hear and discover?

DS: It's the best means I know how to communicate. Communication is an act of sharing. For it not to be heard, discovered, is for the work to remain incomplete, dormant. Restraint is something learned or acquired over time. The most powerful emotions are often uttered, if at all, by something muted, restrained, and in that restraint, in that enormous effort of restraint, so much is revealed. It's an ontological exercise I suppose, this tunneling at the roots of being. It's a subtle exercise conducted with inadequate equipment. A bulldozer with which to lift a needle. "...I, too, wish to make contact with some unknown person's inner life." (Charles Simic)

We're capable of shorthand. We've seen so much played out through the history of our respective cultures. There are givens that need no longer be adhered to for the heart of the work to be communicated. We 'read' the works we absorb as connoisseurs without being entirely aware of the fact that this is what we are or what it is we're doing. Sometimes a single word or image will suffice where there was once need for pages of explication or a series of set up shots etc. Poetry is particularly adept at working with the succinctly concise/precise. It could be argued that's part of its function. At a period in time, where the short attention span needs to get to the heart of the issue with a degree of rapidity, this condensation or act of compression seems all the more appropriate.

I don't feel in any way protected or concealed by my work. On the contrary, as a result of all that's communicated there's a desire to save a little of myself for myself by leading a private life as far as that's possible. I can't recall who said it but I remember this line about the artist that fully exposes him/herself through their work, not simply standing naked but stripped to muscle, nervous system, bone, that in such instances, it's advisable to wear an all concealing cloak when in public for the sake of one's own sanity.

NK: It's always a jigsaw - musician and his audience, his mindset and heartset and theirs. Who's first in your scheme? Where is the balance at the moment when music is created? How independent are you from those who (will) listen to you, and what is your reward when they do?

DS: Without doubt it has to be total independence. You can't second guess what an audience will take to (ok, you can to a degree but that's cynical exploitation of which we see plenty). The point of the act is, as I said, to communicate something. The challenge is to find the most appropriate means with which to communicate in any particular instance. So you're true to what it is you're attempting to express. You're true to the needs of the composition and nothing else comes into play but how well that composition holds water, carries what it needs to communicate using the most efficient means possible. You've only yourself to gauge this fine balance between success and failure. "And a feeling of we're-right-here that you have to keep / Like carrying a pail filled to the brim without spilling a drop." (Tranströmer). You have to be present with the work until it reflects back to you the impetus for its creation. Then it's capable of standing alone.

My reward for reaching the inner life of another human being? That's both intangible and incalculable. Much like an act of human kindness.

NNK: Was there, at any point in your life, an artist - a musician? - that affected you just as tangibly, as deeply as your own work affected some of your own listeners? Or are you, in this respect, "a water pipe that does not drink"?

DS: It's impossible for me to know how my work affects those that hear it. There's no means of quantifying that impact. If I wasn't knocked off my feet by musicians, composers of all kinds, how could I find myself where I am now? It's essential to fall in love with aspects of a musician's output or a genre of music etc. Not one genre, one artist, but many, too many. But in later life... this is less necessary. Silence is often preferable.

NK: A sort of transference - from the emotional impact of artistic work and onto the artist's personality - is incredibly common in the world of popular music. Was this ever an issue for you? Do you think it's in any way detrimental for those who experience it?

DS: Even a listener that projects the emotional impact of the work onto the personality of the artist gets something out of the work that rewards their lives in someway so maybe all is not lost but very occasionally, yes, I think it can be detrimental to certain individuals that make that kind of transference but in such instances you just happen to have become the focal point for forces already in play.

NK: Much of what you did as pop artist was subterfuge - musical phrases too convoluted, modulations too unexpected, moments of atonality, lyrics ambiguous if not disturbing. Till "Blemish", the experiments remained subtle: the sound itself, the instrumentation, and the skeleton of a pop song proved a comfort enough to keep the listeners listening. By now, do you feel like you have sabotaged enough of pop-ness to be ousted into the "obscure experimenter" category? Would you say that perfection of form, which, to many, seemed to be your mission, was just a disguise all along?

DS: The form was flexible and ample enough for the content. Or the content could be modified to sit comfortably within the form. Then suddenly the form was no longer a viable vessel. The content expanded, exploded, outgrew the form. It was therefore necessary to reinvent the form, or expand upon it, or to find forms of a more modular nature or invent new ones.

I would still describe myself as a pop musician. The term is flexible, expansive and inclusive. If I was to describe myself as an 'obscure experimenter' I would no doubt upset an altogether different category of people who would argue I've not pushed the envelope enough but it'd be an ill fitting description of what it is I'm up to regardless. Best to understand something of your musical roots, where it is you've come from, and view the resulting material as an offshoot from that particular branch of the tree even though there's been plenty of cross pollination along the way. What I'm currently producing isn't purposefully/willfully obscure. My intention is quite the opposite. The need for experimentation should be present in all forms of the arts, no? Are we happy with stasis in any of our art forms? In popular music there is a point at which a long-term artist is notified that further experimentation isn't welcome. That a return to a career's highlights in terms of style and content would be advisable. This is indicated by a drop in sales and the threat of obscurity or, worse, irrelevance. Hence the constant bowing to the demands of the market which is fair enough. Not allowing the work to mature as the individual does is often seen as an act of complacency, cowardice, or a reflection of 'peter pan syndrome' perhaps? I wondered why the majority of the first and second generation of rock/pop stars refused to let the work mature as they aged and I think it's less to do with complacency and sales than it is the strain it takes on the nervous system to continue to push the envelope. When we're young we're in fine enough shape to withstand the demands that pushing the envelope inevitably take on the system. As we age, knowing full well we can entertain and sustain the interest of an audience without trying overly hard, the temptation might be to play the entertainer and tread water indefinitely. Priorities shift too perhaps? As George Harrison once said, many gave of themselves to help create the Beatles' success but only the four musicians gave their entire nervous systems. It's a considerable sacrifice and it takes a toll but as long as the public is with you it's arguably worth it. Once they fall away you might ask yourself, why push so hard if no one appreciates, yet alone comprehends, the effort? The answer being, you do it because you need to to stay alive. Creatively vital as opposed to economically viable (although I wish those terms weren't quite so mutually exclusive. For the fortunate few, they're not).

NK: Being your own driving force, have you still found yourself, at any time, asking that question in earnest? "No one" is, perhaps, more a reflection of your inner state than of reality...

DS: Sure, I ask it of myself from time to time. It's only natural to occasionally question motivation. In fact I'd suggest it's essential that we do. When the day comes I call out and no echo returns, I'll know it's over.

NK: Do you count yourself among, or at least reasonably close to, those fortunate few? I know this might have seemed like a tall order after you left Virgin, but things have changed, haven't they? You've delved into the industry yourself by creating and running SamadhiSound. How successful do you deem the enterprise, and what is your personal role in running it? Prior to its beginning, could you ever envision yourself as a music entrepreneur - however "organic" and small-scale?

DS: No, no, not a music entrepreneur. What started out as a sort of marriage of convenience developed into something other. I'm capable of sustaining the vision needed to run a label like samadhisound but if I personally viewed it as working from within an industry as such, I'd pull the plug. This is personal, intimate, creative. There's some beautiful people that act as a buffer between me and the business end of the enterprise. Not that I don't make decisions outside of the creative aspect of running the label, I do. But I don't feel it's so different from the hand I've had in my own management over the years which has essentially been a partnership between myself and a dear friend, businessman and confidant, Richard Chadwick. But this brings me back to the notion of the periphery and my place there. We exist and, wherever possible, do business on our own terms. We've attempted to have as little to do with older models as possible looking to smaller set ups that certain robust enthusiasts have managed to sustain over a reasonably prolonged period of time. With a little research and the combined experience of all involved, we've really made things up as we've gone along.

NK: Recent years spell a drastic paring down in your work; what used to be a lush garden is now buried under snow, just barely breathing. Overwhelming plenty of the cake that killed the bees is gone, replaced with stern frugality of winter. This seems a very unlikely, if not impossible, change - even given your personal circumstances that may have contributed to it greatly. Where is the beginning of that transition, and what is, you think, its real extent? Is this a loss, a cherry orchard? A hibernation? Or a permanent shift in scale and focus, a stage completely new?

DS: Nothing is permanent. Yes, a shift has taken place in life and work but it has on the whole been a revitalisation. I feel very fortunate to have found an entirely new process with which to work at this stage in my life. Well, it's been about 7 years since that shift took place with the writing and recording of "Blemish". The results and thematic content of the work are one thing but the process is independent of it although it is the means by which the work was created. A similar approach was taken when creating "Manafon". Again, the process of creating the work isn't bound to producing one kind of result. It could be applied in different settings which in turn could produce radically different results. So, that's the process. The paring down of the arrangements of recent work was necessary for the subject matter to be carried across in a suitable setting. Working with minimal means set interesting conundrums or constraints whilst at the same time offering up a certain liberty I'd not enjoyed in any other context. Thematically, on both "Blemish" and "Manafon", I wanted to address more 'uncomfortable' issues. I chose not to blink. I wanted to dig a little deeper to see what surfaced. As a result they're possibly the most autobiographical of works in that they reveal myself to myself via, in part, the process of automatic writing. Ok, they may not represent the full picture but then neither does Dead Bees nor any of the earlier works. I chose to write about what I was experiencing which was a sort of disillusionment if you will. Sparked by a couple of major events in my life it was something I'd not experienced to quite that degree in the past so it needed to be addressed, to find out where I could go with these emotions, how to write, to find the will to write? What language was I to use? On some level it was exciting to find myself at that turning point on three fronts; process, instrumentation, thematic content.

Disillusionment's just one side of the coin though. These compositions also speak of, if nothing else by the fact of their existence, the power of the creative mind. This subject is brought up repeatedly on "Manafon". It counters the sense of disillusionment as a powerful act of creative will. An affirmation of the beauty of that state of being. Will the content, the subject matter change over time? Based on past experience I'd have to believe that's quite likely. Is it a form of hibernation? I don't believe so. Is the shift in scale permanent? I never rule anything out before conceiving a project. All doors remain open at the outset until I understand the needs of a particular work.

The change was on its way long before any upsets in personal life. Prior to "Blemish" I'd been working on a number of compilations for Virgin Records as a 21 year contract came to a close. I tied up a lot of loose ends with those compilations but it also forced me to review the work I'd produced over the previous decades. It felt as though the cycle was complete, that whatever was to come next, and I had no idea what that was to be at the time, it should be unlike what had come before. I wouldn't be returning to familiar forms in the hope of bettering myself next time round. You could reasonably argue that that had been the role of Dead Bees. A return to familiar forms, that I loved working with, before burning down the house.

NK: Burning down the house... is it possible that the need for change was so great that it couldn't be confined to work only and prompted the personal unspooling, too? In any given situation, you spend a certain amount of energy for its upkeep; what happens if you release the grip because you have to apply yourself elsewhere, because your path pulls you away?

DS: A plausible scenario but not one I feel applies comfortably to my own situation.

NK: How does this change compare to breaking out of Japan's cocoon?

DS: It doesn't. The band was a schooling of sorts. Leaving it behind was a bit like graduating. It had been educational but had grown increasingly dysfunctional.

NK: I really have to note the way you work with the notions of emotion and creative process. It's quite unusual. Emotion itself, seen as a force engulfing a human being, is habitually sanctified and glamourised as something emanating out of a higher realm - which is really, one suspects, a commonality of experience, a charmed mirror for what each of us feels at one time or another. Passive and passion: it's usually enough to be possessed by feeling, to be its subject, for that sacred glow to rub off on you. But you are obviously not content with just being a subject and letting the experience wash over you. You're an operator. The last two records are, in a sense, surgeries you performed on yourself. Is music an instrument of survival, then? A therapy of a non-accidental kind?

DS: Essentially it's an intuitive process which is always rather dull to speak of or write about as intellectually you chose to remain somewhat blind during the process of creation itself. Post mortem there's plenty that can be said but it's all so much hubris really. There's plenty of preparation or set up, there's an intuited sense where all this is leading, but until the moment comes to take action you can't foresee all of the details or intellectually know the substance of the work but you do recognize it when it appears. Therefore, on some level, and to seemingly contradict myself, you're already on an incredibly intimate basis with the material. I don't wish to make the process sound more mysterious than it is but it lies beyond the grasp of explication, as it should.

If it's a form of therapy, it's lousy at offering solutions. Cathartic? Yes, at times. Surgery is possibly an appropriate analogy for the process of internal excavation that takes place. Essentially, there's a cloud on knowing… in which you trust. There's plenty of unknowing too but over time you come to trust the direction that intuited sense of 'rightness' takes you in.

NK: Disillusionment: in what - or, if this is too rude a question, of what kind? You gained from the experience of creation; what did you lose before this experience became possible?

DS: I lost myself.

NK: You are known to excel in crafting luxurious, elaborate, polished works - beautiful but also pretty. Mellifluousness camouflaged their inner conflict so well that it could go unnoticed: at 22, I bought and sold "Weatherbox" - it sounded cold and cloying. The beauty and the sweet sorrows of it reached me years later. "Pretty" can hardly be applied to "Blemish", and even less to "Manafon". Even "Snow Borne Sorrow" offers some harsh surprises. You either refused or lost your former methods; obviously their absence became a quite unexpected presence, with very tangible things emerging out of the way you created your latest records. Your arrival to the new method - was it a choice, or has it been prompted by your inability to do things "the old way"?

DS: In principle it couldn't be easier to repeat one's self, to knock out what one has done in the past but without the passion and personal investment. You don't lose it. In fact the reverse is true. You can become too tied to the forms, the themes, the comfort of familiar territory. But if the form becomes tired, exhausted, over familiar, it loses its potency to play its role effectively. The work has to NEED to be created. I continue to follow where my instincts tell me to go, which is all I'm capable of doing, while sustaining a totally vested interest in the outcome.

NK: Is writing and playing music a part of your daily routine?

DS: No, it isn't.

NK: What makes you sit down and play, and how do you judge the value of the output?

DS: You sit when you know something to be there... its shadow follows you around. You dabble, you dream, and slowly what was tenuous at best begins to take abstract form in your mind prior to taking absolute form.

NK: With finishing "Manafon", did you feel like a gestalt was closed, a wave of emotion exhausted and worked through, or is it an open end? Is there already an inkling of what might demand to be explored next?

DS: That's difficult to answer at this moment in time.

NK: The armour of form came off with "Blemish". It seemed abrupt, almost demonstrative. It seemed a reaction to a large catastrophe rather than a product of evolution. But relinquishing the safety of habit in response to pain and/or change would be counterintuitive, no?

DS: I have yet to work counterintuitively but I feel it's on the cards.

NK: You might be close.

DS: Every move I've made has been based on intuition even when deciding to work counter-intuitively. It's not a straightforward matter.

NK: Your latest work imposes the unfamiliar both on yourself and your audience, and functions similarly for both.

DS: I can't claim I'm confronted with the unfamiliar. If I plan an excursion into a field of poppies I've a pretty good idea what I'm going to find there. How I use, transform, or incorporate what I find is something other.

NK: With music that doesn't carry a well-defined emotional pitch (or, at least, it's too complicated to be immediately absorbed), a different kind of transmission happens - training by means of incongruity, if you will. It nurtures the ability to adjust, to get used to new and unfamiliar things rapidly. In art, eliciting emotion is most usually considered the ultimate merit, but it might not be always the biggest one.

DS: Maybe the issue has something to do with our wanting, needing, recognizable signifiers, wanting to be spoon-fed? We'd like to recreate past experiences in relation to music perhaps rather than embrace new ones? Epiphanies don't have a habit of arrive on cue. They tend to reach us when the filter of expectation is removed. They come at us sideways.

Occasionally art acts as a slap in the face. It challenges us to take a leap we might feel ill prepared for, but, as we've all experienced at some point in our lives, when we do finally let down our guard or resistance, marvelously dramatic changes can occur.

Beauty is. We place parameters around what is beautiful and what's excluded from that definition. In this respect our experience of the new can be expansive, inclusive. More of the world becomes available to us in the form of nourishment, stimulation.

I think we've a responsibility to attempt to create new forms, new languages, with which to speak in contemporary times. Fortunately or otherwise, they won't always feel quite as forbidding as they do to some at the outset. They will be absorbed and through absorption cultivated to the point where they too will lose their potency.

NK: Have you used automatic writing before "Blemish"?

DS: All writing has an element of the automatic about it if it's completed swiftly enough. The impetus for the creation of a composition comes quickly as a rule so, yes, in a sense there were years of preparation for this approach but with "Blemish" I set myself restraints that produced different results. Many elements can influence the direction a person takes in life. "Blemish" sat at the crossroads of multiple events or circumstances which had a hand in the outcome.

NK: Could you describe the limitations you set for yourself?

DS: Time, a limited set of means, and all the work was to be 'improvised'.

NK: The word itself, "restraints", implies certain effort needed to remain within the boundaries... how hard was it to stay within them?

DS: It was taxing applying oneself to the same restrictions on a daily basis but the results proved the restrictions effective in producing material from limited means within a strict time frame.

NK: You also mentioned that restrictions liberated you: how?

DS: By giving myself fewer options with which to work I applied myself to what was at hand without question, without second guessing myself. I also gave in completely to the process of automatic writing as, again, the clock was ticking and the work had to be completed with a sense of urgency and immediacy. Because of this sense of urgency (which I knew to be essential to the life of the work but wasn't sure how it'd play out in practice) I acquired a new process with which to work.

NK: Would you call automatic writing and improvisation your new creative home for the time being, or are you in transit?

DS: I don't feel I have a creative home. This latest process simply gives me greater options, or rather fewer limitations, as to how I approach a particular project.

NK: Your new music is fearless - you're braving your own as yet unexplored abilities, the barely charted waters of improvisation, and the potential declining of your audience. But art, among other things, is limits. Fearlessness with no limits risks becoming a narcissistic rant. Discipline, structure, self-censoring - how do they fit in with automatic writing? Is there difficulty in leaving things be just as they come, rough edges and blemishes all?

DS: If I'd tried this approach as a younger man the dangers would've been greater but through experience it's possible to comprehend fairly rapidly if something is working, and by working I mean it has the potential to communicate itself to others. What it is I'm pursuing is far from limitless. (The same would be true for life long improvisors. There are always some parameters in place, conscious or unconscious, self imposed or otherwise). Although I'm coming at it by unorthodox means I know what it is I'm looking for and recognise it the moment I hear it. On the first sessions for "Manafon", held in Vienna, I gave myself 8 days to dig around and find out if this process, developed on "Blemish", could work with larger, free improvising ensembles at play. Plenty of amazing improvisations manifested throughout those early days but I didn't find what I was looking for until the seventh day. Once I'd found it I explored that avenue for the remainder of the time I had left to me. From that point on I only gave myself one day with which to work with each successive ensemble. I knew what I was looking for and now, following on from Vienna, I knew how to get it. So much of the work is done prior to ever setting foot inside a studio via research, understanding the background, the aesthetics and flexibility of each musician involved, and selecting who should be in which ensemble with whom. These aren't random decisions made out of convenience. They're educated assessments. There are plenty of parameters in place to make sure I'm in a particular ballpark with the best fucking team I could hope to be playing with.

There's plenty of discipline involved in improvisation, especially with players at the peak of their game. The dangers you feel inherent in charting this particular course could apply to most others. We're simply talking about judgment here. Judgment doesn't go out the window with improvisation. If anything it's more acute. The process of automatic writing has reached me in maturity. I've some experience with song writing at this point in time so a lot of this is brought into play at various stages in the creation of the work. So much of it is intuitive, second nature, that I barely notice the process itself in action at the time of working.

NK: Half-awake one morning, I heard music - lilting, slightly out of tune, a deaf angel choir of sorts. As soon as I did wake up, it reverted to its "reality" - commuter cars on nearby highway. Before "Blemish", your songs were complete, insulate experiences. Now they are suggestions. Little steps toward, small nods, never entirely followed through. Catchiness is hidden, but still present. Melodies are still as much there as they were in "Dead Bees on a Cake", only in slow motion now, jointed loosely if at all. The burden of creation is shifting; so is the locus of assemblage of the emotional message. "Manafon" is practically a collaboration between yourself and our willing ears. Was this change intended?

DS: There's hearing and then there's participatory listening. You have to invest in a novel, poem, painting etc. Without investment there's no real return. It's often been stated that people have to make an investment in my work. I don't feel much has changed in this respect. We're simply evolving, moving forward.

NK: There is a meta-narrative formed by your personal history and your work; they form a story greater than a mere sum of its parts. People follow the beautiful boy - who is yet to write "Ghosts" - into the rough terrain of "Blemish" and "Manafon". They might have turned away, failing to find a recognizable form or reference points in your latest work; but continuity of your body and name stops them from leaving. You are the experience, along with the music; in this sense, you are still a pop star. Is such thought problematic?

DS: I avoid thinking along those lines but it's never been a problem for me as such. The generosity on the part of the audience has always been something I've felt immensely grateful for whatever the individual motive. For some I've moved on too far too soon perhaps but even that's to be expected in some possible scenario perhaps?

At the end of my last tour in 07, after the final night in Tokyo, physically unwell and mentally exhausted, a thought flashed through my mind with a sense of finality, 'David Sylvian is dead'. With that thought came an immense sense of relief. Obviously the thought was in reference to the persona, the central figure in your meta narrative. That persona, whether it was something projected unconsciously or as a means of remaining invisible, or whether it was something which was projected onto me, was now ill fitting. On that tour, midway through recording "Manafon", I began to feel the gulf between myself and the persona. I no longer inhabited it.

In the world of analysis it's said that patients come to them when the personal narrative of their lives no longer holds up under current conditions. Most of the time we're able to forget or compartmentalise aspects of our lives or personality that don't fit the narrative (something I addressed on 'a history of holes' nine horses) but occasionally we're unable to re-write that central narrative, unable to make sense of our own lives, we unravel, come undone, lose ourselves, so we seek help. Maybe this is a problem that could be applied in the public arena too? Whatever lay behind that absurd pronouncement in my own mind, something prior, possibly fundamental, had shifted in me and being out in public had crystallised that fact.

NK: Transferring "Manafon" into a live setting might be akin to taking a fish for a walk, but "Fire in the forest" tour did work - and beautifully - with similarly difficult material. During that tour, and in 2007, what were your reasons for taking the stage? Have you resigned to never taking "Manafon" out, or is there still uncertainty?

DS: There's still a possibility, let's put it that way. I do have a specific set of requirements that would need to be in place to make the live performance work on my terms. Those specifications would be costly and involve a fair amount of creative input from others so sponsorship would be necessary. None of the previous tours undertaken were supported financially so this would be something new to me. Should there be sufficient interest in the ideas surrounding the staging of this material, I'd be unable to turn my back on it. It'd be too exciting a proposition to walk away from.

Failing that, I don't see any reason at present to tour as I once did. Why tour "Blemish"? Because I wanted to see if it was possible to do so. I enjoyed the scaled down aspect of that tour and working with Takagi's visuals. The material was still fresh, I was still breathing the same air.

The last tour of '07 was a farewell to (the material of) the past.

NK: Sharing your voice and words with people in a room can be an act of kindness, too, and quite possibly a life-changing experience for some of those present. That is, to an extent, the silver lining of "entertaining". Can it, too, be a reason for you to play live again - barring a situation where the emotional/mental price you have to pay is too great?

DS: Yes, there's a beauty in that... of course... but, to be affective, it has to be more than an act of kindness. You have to embody the material, make it come alive, allow it to reinvigorate, to energise you or you won't pull it off successfully. I won't say that's never going to happen but right now it is very, very, far from where I find myself.

NK: Musically and personally, do you perceive yourself as a single entity moving along a timeline? Can now-David relate to the music and the mind of then-David? You often say that performing old material is a burden; are you just bored, or is the music no longer yours?

DS: It's mine and it isn't mine. Is the love letter you wrote when you were thirteen yours or not? Are we the same person before and after the birth of a child, the death of a parent, surviving illness? We live many lives in one lifetime.

Is it a more authentic experience to hear the Stones perform satisfaction in 2010 or would it be preferable to hear it interpreted by someone younger, more fired by the emotional content of the song, feeling it for the first time? Did Jeff Buckley make Leonard Cohen's song his own? There's authorship and then there's interpretation. For my money, with the possible exception of the original recording, with the passing of time, authenticity of authorship doesn't necessarily trump the real embodiment of a song.

I don't feel burdened by the material I've written but it wasn't written to fulfill any function for me past the writing and recording of the song in question. I quite unexpectedly heard 'boy with the gun' recently and felt it stood up well. I gave each and everything all that I was able at the time. What's behind me now is out of my hands. I could perform a convincing rendition of something from 'brilliant trees' under the right circumstances but could I do it nightly? Yes, I could, as an entertainer or interpreter of song but right now I'm not interested in playing those particular roles. Maybe that desire will return in time but as of now I want to be absorbed in new experiences that challenge me. I want to deliver something of that same quality in what I put out into the world.

I don't suffer from nostalgia so I don't spend time looking back. If the work of a single entity, the arc of its life has some merit. But I wake with a sense of amnesia about the past with the exception of how something was created, how decisions were made. That's still with me. But, generally speaking, each day is like starting from scratch.

NK: The new process, obviously, brought you the excitement of the unknown. Did it bring the dizziness of danger as well? A fear of failure, perhaps: what if that path ended abruptly at a precipice? What would David do if the music left him completely? Is there anything in your life that would possibly compare to it in intensity? You make wonderful photographs that radiate both humour and melancholy - a rare, precious mix.

DS: Thank you. Danger...that word again. The possibility of failure, personal and professional, is a given under most circumstances. Failure is related to a lack of concentration, vision, a lack of commitment, as much as anything else. Yes, I could fall flat on my face perhaps but is that really the worst case scenario?

Can I reiterate that the creation of the work wasn't a dizzying high of some kind. I knew what I was looking for and worked out how to go about accomplishing my goals.

I don't worry about music leaving me. A very odd idea. I've considered leaving it on a few occasions but only because events in my life were pulling me in other directions. If I stop making music the world keeps on turning. Yes, I may find something to replace it. That's plausible.

NK: Do you feel that in place of the persona that died in Tokyo in 2007, a new one has been, or might be eventually formed? Or would you be able to live and create without defining - and letting others define - yourself anew? Is that even possible?

DS: I think the recognition that the persona that was being projected was ill fitting would indicate another has taken its place. From the perspective of the onlooker changes aren't always apparent. We've made our assessments early on and we stick with them regardless of signs that indicate the portrait we've constructed no longer quite fits the subject. External perceptions are therefore slow to adjust. This happens in day to day life with people that we know, are close to. With those that we don't, that we come into contact with via media, the relationship is far more complex and an even greater reflection of ourselves.

NK: "Do you know what people did in the old days when they had secrets they didn't want to share? They'd climb a mountain, find a tree, carve a hole in it, whisper the secret into the hole and cover it up with mud. That way, nobody else would ever learn the secret". You're a paradox of self-expression. The level of openness that you offer in your lyrics is astonishing. Your confessions scathe and burn. Yet you are a shy man, a self-confessed recluse thriving in almost complete withdrawal from the social milieu. How is this possible?

DS: The answer is there in your question.

NK: Can a poet tell a story that didn't happen to himself?

DS: If the story is a means of transmission. The important elements are the philosophical and emotional authenticity that underlie the work.

NK: Automatic writing must be much like dreaming - our own little theater where we are on stage and in the audience at the same time. Does the one who is watching the play always know the plot beforehand, or is a self revealed to self as the play goes on?

DS: The witness knows something but not all. Can be surprised by what is blatantly apparent to all but him/herself. Sometimes little is known at all, you learn as you go.

NK: Insulated as the world of your recent collaborators might've seemed, it accepted you and rewarded your effort. It was relatively new to you; were you an element of newness to it yourself? During the improv sessions, what kind of input did you offer? As I understand it, you set out to cajole a group of artists into producing material that'd resonate with what was, at that point, your inner state, a "ding an sich". A very, very daunting task. And risky, no?

DS: As I said, I wasn't certain the process itself could work until I put it into practice. I tried to reduce the element of risk as far as that was possible but a certain amount of risk was desirable. A fine balancing act in that respect. Yes, my presence changed the chemistry of the ensembles, some of whom were already very familiar with one another, in the same way that an attentive film director might bring out specifically atuned performances from the actors. They say that Bergman's face was right next to the camera lens as he directed his actors, that his focus was so nuanced and intense that the actors gave the best of themselves. He was the appreciative audience as well as director. There was an element of that at play in some of these sessions I suspect. I would like to think so.

NK: Were you seeking to express an existing meaning, or has meaning formed as you went? In other words, was "Manafon" largely an aftermath of an experience or the experience itself? "Why this and not something else?": how wide was the field of potential resonance?

DS: There's the experience that informs the work and then there's the work which is experience itself. There no division as such. I suspect the field of potential resonance was drawn in the finest of lines prior to the work getting underway but there was a conscious amount of unknowing, of room for what was pre-verbal but intuited. So we'll go with 'fairly narrow'. This might be evidenced by the amount of material that remains unused which far outweighs what was released. The impetus for a body of work is pre-verbal, is purely intuitive, so it's fairly difficult to relay that in concrete terms to a group of free improvisers or even an individual. It was acknowledged on trust that I knew what it was I was after and the musicians involved, in all generosity, allowed me the freedom to go in search of it. I'd done my homework so it was a matter of subtly adjusting the chemical balance to react as I'd anticipated.

NK: That required of you, it seems, to relinquish control - in favour of new, subtler forms of control. One of the aspects of working counterintuitively, perhaps...

DS: Yes, as I said above, what is intuitive and counterintuitive isn't exactly cut and dried. True counterintuitive actions tend to be taken at the behest of others. That's where things could either come undone or become more interesting still.

NK: ...and if the resonance was found, what is that sound you coaxed into being? As the environment in which the narrator moves, the music is the sound of a world that's being disassembled, functioning but just barely, a weak dissonance in place of a merry chorus, clicks and hisses where steady rhythm of machinery thumped before. It's fragile, unsafe, uncertain, it's tittering on a brink. Is this all an inner landscape, or does this reflect your feelings about the world that surrounds, contains and - to some extent - defines you?

DS: It was the lack of definition, the hint, allusion, the musical and non-musical elements on the brink of dissolution. It was shorthand for the initiated, the ghost of electricity, snatches of conversation and audio intervention. It was an orchestra of the everyday. Atomic particles, the building bricks of life. Each and every sound a yantra containing a universe unto itself. It was in fact an embarrassment of riches with which to support and amplify the narrative.

NK: For me, the sound evoked, and strongly, two moments of brokenness and uncertainty: when I woke up in a country without a name in 1991, and the day the towers fell in NYC. Neither of the two events affected me directly, yet they did dent my universe - and nearly everyone else's, it seems. How firmly are you rooted in the world that isn't your immediate environment? National consciousness, freedom, world peace, world suffering, wars, distant catastrophes we watch unfold on TV - what do they mean, if anything? And if they are but artificial constructs, then, perhaps, there is a better way to spend the effort invested in belonging to and fighting for?

DS: I am, of course, rooted in the world, in time and place. I've made frequent references in recent work to world events even if in a slightly unorthodox manner. Events, such as the ones you mention, burn themselves deeply into the personal and public (un)consciousness, are powerful elements of destabilisation increasing the level of uncertainty in all things. Social constructs are easily upended. The line between civility and chaos has all the substance of surface tension in a pool of water. Universal suffering is an extension of individual suffering. Universal conflict an extension of internal conflict. One cannot be resolved without the other. I believe in a society that looks after its people, a people that support one another, that lends dignity to the lives of all by seeing to basic human rights and needs, is inclusive, liberal and unafraid of difference. The greed of american capitalism was/is unsustainable. Before the value of the currency must come compassion and a shared sense of human values devoid of dogma and religious overtones.

Acts of terrorism nurtures the climate of fear, building walls between cultures, beliefs and individuals. It breeds mistrust. By contrast natural catastrophes bring out our empathetic nature, emphasises our common humanity. You could say that, in a sense, the future depends on whether empathy or fear gains the upper hand in each of us.

NK: But this precedence of internal over external is a discouraged notion these days, it seems, a Cinderella. As the culture urges to consume goods, it also urges to consume societal benefits - liberties, rights, etc., or things marketed as such. Many feel, I suspect, that those are manufactured somewhere outside of themselves, just like plastic goods at a factory in China, and can be, like any commodity, distributed by bodies of power. "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." (Goethe) One has to wonder how, if at all, can attention - especially in children - be directed inward as a place where meaning is formed...

DS: Children do have an interior life. In this information age they might lose sight of it a little too quickly but others withdraw into it, looking for something that might be described as self-nurturing, part of the road to independence.

Whatever is absorbed from the world around us is digested internally. There is no such thing as complete objectivity. We create our own reality, are complicit in building, embracing and shouldering its responsibilities but, for all the tribal beating of drums, we're essentially alone. Don't we know this as children? I'm certain we do. A realization that's often accompanied by sadness or fear.

There's a wall between interior and exterior, illusionary perhaps, but substantial in its psychological ramifications. Via work on our interior lives the substantiality of that wall begins to evaporate hence the greater the properties of empathy and compassion in such an individual. Another's suffering becomes one's own. It takes the slightest of shifts in conscious awareness to see through the illusion and therefore to avoid buying into it. What we might grasp intuitively can find its way to the forefront of our awareness.

Not to recognize your perception of reality reflected in the culture is a cause for concern that can be acted upon. Disenfranchisement, to be forced outside, can also enable a better perspective on the infrastructure of the society of all that's exclusionary about it. It's no coincidence that minority groups/outsiders appear to produce the most significant cultural contributions.

NK: "Random Acts of Senseless Violence" is an especially caustic commentary on the state of "us", the society. There are (are there?) events; then (only then?) there is news. Where their meaning is formed, by whom, and to what ends, is now so obscure that it borders on arbitrary. The mechanism is called, reassuringly, "democracy". Have we spun out of control? Is the circus doomed, or is there something that each of us can do apart from registering the absurdity?

DS: It would appear we're increasingly losing faith in elected officials to work with our real benefit in mind. When a nation becomes apathetic towards the governing body, when it feels its liberties being incrementally stripped away, there can only be one response beginning with protest and leading eventually to acts of disruptive violence in an attempt to be heard. Yes, the media too can't be trusted. Reporting post 9/11 more or less revealed to me there's no such thing as a free press in the US. Most reporting is framed by bias and where there's no bias there's simply a rather bland description of what is, a weak willed attempt at balanced reporting. Failing to call out and out lies as they see them but rather reporting them as another perspective on a given issue. There's a shortage of unbiased but informed opinion.

What can be done? I'm unconvinced that much can and will be done in the short term. We seem to have lost the appetite for revolution for now (although current events are changing the landscape as I write) and in a sense a revolution is needed. It would not surprise me if, increasingly, in many parts of the world, people found themselves at odds with governing bodies and their armed enforcements.

NK: Is that really likely? For many, it seems, the concept of revolution, indeed the concept of any large-scale change, is a romantic one - especially without a history of violence in their own geographic realm. "Revolution" doesn't connect with the idea of ultimate upset that an actual revolution is sure to bring. "Fear of disorder" that you mention, it appears, is a safety catch, an insurance for complacency, and at its worst a complete paralysis of will: just how great the sense of danger should be to trump it?

DS: It depends on what you mean by danger. A wasted life in search of the illusionary is a revelation, a dangerous revelation if reached en masse.

NK: Perhaps the very bottom of the hierarchy of needs must be infringed upon for change to be able to ferment. What would your own breaking point - a transition from contempt to protest - be?

DS: Possibly brazen injustice carried out or endorsed by multinational corporations or offices of governance. A corruption of the governing body to the point of arrogance, a changing of the fundamental laws which secure freedom and liberty, a watering down of democratic values. All of the above seemed within the grasp of the last US administration.

NK: Truly a world citizen, you chose America as a place to stay... and thus, to act on you. Happenstance or inner affinity of a self and a place?

DS: I claim happenstance but who's to decide these things?

NK: Are there physical places on the planet that are of ultimate internal resonance for you?

DS: There are a number of places around the globe that resonate for me but I couldn't claim that one has ultimate internal resonance. Nowhere is 'home' for me... or potentially everywhere.

"When you never leave you own country, you reason within your country; you become the center of the universe. When you leave, you discover there are other ways of thinking. " (Charlotte Perriand)

Or better still:

"The man who finds his country sweet is only a raw beginner; the man for who each country is as his own is already strong; but only the man for whom the whole world is like a foreign country is perfect." (Hugh of St. Victor 12th century)

NK: "Manafon", more so than "Blemish", is a sustained narrative of disruption, entropy, alchemical nigredo, processes ongoing but misread or unsuspected. While the two records share a mood and a method, "Manafon" strives out of the insulate narrative of self and into the world at large. The world appears to to be, essentially, in the same state as the self. Is the food bitter because your tongue it bitter? Was your outlook different in happier times?

DS: "Blemish" and "Manafon" don't reflect my world view. They reflect aspects of the human condition. They were born out of a time and place, a particular stimulus, a rattled state of being, yes. But that was just the starting point. I pushed deeper into those negative emotions than I would've felt comfortable doing in life. I wanted to see where they'd lead me, how dark does it gets down there and what kind of language I could use on my return to embody it? The impetus for the emotional themes on "Blemish" may've been brought on by the breakdown of a marriage but I pushed far beyond the feelings I harboured in my personal life at that time. It was an opportunity to occupy a corner of my psyche I'd not previously explored. I was working with what was to hand. I was in the midst of an experience I couldn't fully digest, a lot of psychic pain, but I thought I'd face it head on without any hope of resolution. Just be with it... latch onto something powerful inside of me and hear what it had to say, how it expressed itself.

We could quite easily ask this same question of filmmakers, writers etc. Bergman, Beckett, Kafka.. but the works resonate because they encapsulate something of what it means to be human. A facet of our common humanity.

NK: Speaking of the relationship between work and life... I may hold your music close to heart, but as I watch from afar, the David I see is only a conjecture that says more about me than about David. And that's a function of art, really, to prompt - perhaps subliminally - self-observation that often manifests itself as observation of the artist. Let's reverse the mirror: how would you describe yourself among others, what is your place in the lives of people around you?

DS: In one, very real sense, as discussed, the place is peripheral, in another the role is central, pivotal. Such are the contradictions of a single life.

As for the latter part of the question it's best left for others to answer.

NK: How do you balance making yourself available, needing others and being needed?

DS: Generally speaking, I don't manage the balance all that well. Given the choice between too much company or none at all, I'll go with the latter.

NK: I can't help but notice, with certain surprise, the transactional nature of "Small Metal Gods"' predicament. "My childish things." But you're throwing them away just as childishly: they didn't serve the purpose, you've been defrauded out of your money in the marketplace of faith, where peace and well-being are given in return for worship... I suspect that this obvious reading is wrong.

DS: The lyric is slightly bitter, quite petulant, disillusioned, angry. It's not in the least bit rational. There's a tit for tat aspect to it on one level but it's also about superstition, false gods, the adopted traditions of others. It's a 'let's see what's real' moment. Let's sweep these trinkets away (physical objects yes, but all that they represent as emotional and spiritual investment) and see what's left standing. A cleaning house. It happens every so often. I don't find it unhealthy. It's a search for truth by removing the excess baggage that's begun to cling to it like lint to a black overcoat. But the anger shouldn't be underestimated. I heard from a number of people that have followed one path or another, that they felt a sense of release/relief hearing that lyric. As if permission had be granted to call all into question. It had to have that degree of the irrational, the petulance, to get across the degree of personal investment, anger and disillusionment. Not dissimilar to the kind of conversations you hear between divorcing couples.

NK: In relation to the practices of faith that you maintain, who are they, the castaway gods? Is it an intentional "sacrilege", questioning elements of the path while still remaining on the path? Jettisoning the paraphernalia that had served its purpose, but now might prove a hindrance?

DS: Even when you reject the path, refuse to believe in the path, you're on the path.

NK: One way or another, "Small Metal Gods" seems to rid you of the last outward vestiges of the very path you adhere to. Where is this going?

DS: Where is this going? where it was always going. it's referred to as a path but it's anything but linear. Sometimes to take action, any action, is better than none at all.

NK: Imagery of devotion is often found in your writings - from various sources, as if you were sampling, trying on this faith and that. You say much - any? - of it doesn't hold any significance. When you chose your current path, what revealed it to you as yours? Was is a gradual immersion, or was there a moment of "marriage"?

DS: Difficult to answer this one as it's too personal. I would say that to experience states of bliss is to acknowledge the existence of alternate states of mind, of being. If an individual brought you to that state there's a fair chance, but by no means a certainty, that they'll make a good scout leading you into uncharted territory.

NK: I'll play a devil's advocate a little - without implying your case, but with interest in your take on the following. One ends up subscribing to a set of exercises, to a certain philosophy, to a picture of the world - even if that picture is one of freedom to change it at will. But the practices of any spiritual tradition, before having been assigned "sacredness", were designed for specific time, place, and people, and with specific outcomes in mind; hence outside its "native" circumstance its techniques might be useless, if not downright harmful. These traditions are still perfectly capable of instilling a sense of emotional wellbeing in their followers, but no real growth transpires. This doesn't mean the practices are inherently empty; there is, let's say, a great chance for them to be misapplied.

Perhaps a teacher, a presence which can observe and reflect your condition objectively, can be a remedy, a true beacon for your travels. At any given time, how do you judge your position on the way? Is there someone to help you with this?

DS: I wouldn't agree that all spiritual practices derived from profound insight and wisdom were designed for a time and place. What was once a fundamental or universal truth about human nature likely remains so but it's not my place to take a defensive position on this. If interested, we should work this through for ourselves.

Judging where one is on any given path is difficult. I'm not at all certain that that's an appropriate question to pose oneself. It's stating that you believe you're at point Q on the map on the road to Z. Linear thinking. The way it works is to let go of such mental concepts whilst recognizing a deepening of certain qualities within, and the greater awareness that accompanies these developments. You therefore recognize the benefit of cultivating this particular conscious awareness. That's where you are, just there.

NK: What does following a path mean to you? Obviously, many teachings are being relentlessly appropriated by western mind and market for their own purposes. Most often they end up functioning as pacifiers, numbing hearts to the very notion of path as work. Placated, the "adepts" tend to neglect and isolate exactly the parts of themselves that require change, control and attention. The product sells and is, infuriatingly, called "spirituality". But the stories of spiritual development that so many choose to ignore speak of anything but comfort. Choosing a path, wedding yourself to it might be the greatest joy you ever knew; what about following it? Were there obstacles, and was music ever one, in any way?

DS: I don't feel comfortable saying I'm wedded to a particular path. I say that with a certain regret as I believe one travels more rapidly when adhering to a singular path. As for teachings being appropriated, sure. If you want to divest yoga of its spiritual 'baggage' you're free to do that. If you choose to meditate just to relax, that's ok too. I don't think it's productive to worry about what others are doing or how they're using, diluting, or abusing the teachings. What is of concern is how they're applied, if at all, in one's own life, how sharply attuned is one's own sense of discernment? After all, one man could sit at the feet of the wisest of individuals and learn nothing, another at the feet of a faker and take away valuable lessons.

NK: Duly noted... an accusatory diatribe indeed most often reflects one's own stumbling blocks - and, in this particular case, locks one out of a potentially beneficial experience.

You say there isn't a singular path; this, perhaps, is not a cause for regret, since there is no real way to assess its comparative effectiveness. You're on the best path possible - for you, - winding as it might be. What is your current set of practices - or, at least, a system (systems?) of reference? How rigorously do you follow it?

DS: This I choose to remain private.

NK: Earlier, the terminology of certain teachings was figuring prominently in your songs - "The Golden Way", "Cover Me with Flowers", etc. With time, it was gone almost completely. How would you describe the process that reflected in this change?

DS: From the romance of the engagement (which is real and healthy) to the reality of the contract (the vow), to a disentanglement from all that binds.

NK: Is there a destination? What would you want to become, ideally - or at least approach? Is being compassionate, responsible, loving the purpose or a satellite effect of a larger change?

DS: When following a path surely the only real concern is with your personal growth and what furthers that (as this tends to result in a more compassionate, responsible, and loving individual we all benefit)? Yes, there are always obstacles, each one greater than the last but there are rewards for scaling these otherwise there wouldn't be the will to go on as suffering is pretty much a given. As with any undertaking there should be discernible results. Knowing the scope for self deception is vast you tread carefully but purposefully.

Being long-term goal orientated doesn't seem quite the point. Maybe this contradicts the notion that there should be discernable results but how can you comprehend a destination for this approach to life at the outset? Goals should therefore be manageable, humble, not overly ambitious. Sitting on a cushion for 15mins morning and evening without giving in to the desire to reach for the iPhone?

In essence you're already where it is you want you be. Think of it as a dream you're having, part joyful, part nightmare, in which you're trying to get back to the safety, the familiarity of your bedroom. You wake up where you were all along.

"you misunderstood the place where you stand"

Long term, so as not to cop out of giving some indication; call it an attunement to where the division between life and death falls away. Not an end in itself.

Yes, making music has been part of the process for me.

NK: Could you expand on this?

DS: The process of creating music is fraught with dilemmas that highlight shortcomings, entrenched thought processes, self-imposed limitations etc. It has the potential to identify and therefore remove obstacles to growth. It's what is known as sadhana: Sadhana Sanskrit term : literally "a means of accomplishing something"

NK: Lyrics and poetry. To you, what is the difference? "Manafon"'s words stand on their own, it seems, much more ably than those of your other records. They are certainly not orphaned without music; there is no obvious dependency. But in the way they came into being, how strong was the connection?

DS: The lyrical content was generally born out of my response to the musical content although there were themes I knew I'd be addressing in some instances before putting pen to paper. They're also, in my mind, tied to the melodic lines that define them as they're more or less created simultaneously.

NK: This works both ways, doesn't it? The language in action, a word being uttered, is in itself music, and much music is - often unconsciously - modeled on the inflections of speech and other expressive sounds. The two meanings - verbal and tonal - converge or collide, often to a striking effect. You've been using this method, knowingly or not, with great success throughout your career...

DS: It's part and parcel of the songwriting experience, yes.

I've said before that the difference between a lyric and a poem is that between the lines of a lyric there's silence which is where the music plays its significant role. The writing is designed for this purpose. Between the lines of a poem, a universe. Any addition is embellishment.

NK: Your singing has also undergone a transformation. What is your relationship with your voice? How did it change over the years?

DS: I find it impossible to discuss my voice. Possibly detrimental, certainly undesirable.

NK: "Manafon" is cutting; it's the words of a man who is either done for and is about to flip a switch, or has purposely dismantled his reality. Were you trying to sing yourself out of that mindset, is the audible pain a productive suffering, a black and bitter but fertile soil? Or is "not leaving a trace" an earnest goal?

DS: I thought it was an album best released posthumously.

NK: Your writing is exceptionally erudite; quotes and references abound - from Picasso to Sartre, from Bible to R.S.Thomas and - heartbreakingly - Emily Dickinson... Are they simply magnets to you, something that resonated with you at the moment of writing, or do the nods signal an allegiance, a very special connection? Are there figures, teachings, works of art that are beyond reproach, or is everything malleable?

DS: I think my approach in this regard has changed over the years. When younger the isolated man wanted a creative community with which to interact. I formed allegiances with artists both living and dead whose vision I grasped, in which I saw reflected something of my own feeble attempts though expressed far more eloquently. A shared philosophical viewpoint, aesthetic etc etc. I phased out much of the openly quoted from my work during the late 80's, early 90's. Now if someone is quoted it's because the quote clearly serves a purpose, other than simple reference, in the body of the lyric.

Continue reading "Witness and participant: a conversation with David Sylvian" »

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 04:19 PM | Permalink

Questions devised by Markus Deisenberger

The first David Sylvian album I listened to was ‘Gone to earth’. Then came ‘Secrets Of The Beehive’, which for me was and still is a masterpiece. If I compare your new album ‘Manafon’ to ‘Secrets of the Beehive’, they couldn’t be more different from each other. The only similarity seems to be in the level of complexity. If your voice wasn’t that recognisable it would even be easy to believe that these are not only two different decades and two different works, but also two different artists. When you look back: Do you feel the same?

with Ryuichi Sakamoto 1987 © Yuka Fujii

I don’t look back, but certainly there’s been a fair bit of work produced. Some of it I feel completely divorced from, some of it partially.  I’m frequently amazed that my peers still go out and tour material written when they were far younger men and women. I no longer feel I am the author of much of my own work and so sometimes feel an impostor when performing the material.  I go out of my way to avoid experiencing this.

But to answer the question; Surely part of the fascination with my work lies in its diversity and in the growth of the individual at the heart of it? In a sense it’s important to acknowledge that this is indeed the same individual that created these recordings. We change, we age, evolve, times change and the language we use to talk about the same issues needs to change with them. I’m attempting to speak of these same issues, reflect the human condition, in a voice that speaks to now. Music as comfort food has its place but we’re lacking in the ‘music as experience’ department. Something that can potentially give a shock to the system, jolt us out of our apathy, and awaken us to the truth of our individual or collective predicament.

Slow Fire Tour 1995 © Ingrid Chavez

In The Wire interview you said after ending Japan you found a new base. Were you referring to ‘Brilliant Trees’?
I’m not sure what I was referring to from your paraphrasing but maybe I was speaking about the need to find a philosophical grounding, a rootedness from which the new work might grow. This was an active search taken at the time, 81-83, which unearthed something fundamental to my well being which was, and continues to be, invaluable to me.

How has your thinking, your view on the world changed since then, when you started your solo career back in the days of ‘Brilliant Trees’?
I’m still rooted in the same soil. I’ve grown a lot, matured. At least I hope I have. But I still recognise the man that wrote the material, I understand where he was coming from, his aims and goals. My worldview hasn’t changed so much as expanded. It continues to expand.

Mont Blanc 1984 © Yuka Fujii

How come that with Christian Fennesz, Werner Dafeldecker, Franz Hautzinger, Michael Moser and Burkhard Stangl so many Austrian musicians contributed to “Manafon”?
Well, the sessions took place in Vienna for a reason. The reason being there were these wonderful musicians residing there. I’d heard Wrapped Islands by Christian and Polwechsel and was really impressed by the restraint displayed in their performances and wanted to tap into that,  in some fashion,  for my own needs. Christian encouraged me to come to Vienna and go for what it was I had in mind. In some way you could say he acted as go-between or facilitator. 

Was there a special moment, when it became clear to you that these sessions would lead to a definite output, to a record, or was it an intention from the very beginning?
Well, the intention had to be there from the outset. I didn’t know for sure if this approach, working with free improvising musicians in search of a fairly specific set of goals, was going to work or not but by the time I left Vienna, after one week of working there, I knew I was going to see this thing through, that the process worked.

Many journalists described ‘Manafon’ as a quasi ‘follow up’ to ‘Blemish’. Do you really feel the same, because for me ‘Blemish’, on which you also worked together with Fennesz, is possibly the closest record to ‘Manafon’, but it’s still miles away?
It is a sister to Blemish in that the approach to the writing, or rather the process involved in Manafon’s creation , mirrors that of Blemish, is an extension and development of those self same principles.

You said you took your first improv-steps on ‘Rain Tree Crow’, a very interesting project with your ex-band-mates from Japan. Mick Karn, Richard Barbieri and Steve Jansen back in 1991. Does the Title track on ‘Rain Tree Crow’, on which you sing over layers of improvised synthesizer-sounds and pipes, come close to the making of your latest work?
My first experience with improv came with the recording of a soundtrack by the name of Steel Cathedrals back in 1984. The second, and more important step, came when working with Holger Czukay on Plight and Premonition.  It was because of the positive nature of this experience that I instigated the RTC project.

with Karl and Holger. Can Studio Köln 1987

If we want to look for early references for ‘Manafon’ we could possibly start with the track ‘Ghosts’. There’s numerous other pieces which one could point to during the intervening period between ‘81 and the present time all of which may or may not be relevant but were certainly part of my personal evolution. ‘Manafon’ is the culmination of 30 odd years of working as performer, composer and producer. It sometimes feels more like emotional archeology than anything else. 

There are also a few improvised instrumental tracks on ‘Rain Tree Crow’. On the other hand there is a pure pop song such as ‘Backwater’. Was the to and fro between pop an impro – maybe that´s one of the special qualities of this work – caused by a struggle between members of the band or a struggle within yourself?

recording at Miraval, France 1989 © Steve Jansen

Although much of the finished work incorporates seeds of the original improvisations from which it grew, there was a lot of re-recording and polishing of the material.  I don’t remember there being too much of a struggle regarding the different directions the material took although I do remember I’d frequently be forced to justify my decisions whereby one piece or approach might be deemed out of context and another not. ‘Blackwater’ might be the exception here. I think I fought harder for that track than any other. Not because if was of the greatest interest but it was a strong piece that worked well in the body of the remainder of the album.

with Richard Barbieri. Condulmer Studio. Italy 1989 © Steve Jansen

There are very few musicians in pop-history that always moved forward and really did not care about the mainstream. You seem to be one of these guys who always and only did what he wanted to do. But your path as a musician also seems to go back and forth – not in terms of quality but in terms of the degree of experimentation. For example it must have been a big step from ‘Brilliant Trees’ to ‘Gone to earth’, or from works with Czukay to ‘Dead Bees’, from works with Fripp to ‘Blemish’?
I can only say that the evolution appears relatively linear to me with frequent diversions, which I’ve tried to more or less eradicate, and occasional, and very welcome, leaps every decade or so. For example, from Tin drum to Brilliant trees or from Dead bees to Blemish. These are very important evolutionary leaps that change the shape of what’s to come.

San Francisco 1999 © Ingrid Chavez

Indigene cultures have a very different feeling for time compared to the society we live in. It is much less linear. They feel and live in cycles. Is this a way of thinking you associate yourself with?
Maybe the spiral is more of an apt analogy. The growth of the individual isn’t a linear journey. It’s experienced as multi dimensional, multi facetted, intuitive, and profoundly complex whilst conversely, and in actuality, it’s imbued with a simple clarity, a pure-tone playfulness and profundity which is something that frequently eludes us. We are ancient and fully alive in the moment. There’s less to be learned than to be undone.
 
In response to the question which arises constantly following the recording of ‘Manafon’; even when you’ve fallen from the path or deny the path exists, you’re still on the path.

Is there anything in your work you wish you had not done?
If you mean are there albums I’d prefer to live without, sure, there’s a few. Anything recorded prior to my 21st birthday might be eradicated without sense of loss. The second album Holger and I recorded together was somewhat forced. I certainly wasn’t in a healthy state of mind at that time. Also, ‘The first day’ suffered for similar reasons.  But the experience of making just about everything I’ve been involved in has, in someway, proved formative. Working with Robert was tremendously educational and his presence in my life at that pivotal moment in time was welcome, even if I’m not convinced by the results of the studio recording we produced together. Live, it was something else. 

with Robert Fripp circa 1985 © Yuka Fujii

Then there's aspects of any given work that could be improved upon or maybe shouldn’t have been attempted in the first place. But, as I said earlier, I don't look back. I don't go back and listen to the material afresh. That's a slightly intimidating proposition. As Borges once said, 'I never reread what I’ve written. I’m far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I’ve done'.

with Holger Czukay, 1988 © Nick White

The Wire titled their cover-story with you ‘the invention of solitude’. For me that sounds artificial as if someone purposely wanted to express themselves in a calculated or premeditated way, I didn’t experience ‘Manafon’ as a created soundtrack to silence and desperation... but as a very, very personal work...
I’ll not disagree.

The poet RS Thomas, whom the title-track of ‘Manafon’ refers to, has overcome a struggle with faith. Do you feel especially linked to him?
I can't say that I do. He just seems somewhat familiar to me. I think I grasp his mindset. He feels like a possible distant relation. I'm able to empathise with his contradictions, his single mindedness, his desire for the living knowledge of the divine reality.

 He writes about work and workers to stay involved or connected. How does your touch to humanity, your connection with mankind work?
I could simply answer that the connection comes through the act of creation. It generates feedback that takes me on all kinds of journeys that might otherwise never have been made available to me. Unlike Thomas' literary work, mine isn't entirely solitary. In fact it has frequently brought me into contact with large gatherings through performance. I could go on but I think the social aspect of what I do is fairly apparent. Outside of that there is what I'll simply refer to as my 'practice'. This has brought me into contact with people from all walks of life in service and support of one another but I don't want to overstate its importance here. 

with daughter Isobel. Kerala India 1999 © Ingrid Chavez

Having said that, I have for the past 6 years or so, lived a very isolated existence. I don't make excuses for this. This withdrawing has been important to me. 

Can you imagine leaving your chosen isolation behind for your next work or do you think a step like that could constrain you intuition?
It will be what it will be. No artificial parameters set in place.

Freeing your mind for total improvisation must be very difficult as you have a system of more than twenty, thirty years of making music in a particular way, developed your own system... Sometimes it seems (especially in the opening track ‘Small Metal Gods’) though you really improvised, you can’t completely free yourself from a certain catchiness?
I’m not sure why I’d try and lose the hooks to a melody just as I wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way to find them. The balance struck is the one I felt best served that particular composition. You are in service to the composition, nothing more. 

Do you think this work, as a collision of these two worlds, possibly gives people who are not used to improvised music an opportunity to open up to it?
I don’t know. That wasn’t my raison d’être for producing the work. It could potentially alienate both my own audience and the audience that embraces pure free improv. It’s a new hybrid. I’m not sure where it will find its audience.  It’s in no hurry though. Open minds will embrace it when they stumble across it perhaps. At least this is what I wish for it.

Having made this album, do you feel like there are still other places to go in improv-music or do you plan to explore other fields?
Hard to say right now. There’s no desire to identically repeat the approach I took with this album. Maybe I’ll take a completely different detour on my musical map and revisit this side of my work at a later time should I be given that opportunity. There might be a personal need for a reactionary response to the approach embraced on Manafon. But first things first, and that’s the sense that something needs to be addressed and from that point on it’s a matter of finding the appropriate form it should take.

Could you imagine being more directly involved with the musicians you worked together with on ‘Manafon’. For example, not having them sign off on their material but playing sessions together with them?
That’s really not what I was interested in exploring in relation to these musicians. I’m not a free improvising musician, I’m a composer or songwriter, however you want to phrase it. I was interested in expanding my musical horizons by working in an area  seemingly at odds with my own goals. At no time did I entertain the notion of becoming a free improv artist and that remains the case.  These guys, many of them, have devoted decades of their lives to a particular pursuit, to the liberation which comes once a certain  proficiency or fluency has been established with their chosen instruments, to a living and breathing in the moment. This is a philosophy that accompanies not just the generation of the music itself but the lives of the participants also. You don’t, or at least I don’t, presume I can just wander into their environment and don my improv hat for the day. That’s not how it works. On the other hand, there’s elements of improv in all the best work in the arts. A theatre actor works from a script but she can bring that work alive night after night through the creative act of will and imagination. This is another form of improv also. Too much emphasis gets placed on the act  of improv as if it’s the exclusive domain of the few. All the arts embrace elements of improv, from the creative act to its performance, otherwise they’d be no life to them. With free improv, what you have is that immediacy, that lack of time lapse between impulse and execution, an act of pure creation in the moment. Thought and action become one as a result of the emphasis on the intuitive. At least that’s how I’ve viewed it up close.

What´s your favourite music at the moment? Or what record accompanies you on cold days?
I’m not listening to music at the present time.

Sonoma CA 1999 © Anton Corbijn

Music such as the songs on ‘Manafon’ must be very difficult to perform live. Either it’s not improv anymore – or like Franz Hautzinger told me in an interview – after a while it looses it’s authenticity and plausibility. Anyway, would it be possible to find a completely new live-setting for this material which might satisfy you?
I’ve given it a lot of thought. It would mean finding a very specific group of individuals who were happy, willing and able to embrace elements of both free improv and composition. Not an impossible task. In fact it could be quite a thrilling project to be a part of. However, I’ve not yet decided if live performance is on the cards for me at present.

Is there any possibility that your Austrian fans will ever see you perform live in Vienna or some other places?
That depends on the outcome to the self-directed question above.

Thank you

david

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 10:14 AM | Permalink

An English translation of this interview can be read by clicking here.

Auf seinem neuen Album „Manafon“ glänzt David Sylvian einmal mehr als der große Tragöde des Pop. Vielleicht sind es die neuen Wege, die er darauf mit österreichischen Impro-Musikern beschritt, die es zu seinem bislang auch persönlichsten machen. Aus der selbst gewählten Einsamkeit der Wälder Neuenglands, wo er völlig abgeschieden in einem Holzhaus lebt, gab er Skug ein Interview, in dem er über Improvisation, Isolation und emotionelle Archäologie philosophierte.

Photograph © Donald Milne

Mein erstes David Sylvian-Album war „Gone to earth“. Dann kam „Secrets Of The Beehive, das für mich, auch nach all den Jahren, immer noch ein Meisterwerk ist. Wenn man nun Dein neues Album „Manafon“ mit „Secrets Of The Beehive“ vergleicht, könnten die beiden wohl unterschiedlicher nicht sein. Die einzige Gemeinsamkeit ist vielleicht ihre Komplexität. Wäre da nicht Deine unverkennbare Stimme, man könnte sogar meinen, es wären verschiedene Künstler am Werk. Siehst Du das ähnlich, wenn Du zurück blickst?
Ich blicke nicht zurück, aber dazwischen liegt sicherlich ein gutes Stück Arbeit, von dem ich mich teils völlig, teils überwiegend geschieden fühle. Mich wundert immer wieder, wenn ich sehe, wie Kollegen mit Stücken touren, die sie geschrieben haben, als sie um vieles jünger waren. Von vielen meiner Stücke fühle ich mich gar nicht mehr als Urheber und komme mir, wenn ich sie performe, als Schwindler vor – ein Gefühl, das ich zu vermeiden suche. Aber um Deine Frage zu beantworten: Sicherlich liegt ein Gutteil der Faszination meiner Arbeit an ihrer Mannigfaltigkeit und dem Wachstum des Individuums als ihrem Zentrum. Und auf eine gewisse Weise ist es auch wichtig zu erkennen, dass das dieselbe Person ist, die diese unterschiedlichen Platten macht. Aber wir altern, ändern und entwickeln uns, die Zeiten ändern sich und die Sprache, mit der wir die gleichen Themen besprechen, muss sich mit ihnen ändern. Von diesen ewig gleichen Themen versuche ich zu sprechen und die Voraussetzungen für das Menschsein zu reflektieren – allerdings in einer Stimme, die das Jetzt anspricht. Komfort-Musik hat sicher ihren Platz, aber woran es uns heute fehlt ist Musik, die Erfahrung mitteilt und das System schockt; uns aus unserer Apathie herausholt und uns die wahre individuelle und kollektive Lage vor Augen führt.

In einem Interview sagtest Du, nach dem Ende von Japan fandest Du eine neue Basis. Meintest Du damit dein erstes Solo-Album „Brilliant Trees“?
Ich bin mir nicht mehr sicher, was ich damit meinte. Ich glaube aber eher, dass ich Die Notwendigkeit meinte, ein philosophisches Fundament, eine Verwurzelung zu finden, von der aus meine neue Arbeit wachsen konnte. Die aktive Suche danach beschäftigte mich in den Jahren 81 bis 83 und brachte etwas ans Licht, das tiefer lag als Wohlstand und Behaglichkeit, die damals wie heute keinen Wert für mich haben.

Wie hat sich Dein Denken, Deine Sichtweise der Welt, seit den „Brilliant Trees“-Tagen verändert?
Ich bin immer noch in der gleichen Erde verwurzelt. Ich bin gewachsen, gereift. Wenigstens hoffe ich das. Aber immer noch kann ich den Mann erkennen, der das Material damals geschrieben hat, und verstehe, woher er kam und welche Ziele er hatte. Meine Sicht auf die Welt hat sich seitdem weniger verändert als schlicht erweitert und das tut sie immer noch.

Wie kam es, dass auf „Manafon“ mit Christian Fennesz, Werner Dafeldecker, Franz Hautzinger, Michael Moser and Burkhard Stangl so viele österreichische Musiker mitwirken?
Die Sessions fanden aus einem ganz bestimmten Grund in Wien statt: Weil dort diese wunderbare Musiker leben nämlich. Ich hatte „Wrapped Islands“ von Christian (Fennesz, Anm.) und „Polwechsel“ gehört, war von der Selbstbeschränkung ihrer Performances beeindruckt und wollte sie für meine eigenen Bedürfnisse anzapfen. Schließlich hat mich Christian ermutigt, nach Wien zu kommen, um das, was ich vorhatte zu realisieren. Er hat als eine Art Zwischenhändler und Förderer fungiert.

Gab es einen speziellen Moment, in dem klar wurde, dass die Sessions zu einem definiten Release führen würden oder war das von Anbeginn an geplant?
Die Intention war von Anbeginn da, aber ich wusste nicht, ob der Zugang, mit freien Improvisationskünstlern zu arbeiten, um ein von mir nur vage umrissenes Ziel zu erreichen, funktioniere würde. Aber als ich Wien wieder verließ, wusste ich, dass es geklappt hat. 

Viele Journalisten haben „Manafon“ als Follow-Up von „Blemish“, Deiner ersten gemeinsamen Arbeit mit Christian Fennesz, beschrieben. Siehst Du das selbst auch so?
Es ist eine Art Schwester geworden, was das Schreiben oder besser den Entstehungsprozess anbelangt. „Manafon“ spiegelt diese Prinzipien wider, entwickelt und erweitert sie.


Du sagtest auch, Deine ersten Berührungspunkte mit improvisierter Musik hattest Du auf „Rain Tree Crow“, einem interessanten Projekt mit Deinen Ex-Band-Kollegen von Japan Mick Karn, Richard Barbieri and Steve Jansen aus dem Jahr 1991. Kommt der Titel-Track, auf dem Du zu Schicht für Schicht aufgetragenen improvisierten Synthesizer-Sounds singst, dem jetzigen Entstehungsprozess nahe oder gleich?
Meine ersten Berührungspunkte mit improvisierter Musik liegen eigentlich noch weiter zurück: Als ich 1984 den Soundtrack „Steel Cathedrals“ aufnahm. Der zweite und sicher wichtigere Schritt war, mit Holger Czukay auf „Plight and Premonition“ zusammen zu arbeiten. Die positiven Erfahrungen, die ich dabei sammeln durfte, waren es, die mich veranlassten, das RTC-Projekt zu initiieren.
Die früheste wirkliche Referenz zu Manafon ist vielleicht der Track „Ghosts“, aber zwischen 1981 und heute ließen sich eine Menge anderer Stücke finden, die auf die eine oder andere Art relevant für meine persönliche Entwicklung  waren. Manafon ist die Kulmination von dreißig verrückten Jahren als Interpret, Komponist und Produzent. Es fühlt sich manchmal mehr wie eine emotionelle Archäologie an als alles andere, was ich gemacht habe.

In der Pop-Geschichte gibt es nur ganz wenige Musiker, die immer das taten, was sie tun wollten und sich dabei nie an den Mainstream anbiederten. Du bist einer dieser wenigen. Dennoch scheint der Weg Deiner Musik – ganz abgesehen von ihrer konstanten Qualität - ein ständiges Hin und Her zu sein, was die Bereitschaft zum Experiment betrifft. Zwischen „Brilliant Tress“ und „Gone To Earth“ ist es ein großer Schritt. Ebenso etwa zwischen „Dead Bees“ und „Bleemish“...
Auf mich wirkt die Entwicklung relativ linear, mit einigen Ablenkungen vielleicht, die ich auszulöschen versuchte, und großen Sprüngen etwa alle zehn Jahre, zB von „Tin Drum“ zu „Brilliant Trees“ oder – wie Du gesagt hast – von „Dead Bees“ zu „Blemish“. Das waren sehr wichtige Entwicklungsschritte, die die Form dessen, was noch kommen wird, maßgeblich veränderten.

Im Vergleich zu den Gesellschaften, in denen wir leben, empfinden indigene Völker Zeit nicht linear, sondern zirkulär. Ist das eine Denkweise, der Du etwas abgewinnen kannst?
Vielleicht ist die Spirale eine passendere Analogie. Das Wachstum des Individuums ist keineswegs eine lineare Reise. Es wird vielmehr als multi-dimensional, multi-facettiert, intuitiv und tiefschürfend komplex erfahren, während es umgekehrt und in Wirklichkeit auch von einer simplen Klarheit durchdrungen, von purer Ausgelassenheit und Tiefgründigkeit ist, die sich uns ab und an entzieht. Wir sind uralt und voll des Lebens in ein und demselben Moment. Es gibt weniger zu lernen als ungeschehen zu machen.

Um auf die Entstehung von „Manafon“ zurück zu kommen: Selbst wenn du vom Weg abgekommen bist oder seine Existenz leugnest, bist du trotzdem immer noch auf dem Weg.

Gibt es in Deiner Arbeit tatsächlich Dinge, die Du gerne ungeschehen machen würdest?
Wenn Du damit Alben meinst, die ich besser nicht gemacht hätte: Klar, da gibt es einige. Alles, was ich vor meinem 21. Geburtstag aufgenommen habe, könnte man ohne Verlust vernichten. Das zweite Album, das ich mit Holger Csukay aufgenommen habe, war irgendwie erzwungen und ich in keinem geistig gesunden Zustand. Ähnlich verhielt es sich auch mit „The first day“. Aber die Erfahrung aus allen, also auch diesen Projekten erwies sich als prägend. Mit Robert (Fripp, Anm.) zu arbeiten, war enorm lehrreich und seine Anwesenheit in meinem Leben während einer Umbruchphase extrem willkommen. Dennoch bin ich heute von unserer Studio-Zusammenarbeit nicht mehr restlos überzeugt. Live war es etwas anderes. Aber in jeder meiner Arbeiten gibt es wohl Aspekte, die verbesserungsfähig gewesen wären oder die man besser erst gar nicht versucht hätte. Aber wie ich vorher schon sagte: Ich blicke nicht zurück. Ich gehe nicht zurück und höre mir altes Material von neuem an. Sicherlich auch eine sehr erschreckende Haltung. Wie Borges einmal sagte: Was ich geschrieben habe, lese ich nie noch einmal. Dazu bin ich viel zu ängstlich und beschämt.

The Wire hat in ihre Titel-Geschichte über Dich mit „Die Erfindung der Einsamkeit“ betitelt. Für mich klingt das sehr artifiziell, als ob jemand absichtlich und kalkuliert vorgegangen wäre, während ich „Manafon“ weniger als kreierten Soundtrack der Einsamkeit als vielmehr als sehr, sehr persönliches Werk erfahren habe
Da werde ich nicht widersprechen.

Welche Musik begleitet Dich durch die kalten Tage?
Ich höre derzeit keine Musik.

Der Schriftsteller RS Thomas, auf den sich das titelgebende Stück „Manafon“ bezieht, hat eine Glaubenskrise überstanden. Fühlst Du Dich ihm auf besondere Art und Weise verbunden?
Eigentlich nicht. Er schien mir nur irgendwie seltsam vertraut. Ich glaube, ich verstehe einfach, wie sein Geist funktioniert. Seine Widersprüche, sein einsamer Geist und sein Verlangen nach Wissen über göttliche Realität – das alles kann ich gut nachvollziehen. Und das fühlt sich wie eine mögliche Fernbeziehung an.

Er schreibt über Arbeit und Arbeiter und die Notwendigkeit, sich zu involvieren und Kontakt zu halten. Wie funktioniert Deine Beziehung zu Menschen, Arbeit und Leben.
Einerseits ist der kreative Akt, der die Verbindung herstellt, Reaktionen hervorruft und mich auf Reisen führt, die sonst nicht möglich wären. Anders als bei Thomas´ literarischer Arbeit ist meine aber nicht gänzlich einsam. Tatsächlich hat sie mich durch meine Auftritte in Kontakt mit großen Gruppen von Menschen gebracht. Aber es ist nicht der soziale Aspekt, der in meiner Arbeit eine tragende Rolle spielt… Dann gibt es etwas, was ich einfach als meine „Praxis“ bezeichne. Die hat mich mit den unterschiedlichsten Leuten zusammen gebracht, die sich gegenseitig unterstützen, aber auch das würde ich nicht überbewerten.


Ganz abgesehen davon habe ich die letzten sechs Jahre eine sehr isolierte Existenz geführt, für die ich mich nicht entschuldige, denn dieser Rückzug war sehr wichtig für mich. 


Kannst Du Dir vorstellen, diese gewählte Isolation für deine nächste Album zu verlassen oder denkst du, das würde das deine Kreativität gefährden?
Was sein wird, wird sein. Ich will mich nicht durch künstliche Parameter beschränken lassen.

Seinen Geist für totale Improvisation zu befreien muss für jemanden, der dreißig Jahre lang Musik macht und sich dadurch auch in einem bestimmten System befindet, sehr schwierig sein. Manchmal wird man auf „Manafon“ auch den Eindruck nicht los, dass, obwohl Du wirklich improvisierst, trotzdem noch eine gewisse Eingängigkeit vorhanden ist, von der Du Dich nicht befreien wolltest oder konntest.
Warum auch sollte man die Hooks einer vorhandenen Melodie unbedingt verlieren oder sie umgekehrt dort suchen, wo es sie nicht gibt? Die auf „Manafon“ getroffene Balance war immer die, von der ich das Gefühl hatte, dass sie für die jeweilige Komposition die beste ist. Die Komposition gilt es zu unterstützen, nicht mehr und nicht weniger.

Glaubst Du, dass „Manafon“ durrch die Verschmelzung beider Welten Leuten, die zu improvisierter Musik keinen Zugang haben, einen solchen eröffnet?
Ich weiß nicht. Jedenfalls war es nicht Intention. Potentiell könnte es ja auch das Gegenteil auslösen und mein eigenes wie auch das Publikum improvisierter Musik befremden. Es ist ein Hybrid und ich weiß nicht, ob und wo er ein Publikum finden wird. Aber es hat auch keine Eile. Dass offene Geister es, wenn sie darüber stoßen, zu schätzen wissen – das ist es, was ich mir wünsche.

Nachdem Du dieses Album gemacht hast: Denkst Du, es gibt andere Bereich der Impro-Musik, die es für Dich zu erkunden gilt?
Schwer zu sagen. Ich habe kein Verlangen, den Zugang, den ich jetzt gewählt habe, exakt zu wiederholen. Vielleicht werde ich auch etwas ganz anderes machen und irgendwann später, wenn sich neuerlich die Gelegenheit dazu bietet, darauf zurückkommen. Vielleicht aber auch wird es eine persönliche Notwendigkeit sein, reaktionär darauf zu reagieren. Aber eins nach dem anderen: Als erstes kommt immer noch der Sinn, etwas Bestimmtes mitzuteilen und erst dann die Form, in der man das tun sollte.

Könntest Du Dir vorstellen, gemeinsam mit den Musikern, die mit Dir an Manafon arbeiteten, direkter in den Entstehungsprozess involviert zu sein, dh nicht Sessions von ihnen einspielen zu lassen, sondern gemeinsam Sessions zu spielen? 
Die Beziehung zu diesen Musikern zu intensivieren, war nicht mein Anliegen. Ich bin kein Improvisationskünstler, ich bin Komponist, Songwriter oder wie immer Du es auch bezeichnen magst.
Ich war vielmehr interessiert daran, meinen musikalischen Horizont zu erweitern, indem ich mich auf einem Terrain bewege, das sich mit meinen üblichen Zielen spießt. Zu keinem Zeitpunkt hatte ich das Bedürfnis, ein Impro-Musiker zu sein oder zu werden. Und das ist auch noch immer so. Diese Leute haben Jahrzehnte ihres Lebens der Freiheit gewidmet, die dann entsteht, wenn man eine bestimmte Professionalität oder Flüssigkeit am Instrument erarbeitet hat, die ein Leben und Atmen im Moment ermöglicht. Das ist eine Philosophie, die nicht nur die Entstehung der Musik selbst, sondern auch die Musiker selbst begleitet. Man kann daher nicht von einem Tag auf den anderen in deren Umgebung herumspazieren und sich den Impro-Hut aufsetzen. Oder zumindest kann ich das nicht.

Andererseits wird auch zu viel Wert darauf gelegt, Improvisation als exklusive Domäne einer Minderheit darzustellen. Es ist aber doch so: Alle Künste beinhalten Elemente der Improvisation, vom Akt der Schöpfung bis hin zur Performance, sonst wäre kein Leben in ihnen. Was freie Impro aber ausmacht, ist diese Unmittelbarkeit, der Mangel an Zeit zwischen Impuls und Ausführung, dieser Akt purer Schöpfung im Moment, wenn Gedanke und Aktion als das Resultat intuitiver Anstrengung eins werden.

Musik wie auf Manofon muss sehr schwierig live zu performen sein. Entweder sie ist es keine improvisierte Musik mehr oder – wie es Franz Hautzinger unlängst sagte – sie verliert irgendwann ihre Authentizität und Plausibilität. Denkst Du, dass es möglich wäre, ein Live-Setting dafür zu finden, das Dich und Deine Ansprüche zufrieden stellt?
Das hab ich wieder und wieder überlegt. Dafür müsste ich zuerst einmal eine Gruppe von Leuten zu finden, die willens wären Elemente von beidem – komponierter und improvisierter Musik – einzufangen. Keine unmögliche Aufgabe. Tatsächlich könnte es sogar sehr spannend sein, aber ich habe noch nicht beschlossen, ob das wirklich drin ist oder nicht.

Zitat:
„Manafon ist die Kulmination von dreißig verrückten Jahren als Interpret, Komponist und Produzent. Es fühlt sich manchmal mehr wie eine emotionelle Archäologie an als alles andere, was ich gemacht habe.“

„Komfort-Musik hat sicher ihren Platz, aber woran es uns heute fehlt ist Musik, die Erfahrung mitteilt und das System schockt; uns aus unserer Apathie herausholt und uns die wahre individuelle und kollektive Lage vor Augen führt.“

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 10:14 AM | Permalink

Life's a series of obstacles for the art-rocker. That's not necessarily a problem.

One can draw parallels between David Sylvian's career and that of Scott Walker.

Sylvian, who at age 51 is 15 years younger than Walker, also experienced early success as a handsome British pop idol - his New Romantic/New Wave band Japan enjoyed a series of Top Ten hits in the early 1980s, one of which, "Ghosts," was remarkable for its ambient soundscape. Like Walker, Sylvian has a gorgeously smooth, sensuous voice - in his case, a tenor (that seems to have deepened into baritone) with a yearningly intimate vibrato.

And after Japan, from the 1980s onward, Sylvian, like Walker, has moved steadily toward the avant-garde side of pop music with his lyrical and instrumental concerns, alone and with international collaborators.

And both men have adopted new homelands - while Walker left his native U.S. for Britain back in the 1960s, Sylvian in the 1990s left Britain for the U.S. to pursue sadhana, enlightenment through the aid of a spiritual guru, first in Northern California and then New Hampshire. Divorced, he now spends time between New York City and New Hampshire, where his children live.

"For people who leave their native country, you begin to feel you can't put roots down anywhere else and yet you can't go home because the place you left no longer exists as it once was," Sylvian says, in a telephone interview about the release of his new album Manafon. "In a sense, the world becomes your home because one place doesn't feel like home any more than any other. Yet there's a freedom in that opening. Something is lost but something is gained."

Both men, in short, have become deep-thinking aesthetes. Yet if there's been a major difference, Walker's music increasingly has tried to match the despair and darkness of his subject matter. Albums like Tilt and The Drift are tough conceptual art. Sylvian, on the other hand, especially in his highly lauded 1999 album Dead Bees on a Cake, had been trying to find breakthrough beauty that contains a spiritual dimension - not conventional prettiness or religiosity, by any means. He's become one of pop music's great seekers.

Manafon -- named for a Welsh village and released on his own Samadhisound label - continues his search for peak musical beauty, in many ways. But the darkness that is life is starting now to surround him.

Working with improvisational musicians over the course of several years at sessions in Vienna, Tokyo and London, he has created nine songs featuring hushed and muted soundscapes: breathy, restrained sax; careful guitar strumming; isolated cello shrieks; short, high-octave piano explorations; quietly commanding acoustic bass; occasional live electronic interventions or turntable scratches, and other sounds. Musicians include Evan Parker (sax), John Tilbury (piano), Werner Dafeldecker (acoustic bass) and Franz Hautzinger (trumpet). Sylvian relies on his voice, both soothing and foreboding, to provide the melody; the songs are all ballads, slowly and ruminatively sung with lots of space between words.

But those words. For a man who seemed on the verge of achieving bliss on Dead Bees' "Krishna Blue," these lyrics often feel ominous. From "Snow White in Appalachia":

"There is no Maker, just inexhaustible indifference/
And there's comfort in that so you feel unafraid."

"Random Acts of Senseless Violence," which may be about the all-too-temporal scourge of terrorism: "The safety in numbers is just a contrivance/For the future will contain random acts of senseless violence." A song called "The Rabbit Skinner," which ends with Sylvian concluding "Here lies a man without quality," has extra bite because the album comes with a portrait of a weathered Sylvian holding a dead rabbit.

Sylvian used a process known as "automatic writing" in coming up with the lyrics. He had done that earlier with 2003's Blemish, an at-times difficult album at least partly about his divorce. On Manafon, he was responding to the music that had (mostly) been previously recorded, sometimes a year ago or longer. It wasn't completely spontaneous; he listened to the music studiously to find words that he believed organically fit the instrumentation. And he occasionally used notebooks to help when he became blocked. But he also let his own words surprise him, not editing or rewriting them for poetic cleverness.

"I wanted to get to a certain subject matter that seemed unreachable, out of my grasp," Sylvian explains, in a voice both erudite and confessional. "I wanted to push myself to those areas and see what would surface. In automatic writing, there's not really a point where one reviews what one has written prior to recording it. [There's] a sense of possible revelation that can be quite exciting, because what's revealed publicly is also revealed to myself."

So what's being revealed? One comes up against a crisis in faith, a mourning for life as lived and its limits. It's especially striking in that previously quoted line from "Snow White in Appalachia" - a beautifully haunting song that seems like a wiser, more sorrowful cousin to The Stones' "Moonlight Mile" - about the absence of a "Maker."

"I'm not afraid of complete annihilation," Sylvian says. "I don't have a problem with this life being all there is, that things come to a full stop at the end of a lifetime. In fact, I find it quite comforting to think along those lines. I find it a beautiful thought that life can go on, but there's no knowledge of what that life will consist of. Does the suffering of this life also go on into the next, as well as the joys?

"Now my brother, who's an atheist, finds that quite troubling, so we're kind of at odds with each other. He would love to believe that life goes on. He loves life so much he wishes it were eternal."

In a way, perhaps, Sylvian is where Peggy Lee was at when she sang Leiber & Stoller's "Is That All There Is?" back in 1969, but maybe not as resigned to it as she. "This whole album, in one sense, deals with disillusionment," he says. "I think this is just where I find myself at this particular moment. It's very much a document of a moment in time.

"There are a lot of questions that show up in the course of writing the work, but there are no resolutions because I had no answers at the time. Usually I write from the standpoint of having lived thru an experience and then I feel comfortable enough to write about it. I haven't been doing that so much. I feel more comfortable with the process of questioning and not knowing."

As Sylvian describes it, his long, devotional search for sadhana lately has been meeting with obstacles. That's not an unheard-of thing; sometimes an obstacle is meant to test someone and show a greater truth. But, he says, he can't get around this one.

"I came up against one of these obstacles and I found myself incapable of getting around the thing," he says. "So I started to look at what was being shown to me, but I couldn't grasp the nature of the lesson. That's where I find myself. At the same time, my means of trying to comprehend it are part of my development."

Asked what specifically that obstacle is, Sylvian demurs. "That's a kind of personal issue I don't feel comfortable talking about directly," he says, with a tone of apology.

On the flip side, Sylvian notes, there's a positive side to Manafon. "It's dealing with the poetic imagination, the creative mind, which is enormously powerful and in some way is connected with the core of our being. If a life is given shape by one's poetic or creative acts, I think there's great beauty and great significance in that."

So Sylvian's struggle continues - as does his art.

STEVEN ROSEN

[Photo Credit: Donald Milne]

view source article here

Posted by Joseph B. at 03:30 PM | Permalink

“We shouldn't ask that things be made too easy for us.”

A compilation of Q & A interviews undertaken in reference to the release and reception of Manafon.

© donald milne

Lets start with the word, Manafon. As soon I heard that this was the title, I thought, “Ooh, you’ve been to Wales.” Have you?
Well, I have but it was such a long time ago now that I can barely remember the circumstances. 

It’s such a Welsh word. Tell us about the connection of your new work to this one word, which is a place in Powys.
I came across the word in relation to the life and work of r. s thomas. It was the location of his first parish and the place where he wrote his first three volumes of poetry. Over time the word became for me a metaphor for the poetic imagination, the creative mind or wellspring, hence the cover art of the cd depicting an implausible idyl if you will. A place where the intuitive mind taps into the stream of the unconscious. 

Manafon, as RS Thomas fans will know, is the place where he was ordained as rector in 1942. Has he been an influence to you?
I don't think Thomas' life or work has had a direct influence on mine that I can detect. 

How/when did you come across his work?
A dear friend introduced me to his work back in the 80's. She'd loved the title of the volume of poetry she'd stumbled across and knew the fact that he was a man of faith would interest me, particularly as his poetry struggled with such issues.

Is it important to have met your influences?
Not at all. In fact it's often better not to have come face to face with these figures in life. Writing about place is similar. It's often better to have explored the place via the imagination before making the first visit. 

In the song Manafon, you refer to Thomas as a “man down in the valley, who doesn’t speak in his own tongue”… a man who “bears a grudge against the English”. The song doesn’t paint him as an attractive individual, which I guess he wasn’t for some. What is it about him and his contradictions which inspire you?
I don't feel the piece paints him in an unflattering light. It's a bare bones character study which, if anything, presents a man for whom there's no easy answers. 

There have been books written about the man since his death that can better pinpoint the contradictions he embodied. It's not a matter of what inspires me so much as what he represents for me. In some ways this austere, cantankerous old man is my grandfather, a man out of time. Rigid, damaged, wounded, immovable. On another level it's the ideals that he tried to live by, the discipline and austerity he adhered to and imposed on others. His desire for self betterment, for answers to life's big questions, but also the role he might personally play in the uplifting of his people, society. A noble outlook were he not such a terribly flawed individual (aren't we all. no judgment there). His over identification with a nation to which he, in a sense, didn't fully belong. So there was this quixotic element to his personality, it seems to me, a tragicomic element that wouldn't look out of place in one of Beckett's plays or novels. In fact he'd fit in beautifully. Then again, there's the poetry which can be idealistic in its praise of the working man but can be profoundly beautiful and moving also. His own questioning of God's silence, well, he railed against it at times as if faith had abandoned him. There's such a rich complexity there and we're only scratching the surface. These contradictions, this multifaceted character, although something of an anachronism in his own time, in some ways anticipates a contemporary predicament. On what does one ground one's own life? In a world that's rudderless when it comes to issues of morality, life values, where all is relative, where does one root oneself? It's a philosophical question that we, at some point in our lives, and the earlier the better, have to begin to ask ourselves. While it might be liberating to be freed from dogma and, for example, the rules of the church, as a society we hand much of that power over to government which steps in as surrogate patriarch and plays the enforcer. This will lead, I'm certain, to outbreaks of violence against societal laws and strictures. If a nation doesn't have a shared moral code how can it manage to order itself and maintain peaceful co-habitation without tighter and tighter reins being applied? With the death of god (as I recently read someplace, shot in the back of the head) on what energy field is the moral compass based? I feel that with the death of the notion of an external god, a necessary step in our evolution perhaps, to some extent we've also done away with the notion of ourselves as spiritual beings, as something more than flesh and blood. This imbalance will need correcting if we're to continue to evolve holistically. 

He was a man with a strong but complicated personal faith. Does that resonate with you?
It's a matter of defining for oneself what gives one's own life its shape and form, what are its defining characteristics, its sense of purpose? By and large, we're all free to determine what these might be. With Thomas, the poet and the priest are inseparable but for me it's the poetry which best gives his life its true definition. The freedom, ability, and the process to openly question aspects of his own faith, which I can only assume helped his personal growth in some manner (in Hinduism they might say this was his sadhana, his personal means for developing his spiritual awareness), must've acted as a considerable release for him. As a man of faith, as rector, his approach might have been too austere, out of touch, to the degree that it alienated people (by all accounts) but his poetry expresses his humanity which, at its best, rises above the specifics of faith and national identity to speak of the universality of the human condition. He dug deep into his own soul, as corroded and damaged as it might've been, and spoke with as true a voice as he could muster. This happens frequently in Beckett's work. These heavily handicapped individuals are merely reflections of ourselves. In a sense Thomas might, on the one hand, represent some of the higher aspirations of the human spirit but, on the other, indicate how heavily handicapped each one of us is individually and what effort of will it takes to overcome that. Some of us bear heavier handicaps than others but as J.G. Bennett once said in a quote that is sampled on Robert Fripp's album 'exposure' "if you know you have an unpleasant nature and dislike people, this is no obstacle for work". Which I take to mean that, despite the most inhibiting of handicaps, work on oneself, in the spiritually disciplined sense, is always available to you. And again, same source; "it is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering". The cause of this suffering is of course, generally speaking, ourselves.

© donald milne

RS Thomas isn’t an “easy” poet. He and his wife lived in the same house, but at opposite ends. They hardly ever spoke to each other, and only met at meal times. Yet after Elsi’s death, all these amazing poems started pouring out. Does love, or the notion of it and its difficulties, influence your own work? If so, how?

I would say the necessity and desire for love is an important underlying theme for me. This issue lies at the heart of a piece such as 'emily dickinson'. It's a fact of life that not everyone experiences unconditional love, finds themselves or others un-loveable, aren't willing to give, to sacrifice for the sake of love. Some simply cut themselves off from it. Withdraw. Yes, the theme of love or its absence is a constant preoccupation. To paraphrase the artist agnes martin, art is a celebration of the beauty in life or a protest against its absence.

How did you musically approach his new work? It certainly feels more easily experimental, picking up where Blemish left off.
I used the same approached that I developed when working on Blemish. This involved improvisational performances accompanied by a process of automatic writing. I expanded this approach by embracing the input of larger ensembles recorded live in studios in europe and japan. At the outset, I wasn't sure if or how this was going to work in practice but after the first sessions, which were recorded in vienna in 04, and which resulted in a number of the pieces you'll find on 'manafon', I knew I had unearthed an exchange which could yield fascinating results. That first session ran for seven and a half days. There was a lot of exploratory work done during that time. Many beautiful improvisations were captured but, as I was looking for something specific, something I wasn't able to verbally communicate to the musicians involved, I had to gently nudge or cajole, make hints and suggestions, bring individuals into and out of the studio so as to change the internal chemistry of the ensemble, until I finally heard what it was I was looking for. This happened on the seventh day of the sessions, the last full day of work. The ensemble at that point in time was a quartet consisting of werner dafeldecker on double bass, michael moser on cello, christian fennesz on guitar and laptop and keith rowe on guitar. I've described this and the resulting work as a form of modern chamber music. 

Once I knew the process worked I gave myself less time to produce results on subsequent sessions. The tokyo session in 06 was a one day affair, as was the london session of 07. I would work on the writing and recording of the lyric and vocal melody at a later point in time, sometimes as much as a year after the initial recordings were made. This gave the writing sessions back their spontaneity and freshness as it was like hearing the work for the first time (I'd made an initial selection of which tracks would work for me around the time the original recordings were made). I'd playback a given improvisation and start the writing process. After a matter of hours the lyric would be complete, composed simultaneously with the melody, which locked into precise queues heard within the improvisation. I would record the vocal on the spot meaning there was little time for revision. This is what I mean by a process of automatic writing. It was a matter of adhering to the process or the discipline and running with it until it felt complete. There's a rapidity about the process which feels urgent, decisive and emotionally linked to the spirit of the original improv. 

The music is kind of free-form, or at least that’s my impression. The melodies come from the voice. Is this a deliberate device?
Yes, the music is entirely free form. From my vantage point the melodies are suggested by what I hear in the improvisations. Whereas the musicians were playing with enormous restraint, I worked against genre if you will, and developed the lines that I heard suggested or alluded to. I used atonal sounds as punctuation, queues, a suggested key (sometimes all I had to go on was the hum of an amp or the buzz from the pickups on Keith's guitar). Where necessary, I added my own musical contributions in the form of guitar and electronics. I also had a solo session recorded by the pianist John Tilbury which I layered into some of the earlier pieces. 

What are the stand out tracks for you, or the most personally satisfying?
The greatest challenge was presented by what became 'the greatest living englishman' so that's the centerpiece of the album for me. Melodically I'm fond of 'snow white in appalachia'. I love Evan Parker's solo on the coda of 'emily dickinson'. 'The rabbit skinner' is possibly the most autobiographical lyric on the album. It is an album that is conceived as a single entity though. A 'song' should stand up alone just as a poem, removed from the body of a book of poems, should do also. But to understand and benefit from the full resonance of the poem it's best read in the context of that body of work. Of course, this is a decision each individual is free to make for themselves but it should be remembered that the album is a meta composition composed by the artist. 

Do you consider the “listener” when you’re making your records?  I mean, do you care about what they’ll take from your work, if they’ll like it? Or, to misquote Oscar Wilde, is any opinion better than having no opinion?
To create a work of any kind is an act of communication therefore the aim is to lend the material as much clarity as is possible without compromising it in anyway. You work in service of the composition. It makes demands and you do your best to adequately respond. Of course one cares what listeners take away from the experience but what you can't do is anticipate a specific audience's response to it or have one in mind whilst creating it. The strength of a piece comes from its internal logic, that it’s true to itself. That the piece might speak to a very small number of people isn't its concern. The main consideration is that the essence of the work is uncompromised and communicated to the best of your abilities. 

As to whether people like it or not, I'd prefer to think that with a work like manafon, they're possibly having an audio experience unlike one they might've had before. There's no intention to repeat an experience someone might've had, say, with Brilliant trees. We're saddled with our past for better or worse but each individual release should rise or fall on its own merits. I've always had to deal with the fact that, whatever I produce, I will upset or alienate a proportion of my audience, occasionally to the point of losing them altogether. Some might complain the work is too 'out there' while others complain that the work isn't experimental enough, that I'm merely repeating myself. Consequently, over the years I've lost some listeners and gained others. I guess I'm one of those infuriatingly 'inconsistent' artists who don't tailor the work to any specific market therefore there will always be dissenters regardless of what I produce. Having said that I am incredibly grateful to those who've stuck with me, given me the benefit of the doubt, and taken pains to understand the reasons and the possible benefits for the, sometimes radical, changes in my output.

© donald milne

Leading on from that, some people would still like a less experimental Sylvian album, dare I say it, Secrets of the Beehive II. Can you see there ever being more work in this vein? More immediately accessible? Or is the process of exploring new creative avenues more important?
On hearing manafon for the first time, a friend and musician told me that, for him at least, it served the same purpose as Secrets of the beehive, was its contemporary reflection. I was grateful to hear that. It's an observation I wouldn't disagree with. I'd also point out that, at the time of 'beehive's' release, the critics were not kind but openly dismissive or downright brutal. Consequently, it initially sold quite poorly. It's easier to see things clearer in hindsight perhaps. Manafon doesn't sound wildly experimental to my ears. Nor do I personally hear it as being a difficult album but I've always known the experience would be different for others. Time will soften its edges. It may sow the seeds for what might develop into a new genre for vocal music perhaps? Or maybe it's simply a passing glitch on the digital face of popular music.  I don't know. But what I am sure of is that, over time, its abstractions will become much easier to embrace. After all, Debussy was considered impossibly avant-garde in his time. It's hard to credit such a response to his music today. Similarly, Brahms piano concerto #1 was reviewed in its day as 'noise'. We need to grow into modern works. We shouldn't ask that things be made too easy for us. I’m obviously not comparing myself or manafon to these composers or their works, but it should be remembered that to be challenged is something of a gift if the work truly has something new to offer, a fresh perspective or experience.

Having said that, I haven't abandoned form entirely. I may make a return to it at some point. For now, I'm leaving all possibilities open.

How important a role did your presence at the Erstlive event in Köln of 2004 play in your decision as to whom to work with on Manafon.
It had no direct impact in terms of the individuals I was interested in working with as these were decisions I’d come to, with the exception of the London session, some time in advance of attending the festival. Christian (Fennesz) invited me to attended the festival knowing full well my intentions believing that this physical introduction to some of the key players I was interested in working with would facilitate later negotiations when it came time to put the sessions together and in that respect attending the festival was very helpful (although, I hope it goes without saying, that it was an inspiring event to attend). Frankly, I was only in attendance on the first night of what I believe was a three day event but I met Keith, Otomo, Toshi, and sachiko at that time. Toshi confessed to being present at the Budokkan many years back when I performed with Japan. Otomo had heard Blemish and was openly complimentary about the work I’d done with Derek. For my part I’d was familiar with large portions of their output going back to Toshi’s work with Tetuzi at Off Site, Otomo’s large and varied output with all kinds of ensembles and collaborations, a personal favorite being the Filament series of recordings, and numerous other works, in particular, those recorded for/with Günter Müller’s label Four 4 ears and Zorn’s Tzadik, so there’s was an immediate rapport. Other listening during this period came from a variety of sources; Christian’s work with Polwechsel, ‘Wrapped Islands’ was another significant piece of the puzzle and of course the Matchless catalogue which doesn’t get the due attention it deserves containing as it does the Amm catalogue and numerous solo and collaborative efforts by that network of players, a truly fantastic resource. Jon Abbey’s Erstwhile label has released a prodigious amount of work over it’s relatively short lifespan which includes much of Keith Rowe’s best work outside of his involvement with AMM. It also acts as distributor for a number of other important and related works in the genre. Other labels of interest include Germany’s Grob, Hat Hut which has released much of Polwechsel’s work and has much to offer from it’s diverse catalogue of artists, Mike Harding’s Touch label which, again, houses a diverse range of recordings and artists, most notably much of Christian’s recent work, Mego.. the list goes on. There’s a fantastic wealth of material out there if you dig beneath the surface. So, I was aware of the backgrounds and histories of the musicians I was primarily interested in prior to the trip to Köln. As far as the musicians that constituted the London sessions; it was incorrectly reported in the Wire feature that I’d worked with the line up of Evan Parker’s electro-acoustic ensemble which would’ve been as pointless to my needs as it was financially restrictive should it have been strategically possible. As it happened I contacted Evan and sent him the work I’d done to date on the Vienna sessions so he knew what it was I was aiming for in the most general of senses. We talked about his work with the electro-acoustic ensemble, which was certainly a reference point, but also his work with the Evan Parker Octet as ‘crossing the river’ remains a personal favorite of mine and the scale of that recording had more in common with what I was aiming to achieve with Evan. The members of the electro-acoustic ensemble that were present at the session, aside from Evan himself, were Philipp Wachmann (who doesn’t appear on the final recordings) and Joel Ryan. The remainder of the ensemble consisted of John Tilbury, Christian Fennesz, and Marcio Mattos (Marcio was a wonderful addition to the ensemble and one I’m grateful to Evan for suggesting. It came about as a result of a series of exchanges between Evan and myself that helped narrow down just what it was I was after).

I didn’t go into this project blind or ill informed. In fact an important part of the entire process for me was deciding who was to be a part of any given ensemble, understanding that chemistry, as it allowed me to anticipate, within reason, the field in which we’d be working. That’s half the work done right there.

In a review in The Wire some years back for Sakamoto’s work with Alva Noto, Rob Young suggested, somewhat pejoratively, that both you and Sakamoto had sought out younger musicians working in the field of ‘electronics’ to revitalize your own works. In your case the reference was to your work with Fennesz. Do you feel that this was/is fair comment?
At root it’s an ill informed perspective that’s likely to be of complete irrelevance to the participating musicians or even the listening audience.

I couldn’t swear to it but I believe that in both the above mentioned cases it was the younger musicians who contacted Ryuichi and I. And by ‘younger’ we’re speaking of an age difference between Christian and I which is narrower than that between Ryuichi and myself so, really, how relevant a point can this be making? A collaboration should, ideally, be mutually beneficial otherwise there’d be no currency in the relationship. Mercifully, musicians do reach out to one another. There shouldn’t be stigma attached to the idea. When I first started putting calls into musicians back in the early 80’s I was told by some of these amazing players that they rarely, if ever, received requests, out of the blue, from musicians they’d previously not met or had some sort of family tree connection with. They were grateful, as was I, that our somewhat hermetically sealed worlds were broken into, that the scope of the horizon was stretched a little wider. With the collapse of the music industry and the intervention of the internet, that global networking is now second nature to most musicians. It wasn’t always the case.

I’m sure you anticipated quite a mixed bag of responses to Manafon. Outside of the critics who found themselves simply unable to place it or even pass judgment upon it did a couple of the openly hostile ones impact you in some way? How do you digest this kind of ‘criticism’.
To be honest, I sidestep the matter of digesting altogether by avoiding them. The last thing you need is a second critic in your head as you tentatively take first steps towards something new because your own critical faculties are more than up to the task. Being overly aware of the viewpoints of others would simply encourage the critical factor to go into overdrive which would completely undermine the intuitive process altogether. The opinions of others, whose motivations are open to question, don’t come into it. Once a work is well underway you might seek the viewpoints of people whose judgment you value. And by that I don’t mean that the response will be positive or encouraging, sometimes the opposite can be equally valuable. If a certain someone heard the work and passed comment of a negative nature, aware of the history of such comments from this individual you’d know whether the work was on course or not. In other words, you don’t take these things at face value but in the context of the history of the individual’s interests and limitations perhaps. But general opinions that give an overview of the almost completed work are only so helpful anyway, By that time you’ve already followed your instincts a long way down a very difficult path with plenty of time for self doubt, criticism etc., to have been digested, worked through on some level or another. What’s more important in the process of making a work is not confirmation of a general kind. It works along the lines of dealing with specifics. Does that bass have enough low-end to it? Will I get away with that much background noise from the room? Can you hear the edit on the piano at 2:32 mins? Very mundane stuff, but that’s how exchanges with trusted loved ones tend to be focused.

I did feel a certain trepidation once Manafon was completed, not because I felt I’d fallen short of my own goals, but I wondered would they make sense to anyone else but me? I personally know so few people with a musical background with significant breadth to understand what it is I’d attempted to achieve. But there were a few lone voices, belonging to people whose opinion I value enormously, that gave me reason to believe the material was accessible, that its subject matter wasn’t either overwhelming or too tightly guarded, and that this unlikely collision of genres and aesthetics made sense to more than just myself. In short, that it worked. Really, that’s all one needs to know.

It seems that in terms of the public that might be attracted to a work of this kind you’re going to come up against obstacles from both sides of the fence. This must’ve been obviously to you from the start, no?
When you say ‘both sides of the fence’ I imagine you’re talking about my presumed audience and the audience that my collaborators enjoy? Yes, of course, the work potentially alienates both. It takes an open mind to get close to the material. If you come with certain expectations firmly in place you’re not going to find access all that easy. There’s nothing I can do about this supposed division of interests, nor would I have attempted to address it if were a possibility to do so. The work wasn’t trying to satisfy a particular niche audience (niche markets are fiercely guarded by everyone with a stake in them with the exception of the majority of the artists themselves). As mentioned before, it was a work born out of personal needs. I’ve spoken about the genesis of the work quite extensively but I feel no need to defend the material. It’ll have a life of it’s own. It’ll work its way out into the world at its own pace. It’s in no hurry.

And finally, can you say something about the samadhisound label and its future?
samadhisound came into being almost of its own volition. Running a label wasn’t something I anticipated as being on the cards for myself but I’ve enjoyed my involvement in samadhisound quite considerably. There have been periods where I’ve fought for its survival because we’d come a fair way in establishing it on a fundamental basis and it felt premature to let the enterprise go. Having said that, we can see that the business and media are changing rapidly and that sales are in decline. If it wasn’t for the hard work of a few good people the label couldn’t possibly have continued to exist as a platform for as long as it has. With that firmly in mind I only look to the year ahead. I believe 2010 will see more releases on the label than in any year prior. Rather than indicating the health of the industry or label this simply reflects the number of projects that have reached my ears that I’ve wanted samadhisound to be a part of. As frequently said in reference to my aspirations for the label; it’s possible to plant an apple tree without harboring dreams of an orchard.

© donald milne

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 10:42 AM | Permalink

David Sylvian interview in Jazz Magazine / Jazzman #607, October 2009.
Interview : Frédéric Goaty

© donald milne

J’entends toujours les fantômes de Ghosts dans votre chant, et votre écriture aussi…
La façon dont j’approche une chanson compte moins que l’idée, plus générale, de déconstruction d’un arrangement. Ghosts fonctionne certainement comme un prototype : c’est là que l’idée, et surtout son exécution, ont donné de vrais résultats. Mais il y eut par la suite d’autres chansons qui ont échoïsé cette approche : Weathered Walls, Gone To Earth, Pop Song, etc. Avec “Blemish”, la forme traditionnelle a plus ou moins été abandonnée, et nous sommes entrés dans un monde plus abstrait, pour tenter de créer de nouvelles formes. “Manafon” est une extension de cette appoche.

À la première écoute, “Manafon” semble effectivement être la suite “logique” de “Blemish”. Mais l’accent est particulièrement mis sur la voix, vous avez “cadré” d’une autre manière les impros libres de vos accompagnateurs…
Il y a une différence, comme vous le savez, entre ce que l’on appelle “jazz” et “improvisation libre”. Bien que beaucoup pensent que les racines du free improv proviennent du jazz, et que son évolution l’a peu à peu défini en tant que genre à part entière. Si l’on considère tout ce que j’ai publié depuis dix ans, “Manafon” est peut-être le disque le moins traversé par un feeling “jazz”. D’un autre côté, il embrasse l’improvisation plus que tout ce que j’ai enregistré à ce jour.

Improvisez-vous live en studio avec vos musiciens ?
Non. J’écris les paroles et je m’enregistre en quelques heures, dès que je me retrouve pour la première fois seul avec la musique, ce qui est aussi une forme d’improvisation – peut-être pas dans sa forme la plus pure... L’économie de moyens mis en œuvre reflète, je crois, les improvisations elles-mêmes.

Quelles sont vos influences aujourd’hui ? Dans “Manafon”, vous oscillez entre le chanté et le parlé...
Il m’est très difficile de définir exactement d’où mes influences proviennent. J’ai absorbé et digéré tant de choses qu’elle peuvent surgir dans mon travail sans aucun calcul de ma part. Vous tenez vraiment à ce que je vous cite deux artistes-vocalistes qui résonnent encore en moi ? Robert Wyatt et Tim Buckley. Mais je ne suis pas certain que vous arriverez à entendre leur “influence” chez moi…

Nick Drake, John Martyn ? Vous avez travaillé avec le contrebassiste Danny Thompson, qui a aussi enregistré avec eux…
Drake et Martyn font tous deux partie de mon régime musical depuis des décennies. De Martyn, je n’ai cependant écouté que ses disques acoustiques. Là encore, ce n’est peut-être pas si évident, mais j’ai souvent ressenti une profonde parenté avec Drake.

Pensez-vous avoir créé votre propre esthétique ?
Ce n’est pas à moi mais aux autres d’en décider…

Noël Akchoté a participé à des séances que vous avez dirigées…
... mais elles ne convenaient pas à la tonalité globale de “Manafon” – comme beaucoup d’autres d’ailleurs... Mais j’adore Noël – le musicien et l’homme –, et je serais ravi de travailler à nouveau avec lui.

Comment avez-vous rencontré Evan Parker ?
J’ai l’habitude d’écrire aux musiciens, de les appeler… Dans le cas d’Evan, c’est très simple : je suis assez proche de quelqu’un qui travaille pour ECM aux Etats-Unis, et je lui ai demandé son adresse email...

Aimeriez-vous enregistrer pour ECM, sous la direction de Manfred Eicher ? Vous avez joué un rôle décisif dans le dernier CD d’Arve Henriksen, “Cartography”, publié par ce label…
Je ne suis pas certain que ce serait une bonne chose. Mais si un jour Samadhisound n’existe plus, certainement. Mais je ne crois pas que j’ai personnellement besoin du patronage de Manfred Eicher, bien que j’aie un profond respect pour lui et son label.

Malgré le “pouvoir” grandissant du téléchargement, légal ou illégal, vous continez de croire au support CD…
Je n’ai pas un attachement particulier au CD en tant que médium, mais j’ai évolué dans une période où la musique y était liée, et je ne suis pas prêt à abandonner totalement cette idée de support physique. Pourquoi ? Parce que j’adore la notion de “collection de chansons”, les thèmes, les concepts, la façon dont on les habille, le design du CD... Les nouveaux médiums repoussent les limites, mais je ne veux pas perdre ce qu’il y a de bon – et parfois de mauvais… – dans le fait qu’on présente une “suite” de chansons. Chacune d’entre elles peut être appréciée en tant que telle, comme un poème extrait d’un recueil, mais je crois qu’on ne peut saisir toute sa résonance qu’en ayant connaissance du recueil complet, non ? Chacun fait comme il veut, mais moi j’aime présenter un travail complet. Et tant que ce sera possible, je le ferai.

noël akchoté © david sylvian

Noël Akchoté about David Sylvian

« J’ai une drôle de chance (dans la vie s’entend), souvent j’fais des rencontres. Mais de vraies rencontres, c’est-à-dire avec des gens dont j’ignore à peu près tout ou presque l’instant d’avant. Il semble que par le biais d’un ami commun japonais, David avait entendu dès sa sortie un album solo (“Alike Joseph”, Rectangle, Rec-AN, épuisé) où précisément je joue sans jamais toucher les cordes de l’instrument (une guitare Duo-Sonic Fender de 1962 et un ampli Princeton, Fender). Ça doit commencer à peu près là, l’histoire. Sauf que de mon côté je n’avais jusque là acheté qu’un seul de ses albums et principalement à cause du guitariste Robert Fripp (King Crimson, Brian Eno, Cheikha Rimitti, The League of Crafted Guitarists, etc.). Ensuite je me souviens avoir reçu un email (en pleine tournée avec David Grubbs, celle où d’ailleurs pour la petite histoire Yann Tiersen nous avait très gentiment proposé de passer notre seul jour off en studio avec lui pour une BO et ce à quoi nous avons préféré à l’unanimité aller manger longuement dans un excellent restaurant français de la capitale), provenant de son management au sujet de séances d’enregistrement (encore) qui plus tard devinrent l’album avec Derek Bailey (là aussi je ne sais plus pourquoi mais ça ne se fit pas).

De David Sylvian, je crois savoir pas mal de choses au fond alors que de sa musique et de ce qu’il provoque chez ses fans je ne connais presque rien. C’est de ce type de rencontre dont je parle. Et on se parle regulièrement beaucoup puis pas du tout puis encore plus. Ça fait pas mal d’années que cela dure, régulièrement. Nous avons passé quelque jours en studio à Vienne ensemble, où il m’a dirigé en solo d’abord, puis dans diverses combinaisons avec Keith Rowe et Christian Fennesz. Plus tard, il a voulu mixer les bandes master d’“Alike Joseph” pour le rééditer sur Samadisound, et ce fût une expérience forte encore. J’ai l’air de vouloir éviter de parler de lui, de son travail, mais c’est plus une sorte de pudeur et de réelle ignorance. Est-ce que ses fans au fond n’ont pas ce même rapport à lui ? Est-ce que tout son chant, ses mondes, ses présences, ne sont pas de l’ordre de l’intime justement ? A peine descriptibles si ce n’est à l’entendre. Le David Sylvian que je connais est avant tout une personne, et cette personne joue une musique qui est la même. Peut-être aussi que j’aime à préserver ce lien au monde extérieur qui est le sien, comme on protège un ami. Parce que c’est son choix, sa façon d’être là en donnant enormément et en se retirant aussi tout de suite après.

Je me sens sincèrement très proche de lui et à la fois tellement différent. Je repense à cette phrase de Sollers : « Pour savoir à quel point l’on partage avec une ou un autre il suffit de vérifier pendant combien de temps on peut rester dans le silence, ou à écouter une musique ensemble ».

Avec David j’ai cette impression, celle aussi d’avoir ouvert une porte qui va durer très longtemps, de s’offrir le luxe d’essayer plein de choses et de n’en retenir aucune, sans la moindre obligation, pleinement libres et présents. Il a son idée, j’ai les miennes, on se les refile : je voudrais vraiment que l’on enregistre des chansons et standards de Broadway juste tous les deux, sans rien d’autre. On a quelques vies pour le faire je pense. Quitte à se dévoiler ici un peu je vais vous dire une chose : il me fait terriblement penser au Chet Baker qui vous tenait la main sans dire un mot et en regardant les gens autour pendant la durée d’une pause entière entre deux sets. Cette même conscience du monde. Peut-être aussi une même image publique qui a fait du mal et qui n’est pas la réalité de ses êtres plus que sensibles, et forts à la fois. Les rencontres vous font une vie, la musique pareillement. »
Noël Akchoté

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 10:34 AM | Permalink

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 11:45 AM | Permalink

‘Dress down for the stage, dress up for life,” offers David Sylvian, the musician, composer and vocalist whose pensive approach to art and life has taken him along many counterintuitive paths. A fashion icon who defined the “beautiful boy” style of the early 1980’s, Sylvian now wants his listeners’ attention focused solely on his music, while offstage he still indulges his love of beautiful clothes.

Known to have sported a cardigan for live performances (possibly a nod to the early look of the bebop pioneers), Sylvian wears a Prada suit for our brunch interview at Hotel Gansevoort, sunglasses hanging from the breast pocket like a sleek glass-and-metal evolution of the pocket square.

Our fellow diners are not the only ones paying attention to his mode of dress. Sylvian’s signature buttoned-up-shirt/no-tie look is the men’s-wear-world’s dernier cri, adopted by influential designers like Raf Simons, among others. Miuccia Prada also sampled his breakaway style in her fall collection for Miu Miu and used the 1980 song “Nightporter,” by Sylvian’s first band, Japan, in the show’s soundtrack. The song brought a web of edgy nuances to her Tyrolean-inspired tailoring and is typical of a rich period of transition in Sylvian’s musical career. The flamboyantly superficial pop star of his youth began to give way to the introspective artist, absorbing the influence of serious art, from the 19th-century composer Erik Satie to contemporary painting, literature and film (not least Liliana Cavani’s movie “The Night Porter,” notorious for its depictions of concentration-camp torture reinvented as sadomasochistic games in a postwar Viennese hotel room).

I ask Sylvian whether he has ever actively worked with fashion designers, joining the creative continuum that today frequently connects the catwalk with the studios of photographers, painters and musicians. His answer is no, because he hates the social aspect of fashion.

Sylvian’s own creative process is antisocial in the extreme. He has sworn off performing for live audiences. He works solo in the studio, taking on the role of producer and engineer himself, and collaborating with other musicians only by exchanging digital files. Yet for Sylvian, this solitary process feels more authentic than the regimen of songwriting, recording, promoting and touring imposed by large record companies. Free of commercial constraints and alone with his microphones, Sylvian says, “It feels like I’m singing directly into the ear of the listener.”

It has been a long musical journey since Sylvian founded the band Japan as a teenager in London in the 1970’s. Initially a glam-rock group inspired by T. Rex and the New York Dolls, it was pure confection. “I didn’t appear in the work at all,” he says. Then, in the early 80’s, Japan evolved into the apotheosis of the New Romantic movement, which spawned acts like Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Culture Club. Sylvian was the very coiffed, sexually ambivalent poster boy of the genre, voted among the world’s “most fanciable” stars by the readers of Smash Hits (Britain’s answer to Tiger Beat magazine).

Sylvian, however, was uncomfortable in the limelight: “I loathe photo sessions,” he insists. “I’d happily go the rest of my days without having my picture taken.” Not surprisingly, his stint as a pop star proved unsustainable. So, after about eight years of struggling, the band split in 1982, just after its music became the soundtrack du jour, selling vast numbers of records with the release of its album “Tin Drum.”

A reference to Günter Grass’s baroque tale of Poland under Nazism (and Volker Schlöndorff’s cinematic adaptation of it), “Tin Drum” takes a lead from David Bowie’s Teutonic “Low” album, as well as from the avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, to create a Mitteleuropean sound, but one overwhelmingly inflected with East Asian influences. On the album’s biggest hit, “Ghosts,” one detects the halting rhythms of Kabuki music and the synthesized re-creations of traditional Asian percussion instruments.

ylvian’s youthful penchant for exoticism has continued since Japan disbanded. He has collaborated regularly with Ryuichi Sakamoto, producing memorable songs like “Forbidden Colours” (a single from the soundtrack to Nagisa Oshima’s movie “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence”) and “Heartbeat (Tainai Kaiki II)/Returning to the Womb,” where he shared the vocals with Ingrid Chavez, a protégée of Prince and a co-author of Madonna’s “Justify My Love,” who went on to become Sylvian’s wife.

Like a Leonard Cohen of the digital age, Sylvian says he and his songs trace “what is irritatingly called a spiritual journey. I avoid speaking about it,” he continues. His lyrics, however, speak volumes about his process of discovery, with references that include Cocteau, Sartre, Fluxus, Kabbalah, alchemy, shamanism, Buddhism and Hinduism. Musically, Sylvian positions himself in “that wonderfully vague area where the avant-garde crosses over with electronic music and the outer fringes of jazz.” Along with Sakamoto, Sylvian’s many collaborators include the cerebral guitar maestro Robert Fripp and Holger Czukay, a student of Stockhausen and a member of the seminal experimental-rock group Can.

Yet Sylvian is still an outsider even in this rarefied musical company, not least in that his primary instrument is his voice. Though it came under the audible influence of David Bowie and Bryan Ferry during its formative years, his voice today occupies a range of tones so particular in its combination of resonance and mellifluousness that it is unmistakable.

So evocative is it of yearning and melancholy that Sylvian’s voice is like the sound of introspection itself. This is painfully evident in “Blemish,” the notoriously difficult album prompted by the dissolution of his marriage to Chavez.

“A work of improvisation, of automatic writing, it was sung the moment it was written, with no time for correction or backtracking,” he says. His most recent offering, “Snow Borne Sorrow,” recorded with Steve Jansen and Burnt Friedman under the name Nine Horses, retains some of the bitterness of “Blemish” but draws upon pop-song forms, making it more accessible.

Meanwhile, Sylvian’s status within artistic circles is on the ascent. He is currently working on an hourlong piece of audio art — a hybrid of an audio guide and a film soundtrack, commissioned for an art compound (including a hotel, contemporary art spaces and a museum) on the Japanese island of Naoshima. “It has to do with creating a musical narrative,” Sylvian says, “as the listener is moving from location to location.” Other artists featured in this project include James Turrell, the architect Tadao Ando and Claude Monet, represented by three waterlily paintings and a garden planted in homage to his own at Giverny.

After two decades of living down the flamboyant media persona of his youth, David Sylvian is re-emerging as an artist, his work finding a new home in the most auspicious of company.

By BEN CRAWFORD
Published: September 17, 2006

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 11:26 PM | Permalink

An interview with David Sylvian
By Jason Cowley

In March 2005, the journalist and literary critic Jason Cowley travelled to New York to meet David for an article published in the Observer on 10 April. Their conversation continued over email.

JASON COWLEY: Why did you set up your own label?

DAVID SYLVIAN: I had become increasingly frustrated with Virgin [to whom he had been attached since 1980, first as part of Japan and then as a solo artist]. There was enthusiasm for my work from one or two people in the higher echelons of the company but there was no carry through. They were happy to get the albums but they wouldn’t know what to do with them. In the end, I felt that they really couldn’t care less if I produced any new work or not. What they wanted from me were compilations, which is what I ended up doing for about a year and a half. In truth, I agreed to do the compilations thinking they might let me back in the studio at some point. I was contractually obliged to put together a compilation but I managed to put them off and keep producing new work, which interested me more. So I went through the motions of producing compilations, as well as a re-mix of a live album, but it was a bad period. I felt creatively stifled. I was dying to start over again, but there was no support from the company. We finally managed to part ways with Virgin, and that was a release, on both sides. I’d just moved from California to New Hampshire and started to build my own studio complex there, trying to become more self-sufficient. I knew with the way the industry was moving that it wasn’t really going to be supportive of the kind of work I wanted to produce. I thought the best thing to do was to become as self-sufficient as possible and start from there, and see how things developed. It took about a year to build the studio. My brother [Steve Jansen] came over, and lived with me for about a year with his family. We started writing together…

JC: But then something happened. You stopped writing with Steve and took time out to make Blemish, perhaps the boldest and most uncompromising album you have ever made. Tell me a little about what led to the creation of Blemish?

DS: Blemish took only six weeks to make. I knew it would be described in the industry as a difficult album, which is why I decided to put it out over the internet. I thought: we’ll create a website, we’ll put it out without any distribution, and those people who are interested will find it. But the first reviews that appeared were so promising – they generated an awful lot of interest. From there, distributors came on board and wanted to be a part of it, and so the notion of a label began to grow. In truth, we were struggling to keep up with everything that was happening. But it was a gratifying struggle, because we were able to do deals on our own terms, and things were just evolving beautifully. At the end of this period we had a label, we had distribution, and everything seemed to be set up for the future. It’s now very gratifying to have a label and to be able to offer a platform to artists we admire, such as Harold Budd.

JC: I was impressed and moved by Budd’s release on Samadhisound, Avalon Sutra. He has said it is to be his final album – and these pieces of music, so fragile and full of longing, convey a sense of last things, of an artist coming to the end of something. When did you first hear them?

DS: Amazingly, I first heard the album in 2001, when I tried to help Harold find a deal for that album. Everyone turned it down. I finally met Harold for the first time in 2003 in LA, and offered to put out the album on our label. I think that period of refusal of some of his best work may have had something to do with his desire to call it quits at this point in time.

JC: How does it feel no longer to be with a major label? Is it liberation or loss?

DS: When I was in Japan, Simon [Napier-Bell, the band’s manager], would talk to me endlessly about what we were capable of and what we could achieve, as if I should automatically want to pursue the same goals as him. A wit and raconteur, he enjoyed nothing more than attempting to extract large sums of money from record companies…. He could charm his way out of the most difficult situations. I had to find another, less commercial way of working, which was why during the recording of Tin Drum [Japan’s fifth and final album] we kept Simon as far away from the studio as possible. Simon wished for me to see the industry through his eyes. He manipulated because manipulation was more entertaining from his perspective than a more passive (he would argue less creative) form of management and while this was quite an education, once I’d been given room to breathe, to gauge the situation, to size up the music business for myself, I realised that I could make it work for me in ways devoid of cynicism and crass exploitation, and that there were potentially greater returns in establishing relationships in the industry based on trust (I had a particularly long standing and productive relationship with Simon Draper at Virgin lasting almost two decades, a rare thing in music industry in the late 20th century) rather than taking the money and running. From the 1980s onward I never spoke of compromise and consequently compromise was never asked of me.

JC: I saw you perform Blemish at Festival Hall, in London, in the summer of 2003.Your audience listened respectfully, as they always do. But I remember at the start of the second half of the show, when you began by singing one of your old songs, The Other Side of Life, from Quiet Life, there was a huge cheer. It was so loud that you could have heard it from the top of the Millennium Wheel.

DS: It was probably a cheer of relief [we both laugh]. Blemish is an album that people have to work at. That people are prepared to do just that, to spend some time getting to grips with it – well, that’s an act of true generosity on their part.

JC: What do you think of the remix album, The Good Son vs The Only Daughter?

DS: I’m happy with it. Remix albums are, in general, only ever moderately successful: the person commissioned to do the remix would generally prefer to be working on his own material than being paid to work on someone else’s. In this instance, the remix gave us an opportunity to build relationships with artists like Akira [Rabelais] and Burnt [Friedman] that could lead to future collaborations. It gave us a chance to discover if we spoke the same language, if you like.

JC: To listen to Blemish is to discover an artist engaged in the complicated process of remaking himself. I was shocked when I first heard it. It sounded like nothing you had done before.

DS: When I began work on Blemish I had an incredible desire to eradicate the past and to find a whole new vocabulary for myself. At first, you are working from pure intuition. You are not sure where you are going; later, you begin to understand where the vocabulary is leading you and how to make it speak for you in a more profound way.

JC: The form of the pop song no longer interested you?

DS: For me those old forms reached a natural end – or shall I say their pinnacle – with Dead Bees on a Cake. Without the benefit of having to face my catalogue as I had to when putting together those compilation albums [for Virgin], I would never have been able to make such a radical break. In the end, I was too familiar with my own material. I’d toured with it, I knew it too well. I was happy to put it to rest and never face it again. I still enjoy the challenge of writing a well-structured pop song, but the stimulus for doing so usually comes from outside – someone will offer me a project or will offer to collaborate or give me a song to write a lyric to.

JC: You are in the process of completing an album with Steve Jansen and Burnt Freidman. I’ve heard the title track, Snow-borne Sorrow: much more accessible than Blemish but still bold and innovative and rather beautiful. How did this come about?

DS: Steve and I had been working on a project, and I’d also been working on another a project with Burnt. From there, the two projects just came together in the most natural way, and began to develop into something very impressive. The project will incorporate some of the strongest material I’ve ever written with Steve – that’s for sure, some really beautiful pieces. It’s a very confessional album. It has that same confessional edge as Blemish had and some very powerful and emotional qualities to it. The structures are rather repetitive, similar to Blemish, but, yes, far more accessible. But I’m looking forward to putting this one to bed and moving on. At times the speed at which I work causes me great frustration...so many other ideas to pursue.

JC: How comfortable are you about writing so nakedly of your own emotional experiences? Blemish can be listened to on many levels – but most notably and affectingly as an anguished confession, a tortured expression of interiority. One has a powerful sense of you grappling with feelings of regret and loss arising from the failure of your marriage to Ingrid. I felt your first solo album, Brilliant Trees, conveyed a similar sense of bewilderment and longing, but without the same intensity of feeling.

DS: The work I find the most gratifying is the work in which I’m most revealed in a way. When I was writing Blemish I was still in the midst of a difficult emotional experience. I wasn’t in a comfortable position from where I could look back … I didn’t know how to handle the emotional side of things. Once I got into the studio and closed the studio door, I felt a certain sense of safety, of liberty, to deal with the emotions, emotions that were primarily negative and all to do with my relationship with my wife. I wanted to delve far deeper into them than I would in daily life. How far can you go with that sort of feeling and where does it lead you? At the same time, I’m delving into something that one should be wary of delving into, because you don’t know how readily you will be able to re-surface from it at the end of the day. There was a sort of trepidation involved.

JC: Were you listening to other musicians at this time as part of your struggle to find a new way of expression and to make it new, as the modernists used to say?

DS: I went back to listen to artists I’d been listening to for decades – artists like Nick Drake, those evergreen artists you go back to decade after decade and still find a kernel of emotional truth in their work – but it wasn’t there for me anymore. The old emotional tug had gone. It was as if the whole language of the pop song was no longer valid. You cease to engage in the emotional content of the song because the form is too safe. Or perhaps the whole requirement of pop music is that it doesn’t provoke too much; it’s not designed to be provocative or unsettling. Yet I had these emotions to which I wanted to give voice. How to do that? How to make what you are doing relevant to now? All I knew was that I had to move on from these traditional structures – forms with which I’d been working for decades.

JC: The process you were going through sounds very painful, in every sense. Had you ever experienced anything like this before: the acute self-questioning, I mean, and the experience of deep loss – as well as the desire to remake yourself, artistically?

DS: I went through something similar in the late Eighties, at the end of a very important personal relationship [with Yuka Fujii]. I was completely numbed by that experience. I couldn’t write about it at all. It wasn’t even an option. The whole thing took me at least five years to work through, psychologically. I saw a psychiatrist; I needed help to get through it. I don’t think I could have got through it on my own, the feeling of guilt, unhappiness and grief were too great. When someone dies you have the actual physical loss of that person. But when an important relationship ends that person is still present in your life to some degree, and that confuses the issue enormously. At least, it did for me. It took me a long time to see my way through it.

JC: And now you are going through a divorce… the end of something important, something that once brought you great happiness and domestic contentment?

DS: This time I felt better equipped to face these emotions head on. I guess going through a period of analysis in the late Eighties gave me the tools with which to recognise certain idiosyncrasies that I needed to focus on. I was more adept at dealing with certain emotions as they surfaced. I began to recognise all the familiar traits and was able to work through them myself without the need for help. I am very involved in certain forms of meditation and ritual worship and so on, and I think having those practices gave me a relatively well balanced frame of mind, which helped me to look deeper into the darker aspects of my own emotional make up, and to emerge from it.

JC: You said that you were unable to write during the first period of profound emotional upheaval in the late Eighties, following the release of Secrets of the Beehive?

DS: Yes, music wasn’t a solace. I don’t think I would have worked at all if Robert [Fripp] hadn’t called and asked me to get involved with a project he was working on at that time. It was a very difficult time for both of us, for different reasons. In retrospect, I’m surprised that any work came out of that period at all. The work I produced then was quite raw, and I guess I was trying to find a voice for what I was going through. But I don’t think the context was quite right for me, and as much as I love Robert and admire him, I don’t think our collaboration was right.

JC: But the second time, when you entered a period of intense emotional turbulence, music provided an outlet and a release?

DS: This time, music was all that I had to fall back on. It could be of service to me in the way that it wasn’t back in the late Eighties. I’d just finished work on the retrospective for Virgin. I was ready for a complete break from all of that. And having built by own studio at home in New Hampshire, I was able to enter into a space that was entirely my own. I had the freedom to explore my own ideas and without the usual time constraints. I gave myself six weeks to work on Blemish but I could have gone on for as long as I wanted.

JC: You speak about the constraints of time: I presume you mean fiscal constraints, imposed by a record company?

DS: Money has always been an issue, yet somehow I’ve managed to survive without compromise. What was important for me was to find a voice for these particular emotions. There was this interesting contrast: as I’d end a day’s work, I’d be on a creative high, I’d feel that I’d really covered some new ground, but at the same time I was feeling utterly drained because I’d put myself through the grind of trying to give voice to these powerfully conflicting emotions. At the end of the recording, I felt a sense of pure catharsis. There was a real beautiful clarity to everything. I’d looked as deeply as I dared look at the side of myself that I’d prefer to keep hidden. It all sounds far more dramatic than it is, but the last few years have been very difficult to live through.”

JC: Can we talk more about the past – the past from which, it seems to me, you have long been in hiding. I’m talking about Japan, of course, and your years of pop celebrity.

DS: People say that I could have been as big as I wanted. But I was never interested in notions of fame or celebrity. It wasn’t in my nature. I didn’t have that drive, and I didn’t like the kind of personal attention I got, which might seem ironic when you consider the image [of David and the band]. But to me the image was part of the game of playing in that genre… I enjoyed that up to a point. But in the end nothing excited me about tomorrow with Japan. I thought we’d reached our peak.

JC: With Tin Drum?

DS: Yes. Making that album strained relations within the band considerably. We were beginning to close off from one another, which meant that we couldn’t give musically to one another. There were differing ambitions, and I was at odds with the band in my reluctance to perform live. They were also very dependent on me to write material. I was interested in material of a more Ghosts-like nature; we had such a strong rhythm section that they didn’t share that interest. Everything had to be of a more driving nature. Richard [Barbieri] and Steve were prepared to give it a go for another couple of years, but I’m not sure about Mick [Karn]. He’d already begun work on his first solo album while at the same time wanting to remain in the band as a kind of safety net. That was a luxury I didn’t think we could afford at the time.

JC: I was very curious when, in 1991, I heard that the band had reformed to make an album as Rain Tree Crow. But it didn’t seem to work out for you – and the old rancour, rivalries and disputes returned.

DS: Everything began well. We had so much fun working on the new material and hanging out again. But we took too long over it. We let it drift too long and we began to fall apart even before the album was completed. We had differences of opinion and money was a big problem, which put a lot of pressure on the band. Before then, we had been talking about doing a second and third album and live performances. Then the old tensions and frustrations re-emerged and you could see that there was no point in us taking it any further. In life, relationships run their course – that’s the case with me and Mick – and there’s no point trying to breathe new life into them. My brother and I didn’t speak for about five years after the end of the Rain Tree Crow project. This coincided with my moving to the States. Looking back, I’d say it was a healthy break.

JC: Will you return to live in London?

DS: It’s a possibility. I certainly feel more in tune with the cultural mood of Europe. When I first moved to the US, I lived in Minneapolis for five years. Those were years of domestic bliss such as I had never experienced before. We then moved to California, primarily to be near an Indian holy woman who was living up in the Napa hills. Then we were looking for a bigger property, where I could become more self-sufficient and build my own studio, which was why we moved to New Hampshire. The place we bought was a former ashram and it just had the most beautiful spirit to the land and property, even though the property itself was held together by little more than love, string and glue. Our house is on the side of the mountain, buried deep in the woods…

JC: It sounds remote.

DS: It’s not that remote. We’re only one hour and 15 minutes from Boston and four hours from New York.

JC: Are you frustrated with American politics, especially American foreign policy? Your song World Citizen was an old-fashioned protest song: a cry of anger.

DS: Well, there was so little dissent in the country during the build up to the war in Iraq, even in the New York Times. I was frightened by that. I wanted to write a song that would appeal to an American audience, [a song] that might even get some college radio play, and would have absolutely no ambivalence about it. It wasn’t really an artful exercise. But that whole period was enormously frustrating for me. Yet nowadays it is possible to create your own cultural environment, if you live as remotely as we do, what with the internet. You can avoid the worst excesses of America.

JC: Television, in particular, is awful here, isn’t it?

DS: Yes. Terrible. I don’t have one.

JC: How do you reflect much on your childhood in Beckenham, Kent? What did your father do?

DS: My father was a plasterer, a labourer. He was very meticulous in his work. He cared about what he did, but trying to provide for three children put enormous strain on him and he’s still paying for that today, physically and emotionally. I’m now very close to my parents. There was a time when I wasn’t very close to them but I don’t look back on my childhood as a happy period in my life. I meet people sometimes who speak of their childhood as the happiest period in their life. I can’t relate to that at all. I always had a desire to get away, to escape, and to try to nurture what I thought was missing from my home environment – aesthetics, a sense of beauty.

Later, over email, David returned to the subject of his childhood.
DS: Looking back there was a brutality to life in the suburbs of London. I’m sure it still exists. At home we were quite close as a family but not in an overtly intimate sense. Maybe it was a dependency based on fear, fear of what the outside world was able to inflict upon us. Steve and I inhabited a world of our own making as far as that was possible but allegiances could be swiftly switched and those in whom trust was placed could turn against you in an instance. We were always on our guard to some degree. The pressures on my father to support the family were immense or at least, at times, they must’ve felt that way to him. He fought hard to maintain the most basic of lifestyles. He’s a wonderfully goodhearted man but the strain of supporting us all occasionally showed in his relations with the family. Personal reinvention was a means of escaping from the environment that threatened to identify, classify, and therefore limit or suppress you. There was a tendency to allow oneself to be defined by others; by reinventing the self there was the possibility of escaping this definition and entering into the world of the imagination in which the possibilities for changing one’s life and environment were far greater. I suppose it was a case of bringing imagination to bear on reality: not just reinventing oneself but also potentially the world around you. Initially, the response was a protest against the absence of beauty. Later, it was an attempt to find beauty where there previously had appeared to be none. Despite my innate shyness I possess a strong will and an intuition, in which I implicitly place my trust, of how things should be approached artistically and achieved in a business generally indifferent to my output. Since the early-to-mid Eighties I’ve held the reins of my “career” (terribly inappropriate term for the trajectory my life and work have taken but I can think of no other) in my own hands, working in tandem with Richard Chadwick [of Opium Arts] as my confidant, business adviser, and facilitator, of the ultimately humble paths I’ve chosen to explore. As I mentioned to you when we met, I think the handicap of my shyness has spurred me on to attempt to communicate through the work in ways I was unable to communicate in life, to enter into conversation with the culture at large. Terribly important to my sense of well-being and my productivity.

JC: What about Japan: you never seem to speak well of the music you made then. But so much of it was good, for the era: the mood of records such as Gentlemen Take Polaroids and Tin Drum is very seductive.

DS: The trouble was I couldn’t write nakedly just as I couldn’t perform as myself on stage: I could only perform through some kind of image. Yet there are still some songs from that period that have a certain kernel of emotional truth…

JC: Like The Other Side of Life?

DS: Yes, that song, and Ghosts.

JC: Is it true that you considered giving up music while you were making Dead Bees to dedicate yourself to spiritual concerns?

DS: On asking Shree Maa whether I should abandon a life in music, a public life, I was told that music was my sadhana, my means by which growth is achieved. Both [my teacher] Ammachi and Shree Maa pushed me back out into the world to continue my engagement with it. It renewed my focus and gave me a different slant on being a pubic figure, however minor. I may have been guilty up until that point of separating the spiritual aims and those of my public life. I recognised that nothing falls outside of spiritual life and practice – nothing at all – and it’s this realisation that enables me to maintain perspective and balance in all that I do, and in all the roles that I find myself playing. At root comes the notion of surrender and from this everything else follows.

JC: I don’t quite understand what you mean by surrender.

DS: The notion of surrender is counter intuitive, at least for me. It is maintained from moment to moment by conscious awareness. This makes the practice a form of meditation. The commitment to those things undertaken is still 100 per cent; it’s only in the completion of the work, in one’s duties and responsibilities, that one relinquishes control, doesn’t invest heavily in a desired outcome. By performing ritual worship or puja at the start of each day, particularly while recording Blemish, I was able to maintain the perspective of witness, or observer, to my own predicament while simultaneously being immersed in the true emotional and psychological experiences that governed my life at that time. This allowed me the strength to go deeper into exploring these states without the fear of being utterly overwhelmed by them. I have to be honest and say that on some days it was a close call, but ultimately the practice saw to it that I was able to extricate myself successfully from the intensity of the experience.

JC: Did the life of a pop star never appeal to you – the celebrity, adulation, the money, the girls?

DS: I rarely partied hard. My sexual partners were few. During this period I remember spending much of my time alone whether at home, in various modes of transport, or in hotel rooms around the globe. Even in a crowd I was relatively isolated. Not an altogether undesirable state as far as I was concerned. I did have a problem with drugs during the period of the break-up of Japan, with cocaine. But that was more to do with my psychological problems than with any rock star excesses. I had a sleeping disorder whereby I couldn’t stay conscious for more than four hours at a time, and I was looking for some medication to help with that. This went on for months, and that’s when I became cocaine-dependent. In the end, I reached such a low with the drug that I knew I had to stop or face the consequences. For too long, when I was in Japan, I’d lived in a glass cage of my own devising, had grown up in public to a large extent and I simply wanted out, wanted the freedom to move, grow, unencumbered by fame and pop media interest. I had seen how necessary it was to invest almost equal amounts of energy in both the music and the personal profile to sustain the interest of the media. I couldn’t invest time in my celebrity: the notion had become anathema to me. I was fully aware that the avenue I was about to take musically couldn’t possibly compete with Japan’s success. I wanted to avoid the impression that this new direction had therefore failed me. I turned my back on the spotlight, such as it was, and moved to the more suitable dusk-like lumination of the spotlight’s periphery. The periphery is the area I inhabit in every aspect of my life. I used to resent this fact and fight against it often with disastrous results. I’ve now come to embrace the notion that this is my rightful place.

JC: How were the results disastrous?

DS: I guess that phrase sounds melodramatic but that’s the way I experienced these occasional forced deviations from what I now perceive as my natural place (periphery) towards the centre. You could usefully look at the entire trajectory of Japan’s career as being a result of such a deviation. It’s difficult to give personal examples of this. I can only elucidate a little by saying that when all the free-floating elements that constitute my life and work come to settle in place this is where I find myself and I’ve come to appreciate an intuitive “rightness” to this outcome. I might even apply this theory to my
current divorce and where that places me in the context of the family although I feel far from passive about this.

JC: I met your brother recently and he said something that
I've been thinking about. What he said was this: “Throughout his adult life, Dave has shut himself off, with a partner, in quite an isolated situation...” I wondered what he meant by that?

DS: My brother is a bit of a conundrum himself, a dark horse, but a good man... dependable in life and work. It’s true that I don’t have a need for vast numbers of friends. I wouldn’t only apply the “shutting myself off from others” to my adult life either. This has been something of an ongoing theme since childhood but as Steve was my closest ally through much of that period he may not recognise the continuity into adulthood as such. In fact I’d venture to say that my isolation was greatest from childhood through to my early twenties until the break up of the band. My relationship with Yuka (Fujii), which commenced around the time of the break up, simultaneously narrowed my social circle but opened up my world in terms of cultural absorption, imagination, spirituality. The inner life. Yuka also brought me out of myself by introducing me to the mundane world, the simple day to day aspects of daily life. I suffered from a social phobia so profound that I was unable to enter a store or public transport without experiencing intense anxiety attacks. I didn’t have the vocabulary for it back then nor the professional help: I simply experienced the world as a fearful place. Yuka was the first person in my life to help me deal with these issues although she too had no background knowledge to help her understand my predicament.
In Portrait of an Invisible Man/the Invention of Solitude, Paul Auster says of his father: “...money in the sense of protection then, not pleasure. Having been without money as a child, and therefore vulnerable to the whims of the world, the idea of wealth became synonymous for him with the idea of escape: from harm, from suffering, from being a victim. He was not trying to buy happiness but simply an absence of unhappiness... Money not an elixir then, but as an antidote: the small vial of medicine you carry in your pocket when you go out into the jungle – just in case you are bitten by a poisonous snake.”
I read something of myself in this. It accounts, in part, for my ambition, against all the odds, as a young man. It was survival.

JC: I was thinking, because of what has happened between you and your wife, how you feel about finding yourself outside of a marriage and alone again. You gave the impression that as a young man you sought solitude, but is prolonged solitude something about which you are anxious, especially in mature adulthood?

DS: No, I can’t admit to being fearful of prolonged solitude but I do value friends and family. I cherish my solitude but also love to break that isolation frequently for brief periods. I guess that’s also what draws me to working with others – the spirit of community, camaraderie, shared objectives, the exchange of ideas, personal and collective challenges.

JC: What about ageing and death as you approach what… middle age?

DS: Late middle age now [he laughs]. They hold no anxiety for me. Death – it’s life that I’ve always found frightening.

JC: So you are not fearful of finding yourself alone?

DS: I have a greater fear of hurting others. People that get close to me have a tendency to get very close and I go through all kinds of torment attempting to step back a little from what I sometimes find to be the cloying or suffocating aspect of the relationship without causing hurt or rejection in the hearts of others. This hasn’t always been easy in my experience. Having said that I want to stress that I by no means take these relationships for granted. They are among the most treasured. That said, I’m uncertain if your question refers to a personal, loving relationship, or friendship in general. I adore sharing my life with a lover, companion, and sparring partner but I’m not afraid of finding myself without such a relationship although at times I yearn for it, miss it terribly. No, it doesn’t register as fear though. That’s not to say that one day that yearning couldn’t develop into fear of absence.

JC: Or perhaps your resilience and freedom-in-isolation arise from your faith-based awareness of the insubstantiality of the self and from a desire to be liberated from its primary emotions, if that is ever truly possible?

DS: There are challenges inherent in both solitude and relationship with others. It would feel cowardly to back away from either one for the sake of a more peaceful existence. Ultimately it should be possible to rest in either condition with equanimity. During this period of separation leading to divorce I’ve felt the need to call upon the friendship of others more frequently than at any other time in my life. I had powerfully conflicting emotions, the majority of which related to the incapacitating fear of hurting my children. So absolute solitude in these times has been welcome and beneficial. Partial isolation (still residing in the family home) has not.

JC: How are you feeling now? It seems as if this is a good time to have met you, both creatively and emotionally?

DS: I try to live on a fairly even keel. I don’t believe in being taken up too high or taken down too low, because at some point or another you’re going to swing back the other way. I genuinely believe that I’ve found direction for myself, in the short term at least, that I’m entering a period that is going to be enormously gratifying and challenging for me as a writer.

Jason Cowley is a senior editor on the Observer and a contributing editor of the New Statesman: Jason.cowley@observer.co.uk

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 04:47 PM | Permalink

What does the name Nine Horses stand for?

Whilst Steve, burnt, and I were able to find common ground musically we found it more difficult to come together philosophically so we settled on a name embraced for its absence of meaning which may or may not be imbued with meaning over time

Which is the reason to create a brand new name instead of releasing this one as a Sylvian album?

Because I'd always viewed the project as one created by this somewhat disembodied band. Because the contributions of both Steve and Burnt were important in determining the general direction the project would take.

Can you say something about the birth of this project?

Initially Steve and I started writing together in late 02. We were using the writing as a means of exploring some of the newer technology in the samadhisound studio. The writing took off in all kinds of directions whilst we searched for common ground, passions, interests. Progress was slow as the tools were still new to us but other than that the writing came relatively easy. Around Feb or March 03 I felt compelled to get to work on a project that seemed pressing and asked Steve if it would be ok to take time out from our project for about 6 weeks or so. It was during that time that I wrote and recorded 'Blemish'.

As 'Blemish' and the label seemed to take off in ways we hadn't really foreseen or been prepared for so my time became increasingly absorbed in these matters. Soon there was a tour being discussed taking Steve and I further and further from the work we'd been doing together as a team.

On the European leg of the Blemish tour (Oct 03) we met Burnt Freidman for the first time at our concert in Koln. I'd been listening to Burnt's work of late and had been enjoying it a good deal. When the chemistry between Steve and I lacked fireworks in the studio I often thought a third element would be beneficial to the proceedings and oddly enough it was Burnt who'd come to mind during those times. That evening we spoke of working together at some point in the future.

After a period of a few months in the Spring of 04 I delivered five completed vocal recordings to Burnt based on a series of demo tracks he’d sent to me. The idea was that I'd make a contribution to an album project instigated by Burnt, featuring Jaki Liebezeit. About two months later I heard Burnt's mixes for the album. I was a little taken aback as the pieces had been stripped back to their barest bones with my vocal floating very much to the fore. All traces of group interaction appeared to have been jettisoned. For my money these pieces needed to be built up, they needed greater dynamics, group interaction. The demos had, on the whole, suggested large scale accompaniment. I wanted to salvage that notion and build upon it. I asked Burnt if I might take a crack at reworking the material. He magnanimously consented and sent me the sound files to work on.

I made guitar, keyboard, and vocal additions of my own. I asked Steve to replace Jaki's patterns with something entirely his own (often in a different time signature from the original) and to add percussion where they'd previously been little or none. As I'd been layering my own voice on these recordings I took things a step further by adding male and female backing vocals to a number of the tracks. By this time I'd already grasped the opportunity of bringing the best of what Steve and I had done a year ago into this project. Both Steve and Burnt were quick to give approval. The challenge was finding and sustaining the coherence, the continuity. This was certainly helped by Steve's contributions to the songs I'd written with Burnt, also by some of the musicians who were added to the mix.

The title of the album suggests a winter picture. How much the introspection suggested by the winter season can feed the creativity?

I've always found the Winter months to be conducive to creative work. It's like a form of hibernation, gestating, nurturing. A wonderful time for introspection.

After the minimalistic structure of Blemish’s songs, this new album sounds like a comeback to a more rich and traditional pop expression. Is it an indication of what will come next or just a side-project in your musical production?

As noted above, this work was instigated prior to the work on Blemish. I see it as a continuation of the work I've done on solo albums of the past such as Dead bees on a cake etc. This is because the forms are very similar to the ones I'm more used to working with. The work on this project doesn't necessarily indicate the road ahead for me.

Would you say something about the balance between you, Steve and Burnt describing role and artistic/human aspects of each of you in Nine Horses?

I guess I touched on some of this in my answer above. Steve is a very reliable player and programmer. He designs beautiful architectural patterns on which to build the arrangements. He works quite painstakingly on every aspect of his contributions. He's also a marvelous sound designer. I have never had the pleasure of sitting in a room with burnt and working side by side with him. All the work we did together was via sound files sent to one another so it's a little more difficult to be specific about burnt's contributions and the chemistry between us. Burnt is a strong willed character with an equally strong vision. His programming and sound design abilities are what drew me to his work in the first place.

With a very few exceptions you’ve always been not used to the vocals collaborations. What’s behind this time choice of singing with Stina in this new album? How did you get in touch with her?

I'd been aware of Stina's work for years and the thought had occasionally crossed my mind of singing a duet of sorts with her. Once I'd completed the lyric for 'Wonderful world' I knew I'd found the opportunity for us to work together. We corresponded via email at first then Steve and I flew to Stockholm to record her vocal.

And what about Sakamoto? Your friendship started more than 20 years ago and went on in a very discontinuous way… is that discontinuity the secret of your undying understanding?

Possibly. We never speak of a next time when working together. Each time we collaborate could potentially be the last but somehow the partnership keeps extending its life span. There's a good deal of mutual respect and we tend to speak the same musical vocabulary which is quite invaluable actually.

If you look back, from the very first Japan days to now, which are your records or songs that you feel closer to you today and which the most distant ones?

I couldn't relate to any of the albums as a whole. Certainly nothing from the first two releases...as far as memory serves me. I can relate to 'ghosts', 'nightporter', and one or two others that I have performed live over recent years.

How much the music industry and scene have changed if you compare your first steps with Japan with today’s market and media laws?

Oh, so much has changed that I don't really know where to start. The majors still exploit the artists for all their worth though. That much hasn't changed. With the advent of digital technology and the internet the nature of the game (the business) has changed dramatically. It is now possible for the individual or the collective to work relatively successfully on the periphery of the music industry and still make an impact. Over time these individuals and companies will help redefine how business is conducted in the industry at large.

During your solo career you’ve been working with several musicians very close to Brian Eno’s area. I wonder if you’ve ever had a chance (or the intention) of making a proper/official collaboration with Brian Eno? Have you heard his new album “Another day on earth” (which is sang as his old 70’s albums)?

No, I’d never intended to work with Eno on a collaboration. I did hear the last album but I must admit that I found it disappointing.

A very personal curiosity: have you ever heard the Blue Nile albums and the one that Mark Hollis (ex-Talk Talk leader) released some years ago? If yes, what do you think of their musical approach?

I never kept up with BN’s work. It was always too polished for my taste. I thought Hollis' album was very strong.

During your solo career you’ve often shown to have a strong link with our country (several gigs and tours in Italy, your collaboration with Andrea Chimenti and your longtime friendship with the guys of Time Zones festival). Which is your feeling about Italy? Have you ever took in consideration the idea of living here (if yes, where would you like to) ?

I guess my affinity with Italy is played out in my relationship with the people there along with aspects of the culture (cinema, literature etc). I have never considered living in Italy but if I did I think I would be drawn towards Tuscany...Sienna...

If I’m not wrong, you, Ingrid and your children are now based in New England after spending some years in California (from the west to the east coast: a big change, i suppose…). What pushed you to leave England for the States,

I'd decided to leave England just prior to meeting Ingrid. I'd never considered making America my home prior to that time but once Ingrid and I had made the decision to stay together we settled on the US by default.

do you still feel as a foreigner in a foreign country,

Less so than I once did. American culture is a relatively easy one to negotiate but culturally I do feel somewhat alien here.

what do you miss of Europe and what did you find over there that it’s not available in the Uk/european kind of life and mentality?

There's a liberal european sensibility that, for the most part, is missing here. History and culture are at the service of entertainment and the tourist industry....money. Too much emphasis is placed on money here, not enough on compassionate human values. For all the talk of God in this country for the most part it feels like it's every man for himself. Analogies to life are often sport related. There are winners and losers. This is as far from my own perspective as it’s possible to get. On the other hand there's a rather naive optimism here which I think is one of the more endearing traits of the American character especially on the West Coast where the open mindedness of groups and individuals leads to some truly positive developments in the culture.

Are you still practicing Buddhism? Are you also into Hindu teachings? Do you meet your guru very often?

I am still involved in my practices, yes. I see my Guru in the flesh once or twice a year.

Which are your core motivations as a musician today? And do you feel more comfortable with the definition of composer rather than musician?

Motivation: to remain interested, excited, impassioned and capable of expressing what needs to be addressed. I don't really care how my role is defined.

Music, painting, photography, movies, literature: which is the medium that you consider more healthy, wealthy and interesting on these days?

Music, the visual arts, and literature hold the greatest interest for me at present.

How do you consider today’s revival of the 80’s pop music: is it a sign of a serious creative crisis or just another chapter in the neverending tale of the historical currences and recurrences?

I'm not aware of the revival so I have no comment.

The very last question: what is changed in your creative process (if any change there is) and which is inspiration for you (something to feed/grow or something that can’t be mastered in any way)?

For inspiration you need to be in a state of readiness, preparedness. How one goes about this I suspect is different from one artist to another. The creative process feels more and more intuitive to me.

May we expect other releases from Samadhi Sound in the near future?

I suspect the next release will be Steve Jansen's first ever solo release.

I would thank you a lot for having spent some of your time in answering to my questions for Rodeo magazine.

Thank you.
david

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 04:37 PM | Permalink

After a more improvisation based Blemish why a more traditionally song structured album?

This project was initiated prior to the recording of the blemish album. I started writing with Steve (Jansen) back in 02 so the roots of the project go back farther than the creative U-turn taken with blemish.

I did find it difficult to return to this material after completing blemish and for a while I thought the work might be abandoned. Whilst touring blemish I was introduced to Burnt Friedman whose music I’d been enjoying in recent months. We talked of working together and a few months later I received a CD-R containing 8 or 9 demos. I worked on these as time allowed eventually completing 5 pieces. Burnt took these tracks and completed them as part of an album he’d been working on with Jaki Leibezeit. When I heard the results I felt the material should be developed further. I asked Burnt if he’d allow me to work with the sound files and see where I might take the arrangements given time. He graciously agreed.

As I worked on this material, radically editing the sound files, replacing Jaki’s drum patterns with Steve’s, adding keyboard, guitar, and vocal elements to the arrangements I thought of pulling together the two individual projects (the one I’d started with steve, the other with burnt) into one cohesive whole. That remained the greater challenge, finding and maintaining that cohesion.

Many reviewers viewed Blemish as a dark album. Was it really dark?

I guess that’s for others to answer. That’s really a subjective reading of the material and not something I’d care to define.

I was obviously dealing with some unsettling emotions. I attempted to find a means for exploring and expressing these emotions that was somehow relevant to now. Consequently the album might be hard hitting in many respects but I found the entire experience of working on the project cathartic. I’ve heard from others who said that on listening to this album they experienced something similar to this too. However, many found it my most inaccessible of recordings. Some seriously disliked it.

What did the Blemish remixed album add to your original ideas?

It wasn’t a matter of what was to added to the original ideas. Blemish is a complete work in of itself. What the remix cd did was to explore the emotional core or aspects of the pieces and place them in a new context to see how they resonated.

Did you like those remixes?

Yes.

Do you see this collective (yourself, Steve and Burnt) as a band?

It’s an oddly disembodied band. I’m not sure what constitutes a band in this day and age. We’ve never sat in a room and played music together as a trio. In fact burnt and I have never physically performed together. I’m not sure how important this is but at the same time I’m not trying to sell nine horses as a band. It is a collaborative project between three musicians who work under the name nine horses!!

Did you knew Burnt Friedman already and what did you think of his musical ideas before this collaboration?

Yes, I was very aware of Burnt’s work. I enjoyed much of it particularly the Flanger project. I loved the general aesthetic of the work, plus the grooves and his detailed programming.

How did you get together?

Burnt came to my show in Köln. We met after the show and talked about a possible collaboration.

How did the other collaborations on the album come about?

I’ve always made it clear that it’s the compositions themselves that cry out for certain voices. When I completed the lyric for Wonderful World I heard Stina’s voice singing the answer vocal. Likewise, when we completed Atom and Cell and darkest dreaming I new we had to have Arve Henriksen as soloist on these pieces. Once the decision is made it’s a matter of contacting and communicating with those you wish to get involved. It’s all very simple really.

I should add that Burnt had already brought a lot of musicians into the mix on the original demos.

What do you sing about in these new songs?

I sing of how I experience the world.

How do you manage to keep yourself and your music away from this madness of our contemporary world (9/11, wars, religious fanaticism)?

I don’t try to keep myself isolated from the madness. The work reflects the world I/we live in. Whilst blemish can be viewed as a commentary on the deterioration of a couple’s relationship it can also be viewed as a comment on the state of the world. After all, the individual is a microcosm of what we see happening in the world on a global scale. This new project looks at 9/11, racism, as well as more personal issues.

Is America still the ideal place to create art and raise a family?

Was it ever? Art can potentially be created anywhere. Adversity fires the creative juices. The outpouring can be cathartic. Family: there are certainly some places that are better than others when it comes to raising children. Clean water, good food, nurturing environment, good education. America is capable of supplying most of these requirements most of the time but the context in which they are provided concerns me. The culture is economically driven. The bottom line is the dollar rather than human values. In the long term this is likely to be the undoing of the nation.

Was it necessary for you to set up your own record label?

I chose to set up my own label for the release of blemish. I believed it wasn’t worthwhile shopping such a difficult work around to the major labels. The critical reception of blemish took us by surprise. As a result of the reception the label grew very quickly. I thoroughly enjoy being a part of the samadhisound team. I have no intension of returning to a major label at this point.

How do you manage your label?

I have a small, determined, devoted team of experienced individuals who help run the label.

How do you invite in people to record for the label?

I get sent a fair amount of material to listen to. I also hear a lot of music on my travels and in my research.

Is it a heavy financial burden?

No.

By releasing Everything And Nothing and Camphor do you think you've definitely shelved your past recordings?

I do hope so.

Is a definitive Japan anthology yet to be created? Or have you had enough of Japan releases?

This isn’t something I have an interest or would wish to be involved in. However, I’m sure a definitive anthology will be released one day.

Practical question: will you tour this album and with this "band"?

I have no plans to tour at present.

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 10:17 PM | Permalink

The following is the original Q & A which appears in edited form in the 7th issue of Fourth Door Review. David Sylvian interview: questions prepared by Oliver Lowenstein 18.9.04.

Japan – I believe you traveled to Japan the country after disbanding the band. The first questions are about your sense of the culture of Japan.
I first traveled to Japan with the band, and on numerous occasions, from around ’78 onwards.

ds Tokyo ’82 © fin costello

What did you uncover when you finally arrived in Japan the country. Was it recognizable, or as completely different in a ‘lost in translation’ sense to how you had fantasized it by calling the band after the country’s name? Or was there perhaps a sense of ‘found’ in translation?
A little of all of the above. Japan has many faces some of which I could only glimpse, rather frustratingly, though overwhelmed and somewhat oversaturated, from the windows of hotel rooms, cars, trains, television, and the media at large. At the time of our first visit to Japan the band was at the height of its popularity there. The local promotion and security were so fearful for our wellbeing that we were treated as virtual prisoners by our hosts. This procedure was a touch heavy handed, and while not unnecessary, I suspect it was more trouble than it was worth to allow us the freedom to roam independently if at all.

I’d read up on the culture to some degree, had seen a couple of exotic documentaries that tended to play up the otherness of Japanese culture rather than explore or explain it but I don’t think I was quite prepared for the beauty, the incredible aesthetic at work on all levels that is an integral part of the culture. The novelty value of visiting a culture so radically different from one’s own, especially when young, can’t be understated . That first visit was one sustained intake of breath, a real high. On another level there was a sense of homecoming. I believe I wasn’t the only member of the band to feel this sense of belonging. There was an intuitive connection to the people and culture which some of us went on to explore in greater depth as the years passed and the opportunity presented itself. This ‘belonging’ was experienced in tandem with full comprehension of my sense of alienation, dislocation (this sense of alienation can play havoc when not in the right frame of mind. That alienation now shorthanded as a ‘lost in translation’ experience). Socially I didn’t belong, outsider, foreigner (racism was expressed more openly at that time), but my heart did. Oddly, as the years went on I felt more at home socially in Japan than anywhere else due in part to my natural inclination to intellectually isolate myself somewhat from my immediate environment. Far easier to do in a country in which it is taken for granted that you do not speak the language. This ease might also be attributed to the comedy of manners, another essential aspect of social interaction. Being shy and, as a consequence, occasionally fearful of social interaction, I enjoyed the formality, and therefore a certain comforting predictability, of the exchanges.

ds Tin Drum sessions London 1981 © steve jansen

Were there particular aspects of Japanese culture which were particularly meaningful to you rather than others? What of the hi tech versus traditional Japanese cultures? Both ends of each of these spectrums are celebrated in the simulated versions of the country picked up in the mediaworld? I wondered what your experience was?

Both extremes can be experienced in everyday life in Japan. It has less to do with location (Tokyo vs Kyoto) and everything to do with the emotional, psychological, philosophical, socio-historical development of the national consciousness. While Tokyo seduces with it’s architecture, technology, urban complexity, at root, in essence, you’ve the same consciousness at work there as in a rural Japan. At least that’s my take on it. There is a social consciousness in Japan that links the community as a whole. It celebrates and promotes the health of the group over the individual. This leads to a heightened sense of conformity but it also paves the way for a developed sense of social awareness missing in many western cultures. For my part I was attracted to these pillars of Japanese culture. The forward thinking modernism, the deeply assimilated Buddhist/Shinto based philosophy or belief system.

If you were interested in elements of traditional Japanese culture, and apart from Kyoto cardboard cutout that the West gets of Japan, which elements were you interested in?
A part of me has always been attracted to a hermit-like, self-contained existence. I guess that’s something that will always be with me. The life of the Zen Buddhist, while spare and ascetic, held me in thrall for quite sometime. Buddhist teachings ultimately became my most deeply rooted connection with the place. And I wouldn’t knock that ‘cardboard cutout’ image the west has of Kyoto. A lot of it rings true and as a seductive point of departure there are far worse places to start. I was also interested in Japanese literature; Basho, Junichiro Tanizaki, Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe etc. Music was an attraction of course, in particular the Imperial court music known as Gagaku. The keening sound of the Sho just pierces the heart. I believe it was Takemitsu’s use of this instrument in contemporary settings (In an autumn garden?) that first drew me to his work. Architecture, pop culture and design were other, more contemporary touchstones.

ds with Takemitsu Tokyo ‘90 © yuka fujii

What did you learn about the Japanese and the Japanese culture from Ryuchi Sakamoto
Anything I learned about the Japanese from Ryuichi was simply absorbed via osmosis. I would find it very difficult from this vantage point to pinpoint specifics. Other friends and acquaintances opened discreet doors for me. There was a very memorable new years eve spent in Kyoto with Yuka Fujii, and the musician, Stomu Yamashita. Stomu had something of the proselytizer about him or maybe the temple master. Knowledgeable on many a subject, a wonderful storyteller, passionate about Buddhism, Japanese culture and tradition, and of course music. I came away from that brief acquaintance with a greater appreciation for the subtleties and the difficulties of the path and its teachings.

ds and rs 81 © yuka fujii

I am intrigued by the possible psychic move, or journey, from Japan to India, it reminds me of a possible post modern collage spirituality, though it is probably you growing. It also reminds me of the recent discovery of your colleague, Robert Fripp’s, involvement with a hybrid Cornish Celtic Russian Orthodox church community. Not that you are in necessarily in anyway involved in any Japanese quest for Hindu spirituality. But Japan seemed the starting point before the ‘wonder that is India’ began to dawn on you?
It appears to me that the journey has been influenced less by geography that it might initially seem. As I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t think all of the elements that constitute a spiritual journey are necessarily obvious. Childhood influences must play a major part in one’s development but how to pinpoint them? There’s the issue of environment, key moments of revelation, epiphany, disillusionment, insight, intuition, habits, and fears. All appear to play a part in a mind eager for clarification, inspiration, or simply confirmation, going some way towards justifying the intuited awareness of another reality that isn’t being owned up to or catered for in the immediate environment or even in the world at large outside of organized religion. I’ve always carried with me a faith of sorts, born out of all the above influences and more. This faith wasn’t really questioned in any depth until I’d emerged from my teenage years. I then questioned every aspect of what constituted that faith. A casting out, doing away with any aspect of a personal philosophy that didn’t bear up to close scrutiny. I had already traveled to Japan numerous times at this point and the open-minded approach of the Buddhists may’ve influenced the resulting search into various esoteric teachings. The search led me to look into Gurdjieff’s teachings, Sufism, Gnostic Christianity, and deeper still into Buddhism etc. At some point or another all of the above held me captivated for a period of time. I felt free to explore whichever avenue of interest cast its spell and, more importantly, produced results. For me, Buddhism held the most persuasive deck of cards. This was the source of knowledge that informed my practice for a number of years without the benefit of a personal teacher. This was ultimately to prove problematic as the practice itself became quite dry and uninspired at which point I actively searched for a teacher. Surprisingly, this search led me to series of teachers out of India whose background was Hindu based. Although I was never told to redirect the focus of my practice, I slowly began to glean the significance, decode the meanings behind the technicolour images of Hindu gods and goddesses, some initially astoundingly gory in their representations, and was drawn into this enticing world, fascinated by the practices, the devotional aspect of the worship, and the, to my mind, indisputable wisdom of the Vedas.

Other media:
I don’t know about your films. Could you tell me something of these? Have they been solely with Yasuyuki Yamaguchi or have you worked with various others? How do you feel they relate to your music? Holger Czukay said to me that his video work was like “a hobby”. Is it like this, or a separate art avenue?
I couldn’t speak about the films with any sense of accomplishment. I’ve had opportunities presented to me to work with film but with fairly hefty parameters set in place. I’ve tried to explore ideas within these parameters but I can’t say I feel I’ve made a statement in film that comes close to that made in other areas of my work. While I was signed with Virgin Records I attempted to get a number of film projects off the ground with no success. Nevertheless, it’s an area that retains a fascination for me and that I’ll return to at some point when time and opportunity allow.

There are a few albums of yours which include illustrative or graphic work by you, for instance Flux and Mutability. I wondered if you have continued this as part of your creative work? Or whether you stopped doing this a long time ago?
I go in and out of working in these areas depending on need. I occasionally draw and paint but view these activities as entirely personal. I have a keen eye and an uneducated but acutely developed sense of design which I bring with me to all of the work I’m involved in e.g. the design aspect of the samadhisound label, photographic work etc. I’ve been art directing my cover art since the release of ‘polaroids’ (80-81) or thereabouts.

ds red guitar London 84 © Anton Corbijn

‘Instruments are so over’ stated Björk (though the interviewer makes her sound a tad arch) this week in London’s Big Issue. David Toop talked about Blemish being a recording where you sensed it had been made in a room. How interested/committed are you to the physicality of music making? With the evolution of the internet in its infant days, do you feel virtualisation is to be wholly welcomed, or rather that being so at one with playing a musical instrument, as for instance as Jon Hassell has said of his trumpet playing, that it is a part of his nervous system, remains crucial?
My path has a similarity to Hassell’s in that my primary instrument is the voice. This provides me with that human element in its most literal sense. Having said that I have no attachment to any other form of instrumentation per se. I’m as at home working with an orchestra as, say, a laptop. I go through periods where invention becomes increasingly necessary, where the old sounds, forms, and methods, seem to lose their currency. At others, there’s a rediscovery of the past, of values, technique, form. All grist for the mill really. I’m a believer in working in the service of the composition. For me the emphasis is on what wants/needs to be expressed and how best to service it rather than experimentation for its own sake or artificial constructs (although not exclusively so). You could call this the ‘soul’ of the composition. If this speaks clearly enough it tends to dictate what needs to be done, what works in its service, what fails. You learn to listen. When a musician, particularly jazz musicians, speak of listening as a sign of a good, sympathetic player, I tend to think of them not simply listening to the other musicians in the group but to the spirit of the piece, tapping into its soul. It’s this ‘listening’, an extension of hearing, that is important to me. When we listen we hear the notes, the vibrations, but it’s what’s communicated that moves us and that goes beyond notes played. (I’m not speaking of ‘meaning’ here).

A musician works in the service of the music by whatever means necessary.

Working with Czukay, Hassell, Fripp, etc/early solo recording questions:
How did you work with Holger Czukay, Jon Hassell and Robert Fripp. Did you work with each separately, or did they meet, and work together? Hassell never seemed to be so involved? So did all three or Czukay and Fripp work together at the same time, or separately, and if they worked together did Czukay and Fripp gel?
(not sure which composition you’re referring to) I tend to work one on one. I met Jon and Holger for the first time in Berlin in 1983. Jon and Holger knew one another from their time spent studying with Stockhausen but hadn’t met since. There was a brief catch up, social interaction between them though no musical performance. Jon’s intensity was refreshing. There was thoroughness, a rigour, that didn’t allow for compromise but instead demanded a clarity of purpose, of intent. Holger’s approach was the antithesis of Jon’s. Joyful enthusiasm, wild invention, much paint thrown at the canvas to see what sticks, manipulation of the results.

I didn’t meet Robert until two years later. At that initial meeting we worked alone on material for the Gone to Earth record and the Steel Cathedrals soundtrack.

Quite some time ago I saw what you were doing working with Holger Czukay, Jon Hassell, Robert Fripp, and Danny Thompson, particularly with the Rain Tree Crow project. as a continuation of the spirit of a very magical moment in sixties/seventies music: embracing Can and King Crimson, and even Fairport Convention, as well as others. Yet you were catching this spirit in eighties and nineties. Does this make any sense to you?
I confess that, despite my association with members of two of the aforementioned bands, I’m relatively unfamiliar with their earlier work (I’d heard a couple of Can albums in my teenage years but knew/know little of early Crimson). If you’re referring to a musically free spirit, openly democratic, intuitive, an improvisatory based collective of sorts then I might understand where you’re coming from. RTC was an experiment in that respect. Maybe a failed experiment but an interesting failure. An attempt to work with a group of musicians with whom I was able to share a common (musical) vocabulary, to explore ideas and directions without bias. To allow improvisation free reign but at the same time allow for development of the ideas that surfaced. The experiment started well. There was a lot of interesting ground covered in the initial sessions. Ultimately the project seemed to collapse because of a loss of focus. The sessions were drawn out over too long a period. The project became costly and I struggled to retain a handle on the material, to maintain a cohesion, that at times my partners failed to share or comprehend. Nevertheless, it was other forces which eventually contributed to the dissolution of the band. All in all I enjoyed the project enormously and am still fond of much of the material. It’s certainly an idea(l) worth pursuing again under the right conditions.

ds London 1991 © The Douglas Brothers

By drawing in Hassell and Czukay there’s also a kind of suggestion of exploring further the sub-current of rock music whose origin was from, in some way, the influence, of Stockhausen and Darmstadt – Can’s Universal music. Did you feel this consciously was part of what connecting with Czukay was about?
Not directly. There was the significant shadow of Stockhausen, that was a given, and Holger couldn’t have been more open about the importance of Stockhausen’s influence on his life and work at the time. But, although I’d discovered the work of Stockhausen as a teen and the work had proved influential (particularly for R. Barbieri and myself as referenced on the track ‘Ghosts’), as I said, Can were/are a relatively unknown entity to me. My reference for Holger was always his solo material which, to my mind (being only marginally aware of what had preceded it), had slipped the net of historical placement or definition and moved into areas entirely of it’s own making. In any case the emphasis, the reference for me, has never been consciously, exclusively, rock music, sub-current or otherwise. These aren’t my roots. I feel as though I was born of a generation that was able to do away with this burdensome lineage to some extent, a generation for whom eclecticism and hybridisation were key words. Growing up we’d hear all kinds on music broadcast on British radio. There was no real segregation as there is today in the States and to a lesser extent elsewhere. If you wanted to hear your favourite artist or record played you’d have to wade through all kinds of material from rock, pop, comedy, balladry, novelty to reggae, soul, r n b. It was a wonderful education in a way, although, at the time we didn’t tend to view it that way. As we got older all of the above and more was available to us. Some take the legacy of a particular strand of music and run with it but to me the point was to breed something potentially new out of the influences, to create interesting hybrids that were a reflection of the diverse musical influences that were available to us growing up. This is why pop music as opposed to rock music can still occasionally be an interesting force to be reckoned with because the sphere of influence is broader, the eclecticism greater. The parameters that embrace pop music are vast whereas in other musical genres that have begun to lose their currency the parameters used to define them have tightened with time, its evolution appears to have slowed to a near halt.

A less charitable interpretation of the Brilliant Trees collaboration – which was suggested to me when I heard how Chris Blackwell of Island Records was trying to figure out how to break Bob Marley and the Wailers in Britain in the seventies into the white audience, came up with introducing rock guitar into the music. The band immediately crossed-over into the white audience. I hope this doesn’t sound unfair, but Brilliant Trees, with its list of star names can look as if it may have had cogitations to push you into a new emerging audience demographic? Or maybe it was completely spontaneous?
The problem I faced when venturing out alone for the first time was deciding who to work with. My social circle in the world or musicians was not much greater than the members of the band. I dreaded the idea of working with session musicians for whom the material would be all in another days work. The answer came from the compositions themselves. I was working on a home demo of the title track for Brilliant trees. As I began to elaborate on the arrangement I came up with a sound reminiscent of Jon’s trumpet on a prophet 5 synthesiser and the connection was made. It occurred to me that if I was able to draw a line between a particular composition of mine and a body of work by another artist would they not be able to do likewise? I continued to arrange the material for the entire album and as I did certain connections continued to be made between given compositions and a musical ‘voice’. These voices obviously existed within my own frame of reference. These were musicians whose work I was very familiar with. Once it was obvious to me who these musicians should be we tracked them down and asked if they’d be willing to give the material a go. They heard nothing in advance of the sessions, most of the participants had never heard of me. It was due to their generosity and sense of adventure that the sessions happened at all. Not one of the musicians invited declined the offer.

Once in the studio I found that there were indeed wonderfully intuitive connections made. The pieces evolved, not without some difficulty, but intuitively. Based on the positive results of this experience this process of selection became my modus operandi for years to come. It was the compositions themselves that cried out for certain contributors, voices. I tried to obey that call.

As a footnote I would add that calculations such as you imply rarely work. Audiences are fairy savvy where these things are concerned. Greatness doesn’t rub off via association, nor credibility or respect. Unless there was real empathy at work these sessions would’ve fallen flat, possibly been derisible.

A career (an awful and inapplicable term in my case but I can think of no other) trajectory such as mine doesn’t reside in calculation so much as the pursuit of ones own interests and passions. Japan, it can be said, was a group that fooled around with calculation and artifice in the sphere of pop music and culture where these attributes, if they can be called that, are entirely at home. It was, among other things, the nature of these games that I grew tired of. I wished to explore the work with the same degree of open-faced honesty that I’d touched upon with the track ‘ghosts’ and such calculations wouldn’t have been in keeping with this form of psychological and emotional archaeology rather, it would’ve undermined it.

Of course, we don’t live in a vacuum, there are external influences at work but these shouldn’t be over stated.

ds and Angus McBean ’84 © Anton Corbijn

In Alchemy: an Index of Possibilities one side of this set of music seemed to map another element in that sub-current of early eighties music, Bob Frippertronic’s Rock Gamelan, which in turn seemed to source back to Steve Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians as much as Balinese Gamelan. At the time was this, in a way, part of the idea?
Reich is obviously present in the mix, Robert not (in terms of influence).

Looking back, do you have thoughts about where Rock Gamelan might have gone?
Rock gamelan (first I’ve heard of it referred to as such) is one of the most unfortunate terms I think I’ve yet to come across. As mentioned, rock music really doesn’t make up a great part of my musical background despite possible appearances to the contrary. Dance Gamelan, disco gamelan, techno gamelan….ha..! The goal was to inhabit the world of spiritual initiation and to try and reflect that musically by drawing on a wide variety of influences. It was an immersion into the ritualised, the repetitious and the exotic. It was also a continuation of themes explored on Brilliant Trees that I’d wanted to take that step further. As to where influences of this kind might’ve gone well they’ve never really gone away. You only have to listen to bands such as Tortoise to hear that the direction still has currency.

You describe Gone to Earth as a very difficult record to make. I wondered if its psychology was one of resolution, and given the explicit alchemical overlay of its feel whether you sensed it as an alchemical record.
There does seem to be something of the spirit of acceptance or, as you say, resolution, that must be the product of experience, direct experience of the subject of the journey or inquiry. I was beginning to make inroads I remember. There wasn’t so much of that clawing in the dark without benefit of a light. Yes, there are multiple references to discovery as opposed to questioning, the recognition of my own failings, shortcomings and the embrace of the same, the acknowledgement of a ‘presence’, an other, to whom many of the pieces are directed or refer to.

I did see the record as being a reflection of that alchemical process from base instincts to the development of higher properties or attributes. I was reading Gurdjieff around this time but was intrigued by the Gnostics, the Rosicrucians also, Pascal etc. This interest didn’t lead me away from the clarity of Buddhist teachings but I was briefly held captive by the symbolism, the language, the romance. Ultimately I felt this knowledge obscured as much as it revealed. The straight ahead clarity of the Buddhists, the lack of obfuscation, the indisputable benefits and results of the practice determined that I should stick with the teachings when other avenues of interest had lost their charm.

Russell Mills, in the interview in Fourth Door Review 6, says for him alchemy is a language of metaphor. I wondered both in the article and here, whether you felt differently, or similarly that Russell’s painting was a visual analogue to ambient music, I wonder if you agree with this, and whether you feel your visual work sits within some kind of visual ambient spectrum.
I’d agree with you that Russ’ work was/is a visual analogue to the field of ambient music. That had to be a conscious influence or consideration in Russell’s development that saw him move away from the figurative and into these richly illustrative or suggestive images. That description doesn’t quite hold true for the GTE artwork which I felt pushed Russell in a slightly different direction at that time. I came to his studio bearing books ripe with illustrations that I felt might work as an interesting starting point for the cover art or discussion thereof. Codex Rosae Crucis was one volume I remember bringing and the graphics of Robert Flood another. They had a clear influence on the nature of the finished work. Russ digested these elements, appropriated them, made them part of his own vocabulary.

My own visual work is a different kettle of fish. I don’t tend to think of it in the same light. It doesn’t sit comfortably or successfully with the term ‘ambient’. Elements of it possibly once did (e.g. the film ‘steel cathedrals) but that aspect seems to have played itself out.

I get a real sense of continuity between your work with Holger and the collaborations with Russell Mills. But is it your sense the ambient ‘Music for Chemists’ series, the second side of Index of Possibilities, Flux and Mutability and Plight and Premonition records, are interwoven with your work with Russell, Approaching Silence and The Beekeepers Apprentice even if they come out of different experiences – both time-wise and in that the latter were the sound content for mixed media installations. Were these pieces of music made in similar or different ways, and how much were they about studios, rooms, loops and the possibilities enabled by recording technologies to uncover moods and atmospheres. Do you see a continuity, and would this continuity be, I guess, your ambient musical voice coming through?
That would be a fair enough comment. Steel Cathedrals was the first step in a new approach for me. There had been a fair amount of room for improvisation in the recording of Brilliant trees but the pieces themselves had an existing, recognisable, architecture, a clear framework that the participants had to be conscious of. With S.C. I loosened things up a bit. I drew out a road map of the dynamics of the piece but left the content open to the participants to decide. I created a backdrop to give the players something to work off of (I was still working one on one, not as a group), there was the ambience, the pulse etc. Then I invited players to respond to this. I did a considerable amount of editing after the fact, cutting and pasting, shifting information around, composing would be the simple word for it.

I have trouble remembering the sequence of events but some time later, possibly after the GTE sessions or later still, Holger invited me to come work in Can Studio, Köln. This was to be the second attempt at building a composition around the improvised input of the musicians involved only this time I was the primary performer and there would be no shifting of the elements after the fact (Premonition) but a fair amount of radical editing of the piece in it’s entirety (Plight). These recordings also involved the use of pre-prepared loops that Holger used to guide and influence my mood and performance. I began to really enjoy this process of recording and wished to explore the idea further with a larger group of musicians. This ultimately led to the RTC project (there’s your Can link right there I suspect).

I do see clear connections between the compositions you mention. They’re all interlinked in some way. Ideas are carried over and developed on subsequent projects. The Czukay pieces are very much about time and place, Holger’s idiosyncratic approach to the recording process and technology. The later pieces in this field owe less to place more to technology. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of the limited tools at your disposal at others, it’s exploring a new piece of technology which facilitates a procedure that has in the past been too time consuming and dependent upon access to expensive equipment/studios.

ds and hc ’83 © yuka fujii

Have there been other artists you’ve worked with in a mixed-media/installation sense as with Russell? Who, what were the projects? Are there some present projects?
I undertook a second large scale installation after the Ember Glance piece with Russ. It was installed in the P3 exhibition space in Tokyo. The concept and design were my own, the participants included Robert Fripp (text), Adam Lowe, and Yuka Fujii. The audio content of this piece was released as part of the Approaching Silence cd.

I decided not to pursue more installation work after this second piece. There was/is so much of this kind of work out there and yet little of it appears to cover new ground (the same could be said of video installations). In addition it was always difficult securing suitable locations for the work. In short, I lost interest. I haven’t ruled out future work for public spaces. I need to redefine it for myself so that it might regain my interest and attention.

Songwriting:
When avant rock music began to remove itself from late sixties consensus of what music was, it was the music of the songwriter and specifically electric folk and folk rock, - I think of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks or Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece or the work Richard Thompson - which no longer seemed to hold the same counter-cultural cache from the eighties on. Instead electronic music seemed to become associated with representing the most radical musical statements. But your work, from Gone to Earth to Blemish seems to maintain the place and integrity of the songwriter in the increasingly electronic musical environment. While they are very different sets of music, in their different ways, they maintain something of this song writing tradition. That is, David Sylvian, as a part of the remnants of this song writing tradition? Does this make sense, or do you feel song writing – and here I am thinking along the lines of Dylan and Richard Thompson - is as strong as ever.
There’s an evolution which must take place for any tradition to maintain its currency. As a vocalist I work with words and music. No matter which avenue I choose to pursue this inevitably links me to the songwriter tradition whether those influences are Dylan, Lennon, Brel, Brecht or Weil. I don’t feel a tremendous affinity towards most other writers, in particular that strand of songwriting you indicate in your question (for the record none of the writers you mention have played a part in my own evolution). As mentioned in a response to an earlier question, the music we heard growing up stretched right across the board. I’m more likely to have heard and enjoyed a composition by Cole Porter or Rodgers and Hammerstein than say Joan Baez! I feel that at this point in the evolution of song (to quote Mr Porter) anything goes. It’s what we can pull from the more general field of song writing into the present time that might still have currency, that a writer may connect with, turn it on it’s head, and spit back out as an entirely new breed of song, that’s of interest. Tom Waits drags the blues kicking and screaming into the 21st century and in doing so renews its currency and extends its vocabulary. Singer/writers such as Robert Wyatt, Scott Walker pull on half a century or more of influences to create a vocabulary of their own. I have attempted to find my own way with song. Of course these influences are only partially musical, more often than not the main impulse comes from other sources, but speaking in the context of the song writing tradition it’s those writers that came before the 60’s generation that have had the greatest influence on my approach to song writing.

How involved did you become in the philosophies of the JB's: Joseph Beuys and J G Bennett, sound-referenced on Gone to Earth. Or were they referencing markers in the sand on the invisible path you were treading?
An abiding interest in contemporary art eventually led me to the work Joseph Beuys and his theories regarding the role of art in society. Again, there is this reference to the alchemical process of transforming the base elements of society. Working with ideas and a strong sense of community to uplift society, restructure it, empowering the individual via recognition of their own creative impulses etc. In relation to his own physical work I respected the way that he was able to transform the most mundane of materials, lending them magical properties.

My original idea was to meet with Joseph Beuys and record a conversation from which I was going to take extracts to be used throughout the instrumental portion of GTE. We were in the process of making contact with him when he passed away.

My interest in all things Gurdjeiff led me to the writings of J.G. Bennett. Of course, on meeting Robert for the first time I spent far more time inquiring of Mr and Mrs Bennett and their teachings than recording (actually Robert set up a number of Frippertronics loops so we put the machines into record and left them to it allowing us to take tea and talk whilst simultaneously ‘working’) which in turn, quite naturally, led to the inclusion of Mr Bennett’s quotation on the title track.

ds and rf LA , CA ’93

India:
In the last Fourth Door Review (6) there are interviews with Sheila Chandra and Jon Hassell, which explores their involvement in drones and raga music, and suggests they represent another kind of Indian music, planetary forms, rather than geographically sourced from the sub-continent classical tradition. I wondered given your involvement with your Guru Ammachi whether you feel connected to the future of Indian music? From your released material Indian music seems to be a backdrop presence.
I have general knowledge of the Indian classical tradition. Having spent the past decade in the company of Indian teachers it seems inevitable that I acquire some knowledge on the subject if only via osmosis. Other elements of the Indian tradition that have made an equally strong, if not stronger, impact are the songs of devotion (bhajans) and mantra recitation.

To imply in any way that I feel connected to the future of Indian music would be misleading and far beyond the reach of my interest, ability and knowledge as it currently stands. It’s possible that specific strands of influence (e.g. Sanskrit mantra recitation) may have a bearing on future work and that elements I have absorbed from the tradition of Indian music may surface in one form or another but as I write, this isn’t a conscious goal or musical direction I’m considering taking.

However I would imagine you have some insight into the Indian musical tradition – you talk of Ammachi having a beautiful singing voice – what kind of future do you think Indian classical music will have in this new century?
Mine has really been a brush with Indian music rather than anything approaching a study or passion. One of the beautiful things about Indian music is the degree of discipline and years of study it takes to master any element of it. Therefore the likelihood of the tradition being diluted or easily absorbed into contemporary culture on the back of a trend or wave is fairly low. We do find the use of images of Indian gods and goddesses in popular culture but often the significance of these images are poorly understood and at times offensively re-contextualised. Because classical Indian music has comparable resonances on multiple levels we that appropriate elements of it without sufficient knowledge are in danger of taking similar missteps. But there are basics such as the drone, from which many have explored new avenues. The title track from Blemish is based on that principle as has been much of my work over the years. A drone can be simply that or it can take on greater significance depending on the interest, knowledge, and aims of the writer/performer.

Of course there have always been individual performers from deeply rooted traditions that find the means, the common threads, that facilitate cross cultural collaboration but I’m assuming that’s not what the question was referring to. Indian music, as in the sacred literature of the region, is a living tradition and will continue to make its presence felt globally but on a modest scale.

And in terms of your involvement in ambient, and the future of electronic music – do you sense the emergence of a particular Indian electronic music?
Not that I’m aware of but then I’m a little divorced from a lot of these developments here in the States. There was the Asian underground in London that was given a face by Talvin Singh and others but I’ve lost track of those developments. It failed to sustain my interest. Lazwell has been pushing the envelope with his brand of multi-culti collaboration but, no disrespect, I fail to see where any of this is leading or if it’s furthering the cultural exchange in any significant way. But then I’ve become increasingly sceptical of these cultural exchanges. Not in the moral sense but in the artistic. Jon’s fourth world notion of a coffee coloured music has yet, to my mind, really take off in any significant way although all the signs are certainly pointing in that direction. A certain brand of exoticism has been mined but has become mired in the romantic, the jam session, or alternatively, the dance floor. Rarely has it touched that deep magic realism core that Jon mined so successfully in the 70’s and 80’s.

Currently, my interest lies where the world of the contemporary classical, the avant-garde, and electronic music, intersect.

Continue reading "Fourth Door Review Q & A, 2004" »

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 05:33 PM | Permalink

Originally published in Macedonia, 2004.

-20 years ago you gave up fame and survived. Although you don't lead the life of a pop star and you keep your private life private you still sell records in huge quantities, the concerts are usually sold-out. Can you describe your relationship with your audience? You still have quite a few hardcore, loyal fans out there.

ds- I can only deduct certain truths regarding the audience for my work in the same way that anyone else closely observing the situation might. There are a number of travellers who have undertaken the long journey from pop stardom to the present with me. You could say we've been maturing together. You might also be willing to admit that, in their listening habits if in nothing else, they enjoy a good challenge. There are other listeners that tend to jump on and off the wagon when it suits them, possibly tuning in for the vocal work and out for the instrumental (or in some rare instances vice versa). Still others, whose curiosity is piqued by a particular recording. I come face to face with the audience (I won't be presumptuous and call them 'mine') in the arena of the concert venue. In this respect I've almost universally found them to be the most generous, respectful, gracious, audience an artist has any reasonable right to expect. More than this I cannot say.

-The music you create has a long-lasting beauty and in a way it reflects a lot about you. What would you like people to take away from your music? What sort of response or feeling do you hope is evoked in your listeners?

ds- I have often said that the desire is to blow the listeners hearts wide open. By this I mean I want them to be moved to the point of abandonment. This would be beautiful, an ideal, but it is too much to expect. That the work might resonate in the lives of others is no lesser achievement and one I might more modestly aspire to.

-The artwork on you album covers has been like an art gallery exhibition with works by Russell Mills, Anton Corbijn, Yuka Fuji. Being a painter (and photographer) yourself do you think cover art adds anything to the music when it's released?

ds- The artwork might resonate, enter into dialogue with the music, elucidate possibly? If nothing else it can allude to the contents therein.

-Can you describe the philosophical intersection where art and music meet for you?

ds- I don't think it is a case of one intersection but many. Simply put, in the realm of the heart or possibly, wherever it pushes up against a truth of sorts.

-Can you contrast the creative catharsis of the finished aural product to when you finish a piece of visual art?

ds- I only feel eloquent enough in my work in music to achieve what might be called a state of catharsis. The visual work (such as it is) doesn't function on a comparable level.

-Do you believe the evolution of digital music downloads is substantially impacting the perceived importance of album artwork?

ds- Yes of course. But this will change and evolve in ways that will prove interesting and satisfying. I fully expect the visual component to become more elaborate, more an integral element of the entire experience. Once the physical product is all but obsolete we will see dramatic developments in this area. The digital download also does away with the notion of format. As composers we are now at liberty to offer up work that isn't defined by medium, from a piece that lasts literally seconds to one that may run for hours if not indefinitely.

-Describe the overall approach you took to putting the new record together. If the key elements to DBOAC were Love, devotion and spiritual intoxication it seems that (as stated in other interviews) that the theme subjects are elements that disturb you.

ds- Disillusionment, conflict, isolation, betrayal, even going so far as hatred...you know, the whole trip!

-Please describe the conceptual contrasts between Blemish and your other solo releases (Secrets from the Beehive for ex.). To me the stripped sound and the intimacy are on a similar level.

ds- The greatest and most significant contrast might be the approach to the writing and recording of the material. This in effect was a simultaneous act. A series of improvisations performed over a very short space of time which included the writing of the lyric and its performance before the ink was dry. All very much of in and of the moment. Add to this the fact that I was literally, completely alone throughout the entire 6 week session and I think you might begin to comprehend the difference behind the creation of this work when compared with previous projects. Then there was the open-ended form many of the compositions ultimately took. Structurally these are very loose, never amounting to more than two chord changes per composition. Essentially, drone based pieces, which allowed me to work as lyricist and vocalist in a relatively unconstrained fashion.

-Blemish was also released on vinyl. Do you have a specific visceral or emotional reaction to vinyl itself?

ds- Other than a simple nostalgia (lacking in sentiment) I can't say that I do.

-DBOAC is an incredibly diverse record. Was it a challenge to make its myriad of various influences fit together?

ds- At the time I felt these compositions belonged together. They dealt with similar issues, were created in the same spirit over the same period. There was no shortage of material and in the end the decision as to which pieces should be included in the album appeared obvious to me. Sequencing the album didn't prove an issue either.

-Your interest in Eastern culture is well established and evident. Elements of Eastern spirituality are also present in your work. How closely do you identify with those traditions? Also, eastern music - especially from India - seems to be one of the most important influences on you. Which aspect of this music is the most fascinating to you?

ds- Aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism are part of my discipline/practice so inevitably the answer has to be that I identify with these traditions in a fundamental way. I appear to have grown into them over time though, they weren't always an entirely comfortable fit but have become more so. I can't say that eastern music has a particular hold on me. I've been exposed to a considerable amount of Indian devotional music for the past 9 years or so and that has been absorbed and digested over time. I have enjoyed the living spirit of devotional music (in other words hearing it performed live rather than recorded) and have been incredibly moved by it. However, it would be wrong to say that I'm drawn to this, or any music emanating from the East, more so than any other.

-How important is spirituality to you and your music?

ds- It can't fail to be anything other than fundamentally important in life and therefore work.

-You are heralded for your collaborative work as much as for your solo work? You worked with premier avant/jazz musicians (Czukay, Fripp, Hassel, Ribot, Sakamoto etc). Does working with these gifted musicians grant you a confidence that you can challenge or transcend your own capacity and ability as a composer/arranger?

ds- A challenge is a good thing and something I often request of my collaborators. Ultimately as a composer you're simply trying to do the work justice nothing more. I have been fortunate, as you say, to work with talented musicians but I tend to regard the composition as the benefactor. I'm trying to bring it alive, to give it substance.

-Your work with Holger Czukay has produced one of the most interesting ambient albums. Was there a concept behind these two albums?

ds- The first of the two albums, Plight and Premonition, wasn't planned so if there was a concept at work it arose during the process of recording the material. Holger had invited me to Köln to record a vocal for a track he was working on but when we arrived at the studio late that first evening something entirely different from what had been expected took place. At the Can studio, as it then existed, there were instruments set up all around the room (an abandoned cinema), I settled down at the harmonium I think it was, and unbeknownst to me Holger put the machines into record and so began the P+P sessions. As the evening went on I recorded a series of improvisations on a number of instruments. It became clear as the work progressed that there should be little in the way of 'performance', that the work should sound as though it'd been captured illicitly while the instruments themselves reverberated in that large room. Holger made a point of recording me in the process of finding myself on any given instrument. At the point that I felt I had developed something worthy of recording, the moment had already passed and we'd move on. We tried to recapture the spirit of these sessions at a later date with the recording of Flux and Mutability but we weren't successful in manufacturing what had been so intuitively created first time around.

-Czukay is well known for his improvising abilities. To what degree does improvisation play a role in your compositional process?

ds- It has played a progressively important role for me from Brilliant trees until the present time. The answer to your question regarding Blemish should give you insight as to how this element has become an integral part of the process for me.

-Is it frustrating having people constantly refer to you as a vocalist only instead of a composer?

ds- I've never given the matter any thought.

-How do you look back at the "The First Day" experience? What are some of the sonic challenges in having to work in this format?

ds- Personally, it was getting my voice to sit well within the context of the guitar heavy music. As you can hear we ended up treating it a fair amount to enable it to rise above the fray to some extent. I left the sessions about one week into the recording as things didn't appear to be working out the way I would've liked them. I thought it best to leave Robert alone at the helm for a bit. Two weeks later I returned and a number of basic tracks had been recorded but sonically the sound was incredibly dense with little room for air. This fact was compounded by yet more overdubs on guitar and stick. It took quite some work to sort the material out in the mixing stages. I was still trying to improve upon it in the mastering stage. Never a good sign that! As for the experience over all: I really enjoyed touring with Robert, that's where the material seemed to come alive. I thoroughly enjoyed my friendship with him. They were difficult times for us both, his presence in my life was benevolent.

-Last year there were several reissues of your past solo work as well as some older material with your previous band. The additional material on the reissues is present on your box set "Weather box". Since there was a lot of rumour about the re-release of this box was this the only way to re-release the material from this box?

ds- It isn't true to say that all of the additional material on these re-issues were present in the Weatherbox set. There's material on the re-issues that's available for the first time. As for the re-release of Weatherbox:; this was something Virgin/EMI where interested in pursuing. I personally never thought it the right thing to do. Fortunately they couldn't find the original artwork so that idea was put to rest. The re-issues were always on the cards independent of the boxed set. In fact Virgin/EMI are still talking over the possibility of creating a new boxed edition

-In relation to publishing out of print materials the bootleg community is flooded with these materials be it video or audio. Bands like King Crimson or Led Zeppelin (among others) have been releasing stuff from their archives (live stuff mostly) to prevent this. Do you plan to re-release any past material video/audio/books in near future? (this refers stuff like Preparations, Steel Cathedrals, Trophies Vol.1, Polaroids)

ds- I don't like the idea of being forced to recycle material that has to my mind run its course just because the bootleg community are having a field day with it however, if there's a demand, and if I still feel a connection of sorts with the material then I wouldn't be adverse to re-issuing certain editions. No plans at present though.

-In the forthcoming period you'll be touring Japan as part of the Fire in the Forest tour. Do you enjoy the whole rigor of touring? How do you conceive your live performances?

ds- If the company that you keep is good then the touring itself can be a pleasant experience although, having said that, there's no doubt that travel has grown increasingly torturous since 9/11. The conception of any given performance tends to be guided by the audio content of the show. We have to be a little humble in our staging as it isn't easy to break even financially even without elaborate lighting etc etc. so we work within a tightly constrained budget. Right up to the last weeks prior to starting a tour there tends to be questions regarding the feasibility of the enterprise.

-You have a new independent label Samadhi. How involved are you in Samadhi's day-to-day business?

ds- Currently I am very hands on in every aspect of the business. I am the engine which drives it.

-In the forthcoming period you'll be releasing albums by Harold Budd and Akira Rabelais. What are the main difficulties that accompany an independent label entirely devoted to experimental music?

ds- Your assumption that the label will be entirely devoted to experimental music isn't correct. It's my intention to release music by artists working in a variety of different genres. The difficulties however tend to be the same regardless of the nature of the work; how do you notify the general public of the work's existence and how do you get people interested enough to give it an hour of their time. If we managed to solve those issues to some extent I think we'd be doing well.

-What is the artistic direction/aim of Samadhi? Is there a musician you would love to have on Samadhi?

ds- samadhisound is a place both real and virtual for the meeting of minds and shared creativity. It is local and it is global, a breeding ground for ideas and new directions in music and the arts. This is one possible future for the company. I tend to believe that samadhisound has a life of it's own, aspects of which are revealed to me as and when appropriate. I tend to intuit what the next step in it's develop might be. I may have a personal preference for the directions it may take but ultimately I try to listen and follow. There are many wonderfully talented musicians out there but I have no one artist in mind as I write. You have a significant Internet presence between the David Sylvian and Samadhi websites. How important is the web to the marketing of your music?

ds- It will increase in importance as time goes on. Ultimately, people will be able to purchase downloads of entire albums directly from the site. Obviously, it is already the base of communications between the company and the public, between myself and the public. In many ways this places the site at the heart of the company.

-The final question plans for the future?

ds- There are many plans which I'd prefer not to go into at this time. We will keep everyone updated via the site as things develop.

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 05:33 PM | Permalink

My favorite David Sylvian song is called "Fire in the Forest." Recorded for the singer's 2003 CD, Blemish, the song, just a voice singing over a humming guitar drone, has a gentle intensity that pulled me through a winter spent riding around on public transportation in the suburbs of Toronto. Hearing phrases like "there is always sunshine/behind the grey skies/I will try to find it/yes I will try" on headphones again and again in snowy darkness, somehow showed a fragile determination to transcend the ego's limits, made all the more moving for its place at the end of a record full of dark songs about spiritual struggle. Blemish is not a word normally associated with spiritual practice, yet the record reflects Sylvian's growing and deepening experience of sadhana, first with Mother Mira, then Shree Ma, with whom Sylvian and his family lived in California in the mid-1990s, and in recent years with Mata Amritanandamayi or Ammachi, as she's affectionately known.

Sylvian grew up in a non-religious family in South London in England and formed the group Japan in 1974. The group went on to considerable success as glam /new romantic rockers, but broke up after releasing the marvelous Tin Drum (1981). Sylvian has pursued a solo career since, whose early highlights include Brilliant Trees (1983), written in collaboration with trumpeter Jon Hassell and Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Secrets of the Beehive (1987). A master of songs describing an existential spiritual struggle, such as Tin Drum's 'Ghosts', with its chorus "Just when I think I'm winning/ when I've broken every door/ the ghosts of my life/ blow wilder than before", Sylvian's lyrics have taken on an increasingly explicit spiritual form, reflecting his studies with various teachers after his move to America in the 1990s, where he still lives with his wife, singer Ingrid Chavez, and children. The first fruit of this period of sadhana, 1999's Dead Bees on a Cake, begins with the warm, bhakti-filled "I Surrender" and ends with a devotional vocal by Shree Ma.

The lushness of Dead Bees makes the austere, intense Blemish, with its stunning minimalist guitar work courtesy of Christian Fennesz and Derek Bailey, all the more surprising. The surprise for me, however is one of recognition, of finding feelings, confusions and internal struggles that I could not find a way of articulating, suddenly manifested, in gentle yet rigorous form. The surprise is compounded on the singers's new EP with Sakamoto, World Citizen, a startlingly direct, compassionate description of the current political situation in the USA - in effect, a protest song, yet one which does not contradict Amma's teachings at all.

One of Sylvian's most remarkable songs, Secrets of the Beehive's Orpheus, sings of the Greek legend, whose singing could charm animals, humans and Gods alike. We think of music today as something disposable, as "pop", as background music. Without hiding behind the rhetoric of "high art" or of any particular religious practice, Sylvian's music points to that Orphic power of music, to reveal to ourselves what it means be alive.

I met Sylvian in downtown Manhattan with his lovely daughter Amira. The singer still has the beauty of legend, but little of the ethereal quality that is habitually attributed to him. He speaks quietly, thoughtfully, precisely, while his daughter speaks on a cell phone to her mother, or lounges, reading, graciously tolerating us.

DS: I often feel that there's a greater union between myself and my teachers when I'm not physically in their presence. There's a whole other level of experience when I'm in their presence but that sense of non-physical merging, of intimacy is profound.

MB: It's surprising that you can visit someone who's been dead for six hundred years and burst into tears in their presence. That's how I felt at Hazrat Allaudin Sabri's shrine in India. They say that he was so fierce in his lifetime that the only person who could come physically close to him was a musician, who would sit fifty feet away and play for him. And you can still feel that fierceness today!

DS: That's another element, isn't it? The element of ferocity in the proximity of the guru. People talk about the experience of bliss, but the level of ferocity, the fire that one has to walk through, live through - that is also very intense. The degree of suffering increases as the experience deepens, for me, because at first there's less attachment to who one believes one is, and it's easier to let go of all the things that need to be let go of. As you move through different stages, the degree of fear increases with each new level of experience because ultimately you're getting to the root foundations of the ego which are unshakable. And there is real fear because you see the death of the ego approaching, and if you let go of that, what is there? As you have to face your fears in the presence of your guru, you witness other people going through their experiences. There's often this perception, 'why do I have to live through this fear? I'll take on anybody else's obstacles, but not this one!' (laughs) It's so pinpoint perfect, it's precision made, this laser-like intensity focusing on just what needs to be focused on. Once you move beyond a given level of fear, apprehension, there's an enormous release and a whole new world of possibility seems to open up. You live and breathe that for a while until you come up against that next obstacle.

MB: A lot of people like to think that a spiritual narrative consists in going from darkness and suffering to peace and equanimity, but I think of your music, and in particular of Blemish, which is so much darker than the records that came before. It's still a record about sadhana though ...

DS: It's darker than ever! Some of the experiences you're forced to live through, to face head on, you see them with such clarity. I don't necessarily feel better equipped to deal with what's coming, but compared to the past, when certain negative experiences have welled up and I've become immersed in them and not been able to find a way out of them... Going through a similar kind of thing at this point in life, it has been a very different experience. First of all there was a certain amount of objectivity, of being able to step back and say all of this is just par for the course, it's just part of the learning process. Whatever comes out of this is just to strengthen me and help me to burn off whatever needs to be cleared away so that I can see things clearly.

A lot of things that I couldn't face in my life I could face in the studio environment. I would close that door and start working and open myself to whatever came through. And often it was very negative emotions. And I thought well, I'll just look straight at them, and more than that, I'll take them even further than I feel them in my daily life, because I wanted to go as far with them as I possibly could. I felt very safe doing that. I felt that there was a strength inside of me that would allow me to pull back at the end of the day and be able to do away with those emotions. So I was pushing myself deeper and deeper into the negativity of the experience, wanting to know what that felt like that, if you let yourself go to the point of hatred, how does that surface and how do you give that a voice? It was a way of experiencing those experiences and giving them a new vocabulary that was pertinent for now.

MB: Now as in our time?

DS: Yes. I was also feeling that all the familiar forms of popular song were no longer doing it for me. Even those evergreen artists that you go back to time and time again weren't moving me any more. The form had lost its potency, it had been exhausted. I was beginning to feel: what next, what do you do? And I felt that I personally had to find a new form for what I was experiencing, and I couldn't encapsulate these experiences in traditional forms I'd been using. I feel it's true of other arts too: now is an important time to find vocabularies that are pertinent to our time.

Everything becomes a commodity. We're told that if we understand your taste in how you decorate your room at home then we can probably guess what kind of music will go with that environment. So it's a matter of tying everything together in packages so we can all have what's known as good taste, a tasteful environment. We can dress well, we have good taste in our cultural environment, we can participate in it but without any commitment, no going out on a limb, always tapping into something that's termed classic whether it's a couch or a Marvin Gaye record.

But when we find something that challenges all of that in the culture, that's when we discover who we are, and our response to that isn't preconditioned. We don't have the benefit of reading a review of this experience prior to having it, we have to comprehend it on our own terms: "why did I feel so irritated when I was provoked in that way?" I want to have that kind of experience. The one that isn't scripted. The one that will throw you into the deep end of an experience and you just have to work it out for yourself. There is no right or wrong response, only your true response. And that's what I try to find in my work, that true response. It doesn't necessarily make it that comfortable an experience to listen to but that's not the issue here. It's just trying to find a means to grapple with what it means to be alive in the here and now, trying to find a vocabulary for it, trying to press the right buttons in me and hopefully that will communicate to others.

MB: When you think of musicians who've become involved in sadhana, they often take on the costumery that comes with sadhana, but you seem to have made a conscious decision against doing that ...

DS: It's just not an outfit that felt comfortable to wear. You try everything at some point or another. When I was with Shree Ma we went through that, as a family, supporting and performing with her, but it didn't feel right.

MB: Have you done bhajans?

DS: I haven't recorded them, but we've sung them obviously. I'm very familiar with the form. But there's a certain resistance to that as a musician, an artist. I feel that I'm a very fallible person, I have powerfully conflicting emotions and I don't want to give the false impression that all is right in my world. On one level the world has a beautiful simplicity and clarity to it. On another level it's only got far more complicated, with an increased degree of suffering. I want to mirror that duality of experience. Sometimes I may only want to focus on the blissful elements of divine awareness, maybe within an entire project or just within one piece of music. Or maybe it lies behind everything I do already. It's hard to say. I don't analyze what I do to that degree. But I can't do away with all the questions I have about what it means to be alive in the here and now, all the troubles and emotional conflicts, the love and hate that live side by side. I don't believe it's possible to experience a purity of emotion, I don't believe I ever feel only love except possibly in the lap of Amma. Outside of that beautiful place, love is accompanied by a whole complexity of emotions including its mirror opposite. I want my work to have that complexity, because the best work is the kind of material that, no matter what frame of mind you come to it with, you can still see yourself mirrored in it.

The great failure of so called spiritual music that we're surrounded by in this culture is that it's a music that tries to placate, it tries to insist that you be peaceful and filled with love. Well nothing could irritate me more than being surrounded by a work of art at any level that's insisting I feel something. I would rather work embody all the possibilities and let people find themselves within it hopefully. They see themselves mirrored in the work and they find a release through the expression of the work. That's the best that I can do. I wouldn't want to give the impression of an ivory tower existence where nothing seems to touch you any more, that somehow you can ride over all these obstacles because you've found a greater inner peace.

MB: That's the problem of New Age music, and why so many people are so resistant to the idea of spiritual practice, or music that addresses spiritual issues.

DS: Yes, but it's funny ... we spoke earlier about spiritual music, and the first name that came up was John Coltrane. And that's the antithesis of everything we think of culturally as spiritual music. But there it is, there's the fire, it's right there in the work, the fire of purification, of suffering, of bliss. It's all there, embodied in that work and you can tap into that work on any of those fundamental levels, and experience it in a beautiful and profound way. That's the beauty and strength of a work that reflects all that we are and potentially can be. Maybe it's too much to strive for and maybe you're guaranteed to fail 99.9% of the time. But it's definitely a goal worth aspiring to.

MB: Your own sadhana is involved in very complex spiritual traditions, but the terms in which you describe spiritual struggle in your music, aside from a song like 'Krishna Blue' on Dead Bees on a Cake, avoid direct reference to these traditions and practices. Is it possible or necessary to articulate the specificity of your sadhana in your music?

DS: I don't want to fall into a stereotypical response to my relationship to the divine. I don't want it to feel too comfortable in my own work, as a writer. Writing a piece like 'Krishna Blue', that was during a period of the enormous romance of the relationship with the guru, which is lovely, and it's still present in my life. But now I want to deal with the complexity.

In a sense the guru romances you to begin, you kind of get an easy ride, so that you can just experience all the profound love that is there, without the discoloration of your own ego. And once you have been led in so far, you begin to have experiences that are more profound but far more difficult to undergo. I don't want to fall back on the romance of the journey. What is more intriguing is the reality of the journey because the reality is so much more amazing than just simply the romance. The reality of the journey encompasses so much, and there's no separation from it in any aspect of life. Not one aspect, no matter what one is doing. That's an incredible thought.

I compartmentalized my life at some point, saying, there's this and there's that and then there's spiritual life. To me, now, it's all become spiritual life. There's no part I'll allow myself to push to one side and say, well that's my dirty little secret and I keep that over there. No, it's all a part of my spiritual life. That's a tremendous recognition. Years and years of analysis couldn't have brought me to this point in time, to bring all of these separate elements and embrace them as one. I've noticed there's this radical shift in perception about what my life is, and doing away with the compartmentalizing, which seems to be borne out of what one perceives to be the good and bad in one's self, what is good or bad for one, and the different faces we show to ourselves.

MB: It's so hard to know what do with the outbursts, the things that one would like to be exceptions to the nice pure spiritual system. I love that title, Blemish, for that reason. It's the hardest thing to face up to.

DS: It really is. To me the notion of telling a story about who one is, while it facilitates a sense of mental well being and coherence to ones life journey, is basically a lie. It's so well edited that it can't possibly embrace who we really are, and of course who we really are is beyond all of that. So I've tried to let go of the notion of the story. In fact, now that there are all these different component parts of who I am, there is no conceivable story that can hold it. There's these moments that shine with clarity and beauty, and then there's these darker elements which are extremely dark. What am I going to do with them? All I can say is that that's divine too, and I now have to bring them in and embrace them as who I am, and they're part of me until whenever, until the next stage.

This article first appeared in slightly modified form in Ascent magazine. Thanks to Eddie Stern, Robert Moses, Clea McDougall and Kristin Leigh for their generous help with it.

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 05:32 PM | Permalink

Originally published in 2003

1. I am presuming that the setting up of the Samadhi Sound label is a response to discarding the notion of working with a major label again? How is this likely to affect your future output, both in respect of the new freedom you are offered and the regularity of work you produce?

It isn't out of the question that I'd consider working with a major label again although at the present time it seems an unlikely choice to make. I can't place too much emphasis on the importance of freedom. I've been signed to a major label my entire adult life and while this afforded some sense of security, I was growing very tired of carrying the proverbial begging bowl which was so often met with indifference.

As to the question regarding the frequency with which I'll produce new work, this depends on numerous factors which are often times hard to predict. It's possible a pattern of sorts will emerge over the coming two or three years.

2. What aspirations do you have for the label, will you be attempting to sign other recording artists?

The label is something of an experiment. I have no business aspirations as such I simply wanted the freedom to choose which direction I should move in musically without concerns over 'selling' the idea of the work to company execs. Ironically, by choosing to start my own label I was choosing liberation from all business concerns that might even subconsciously influence the outcome of the sessions. By choosing to release the CD myself I felt all external pressures were off.

Time is an incredibly important resource in the world of the arts, something which the current climate often doesn't allow for. Time to allow ideas to develop, to grow, time to fail, to start over. Due to my overriding love of the process of exploration, improvisation, and discovery, this is what I want the label to offer, time to develop ideas outside of the pressures of commerce, freedom for artists to explore whatever avenue of inquiry fires them and to share in the excitement of helping that work finds its audience.

3. The new album, 'Blemish' was recorded incredibly quickly in comparison to your previous works. Was there a deliberate attempt to consciously let go of the work and not over-scrutinise and perfect it as you may have done in the past?

I'd been living with the idea of the work for almost a year or so prior to writing, therefore, when it came time to actually start the work in process, I felt well equipped to proceed at speed so to speak. I'd given myself 6 weeks to write, record, and mix the work and due to the intense nature of the material I might not have been able to sustain the attention over a much longer duration.

Basically, different projects require different means. However, I've never entered into a work thinking it would take me more than a few months to complete but circumstances arise and you cope, you do your best, that is all.

4. Was there a pressure from the Virgin label that would have made it impossible for you to release this type of album until now?

Not so much pressure as indifference. The more uncommercial the work the greater the indifference.

5. What fascinates me about 'Blemish' is how the melody of the vocal line is all that hold's the tracks together, usually the reverse is true. Was it a deliberate attempt to let your vocal carry the burden to allow the music to express as much of the ideas and emotion as possible?

Each piece started out with a guitar improvisation as the basis for the composition. I immediately responded to that first take lyrically and melodically. Without time for reflection, alteration, the lyric was written, the vocal was recorded. The first piece completed was 'The only daughter'. I heard it as a kind of monologue with musical accompaniment. I took that approach as the blueprint for creating the remaining tracks, all the while attempting not to repeat the process identically in anyway.

6. 'The Good Son' seems to be a very provocative track, in fact it reminded me of your old single 'Pop Song', which sarcastically addressed the commercial aspect of songwriting. Was there a similar intent behind 'The Good Son'?

I think it's possible to take a song such as 'pop song' on different levels. I do believe it can be taken sincerely, after all I love the genre and the form of the pop song, or it can be taken as something of a critique. I saw it rather arrogantly as a possible blueprint for the future of pop music. 'the good son' is more straightforward in this respect being overtly critical in its stance.

7. Is it possibly to write an album such as Blemish without being accused of being somewhat conceited? Do you care?

I'm not sure why it should take a conceited person to create a work like 'Blemish'. Do I care? If I believed myself conceited I would certainly go to work on that aspect of my nature as it would benefit my growth. Do I care that that might be how I am perceived by others who come into contact with the work? In all seriousness it isn't possible to care about such things as there's nothing I can do to change the perception.

8. I understand you are working on a project with Steve Jansen, can you tell me a little about this and any other long-term projects you are considering?

Steve and I are still writing material together in an attempt to map out a unique identity for this particular project. It is currently, predominately, electronically based. I have no other long term projects under consideration outside of my own work.

9. What are your views on the downloading of music from the Internet? How can this be combated and how do you think the industry will have to adapt in the long-term future, including the effect it will have on your own Samadhi Sound label?

Obviously the industry remains confused and panicked. At this juncture little is clear outside of the simple fact that should people opt for free downloads over the purchase of the work in question then, other than those at the top of the commercial spectrum, artists will not be able to survive. The river will dry up at the source. No one should be asked to give away their body of work for free. It doesn't happen in other professions and it's confuses me why people should think it ok that it should be acceptable in the arts (this problem will ultimately affect many in the artistic community at large). Samadhi Sound is a small, personally owned, business. It's a manageable scale. We'll have to wait and see how the current crisis effects us in the long run. There are a number of possible solutions to take. We'll remain alert to these and flexible in our options including the choice to walk away.

10. Having lived in America for quite a long period time now, do you feel at all uncomfortable about the effect that the current political climate is having on your children? And with the intense criticism of the political situation in America, do you feel the country fairly represents the thoughts and opinions of the ordinary civilian?

I don't think the current climate is affecting my children directly at present as they're too young to understand, or take an interest in, current affairs. I feel profoundly uncomfortable by the stance this administration has taken on most issues and on world affairs in particular. I believe America to be the greatest terrorist threat to that of other, smaller, sovereign nations. I believe America has blatantly and consistently interfered in the affairs of other nations for the sake of its own interests. It doesn't act out of compassion, it isn't compelled to act based on moral values of right and wrong. What we see now is an unbridled power at work in the world with very little restraint. I don't understand why it is so easy for this administration to pull the wool over the eyes of the seeming majority of this nation (I truly hope and suspect that this isn't the case) using the fear and patriot cards. Many Americans appear to have a painfully subjective self image that they're unwilling to see tainted. The 'good' that verses the 'evil'. The white knight, the world police. World terrorist doesn't sit well but instead of living in denial we should wake up to what is being said and done in our name, with our money. It's due to the powerful propaganda machine in the States that ignorance of our leaders true actions and goals are sustained. We need to educate ourselves and others.

11. Do you still feel like a foreigner living in a foreign country and what do you miss about England, if anything?

I do feel like a foreigner living in a foreign country. Question is do I feel more at home anywhere else at this point in my life? The symptom of many an exile even if self imposed. I miss England and Europe in general a great deal. I miss the global consciousness shared by many people there, I miss the comparatively liberal outlook, the lack of arrogance and blind patriotism, the lack of segregation in many aspects of life and culture. Most of all I miss its culture, its vibrancy, history, its hybrid nature (the natural cross fertilization resulting from the lack of segregation).

12. How does your relationship with your guru, Ammachi, influence your life on a day to day basis?

It underpins everything I do. It is the substratum upon which my life is built, it's how I make sense of it. Nothing has meaning for me if it fails to acknowledgment all that that relationship represents.

13. On the subject of Guru's, something, that Jiddu Krishnamurti wrote has always stayed with me, he said: 'How can gurus really have any importance at all? If someone is a real or false guru, it is only a problem to himself. If the seeker is not a true seeker, what does it matter what the guru is? And if the seeker is authentic, then it will not matter at all if the guru is false. The only thing that matters is the nature of discontent.' Have you crossed paths with Krishnamurti's teachings upon your travels?

I have. I'm not sure all of it sits well with me but there's obviously enormous wisdom there.

14. During the lengthy writing and recording process of 'Dead Bees On A Cake',you spoke of nearly quitting music and turned to your guru for advice. I was curious to know how you could allow such an enormous part of your life to be determined by any other outside influence. In retrospect do you believe it would have been, or ever could be possible for you to live a life without music as a creative outlet?

I'm not saying it would've been easy necessarily, who learns anything from 'easy'? but possible? yes, I think so. It is difficult to answer the remainder of the question as it would require an explanation of the nature of my relationship to my guru, what that is built upon, the truth of it as I see it. That would be another article entirely.

15. The promotional film that you made upon the release of the 'Dead Bees On A Cake' album somewhat surprised me. It seemed to contradict your stance on
personal privacy. What was the motivation behind revealing parts of your life to the world that had been previously locked away? And what part did the ego have to play in the process?

I was asked to put together an EPK for the 'dead bees..' album. As there was really no budget to work with I thought it best if Ingrid and I attempted it ourselves. The album's subject matter is directly related to the experiences we shared as a family over a period of 5 years or so. I felt the only way to represent the work in this context was to, in some modest, somewhat impressionistic, way, depict the family itself. The experiences that provoked the creation of the material were of such an intangible nature how to otherwise go about showing something of the source? I felt the answer was to let down the guard enough to allow a glimpse at the lifestyle which nurtured the work. As I was in control of the direction of the film I didn't feel my privacy was in anyway threatened. As for the ego, it surfaces under many guises. Who guards the privacy if not the ego? Advances made in the overriding of the ego aren't always as obvious as they might appear.

16. I have read you say that music comes 'through you' not 'from you'. Are you implying there is an outside agent or, without wanting to sound to other-worldly, force, that is using you as a medium to express itself. This would appear to be at odds against the common perception that creativity is 'only' the manifestation of a person's individual emotional expression?

There are times when the work created clearly goes beyond the individual's conscious emotional awareness. Inspiration isn't something that one masters, rather it is a state of preparedness, or readiness which one recognises as being conducive to achieving the best results, not unlike a medium.

17. In what way does 'thought' have its place in the creative process for you? When you are in the thick of composing music do you become absent of thought to prevent various types of conditioning from interfering with the creative process, perhaps almost a meditative state?

There are different scenarios but in an ideal one traditional thought processes appear suspended while work is in progress. Akin to a meditative state might be a fair description.

18. Do you believe that the darker side of the human character will always be more interesting, stimulating and easier to convey through music? It seems that the greatest pieces of music or art often seem to come from those with a particularly troubled mind, either permanently or at a particular given time in their life. Many might say this was true of you with 'Secrets Of The Beehive' which is acknowledged by so many as your greatest album?

The interest these works provoke might have a lot to do with where we focus our hearts and minds. Their popularity might be related to the cathartic nature of the works themselves. The longing and yearning often expressed in this kind of material is an expression, a primary aspect, of what it means to be alive, to be human. It is also an awareness of this state that potentially leads us on to question the nature of our lives, existence, and possibly discard all that we thought we knew in favor of an 'intuitive wisdom'. At the very least it might serve as an aid to cognizance, opening up in a space, unlocked by the nature of the compositions themselves, where it feels 'safe' to do so, or as a possible wake up call.

19. It could also be argued that substantial creativity only comes through discontent. Is it important to keep the fire of discontent burning to continue to be creative and purify oneself?

Complacency is something to be wary of. I'm not fond of the word 'discontent' in this context. It implies for me an unnecessary friction between what I am and what I should be. Starting where you are is important, not from where you think you should be. Discontentment might well be the necessary impetus to provoke action but once that action is taken another quality, maybe that of aspiration or devotion, should ultimately take its place.

20. Do you get frustrated with the technological side of making an album? How much does modern technology interfere with the creative process?

Technology can interfere a great deal! With the constant technological developments it's possible to feel permanently placed on the slant of a learning curve. Of course there are the usual technical problems, the maintenance etc. On the other end of the spectrum technology offers such wonderful tools, liberating, exciting, facilitating, envelope stretching, idea generating....can't live with it, can't live without it.

When I was younger you only needed to know how to hit a few chords on the guitar to make music. Sure, you can still work with those constraints but generally much more is asked of you as a musician....you must wear many hats. Producer, engineer, tech, composer, arranger, performer..the list goes on. It is a great relief to simply pick up that guitar sometimes and play....

21. Freud once wrote that the goals at which the artist is aiming are 'honour, power, riches, fame and the love of women'. Do you believe there is an element of truth to this regarding modern musical culture and if so, did it apply to you in your early years with Japan?

The reasoning behind why we do what we do is very complex. Maybe we can take love (why simply and restrictively 'love of women', I'd have thought love with a capital 'L') and honour as powerful motivators, the rest mentioned might be considered icing on the cake. I think there are equally important factors at work though, a need to make sense of the world, comparable to the naming of a new condition or leap in consciousness. A sound, a vision that encapsulates something in a way never before grasped....now that's motivation enough. There's a clarity and a sense of 'in-tune-ness' that accompanies such experiences that, while difficult to sustain or even recall successfully, becomes part of the impetus or motivation for creating new work once one has had the benefit of tasting them.

22. What part does ambition play in your life? Is there an ambition to continually improve as a musician or as a songwriter? Or does the continual process of self-learning automatically provide new challenges and therefore new avenues to explore?

I'd say the latter was true.

23. I had the pleasure of watching you perform in London in 2001. Unlike any other concert I had been to, I felt there was a sense of shared experience between the audience that I had never quite encountered before. As the concert progressed I also got the feeling that you were revered with almost a sense of awe. Is this reaction something you sense, and if so, does it make you uncomfortable? Although it is a commonplace relationship between artist and fan, do you believe it is healthy?

I can't say that I've ever been aware of those qualities being present in an audience while performing. It remains outside of my experience and I'm happy to leave it that way.

24. Do you find when you collaborate that the more the input of others the less of you goes into the work due to the compromises that have to be made between musicians? Or can you not make compromises with such intensely personal work?

It depends on the setting. If the work is a collaborative project then the context implies compromise from the outset. The hope is that the level of compromise will be minimised by a shared vision. This obviously isn't always the case. As for the solo work there's a tendency to strive for a complete absence of compromise. This is impossible of course but it is a worthy pursuit which, in most cases, ultimately strengthens the work.

25. Do you have any regrets regarding your relationship with your brother Steve Jansen, Barbieiri and Karn, following on from the Rain Tree Crow project? Now that you have the freedom to work on any projects you wish, is there a possibility of a reunion at some point? I ask because there seems little doubt that you shared a natural musical kinship as a foursome?

It's always dangerous to use the word 'never' but I would think it extremely unlikely that we would ever work together again. I have no desire to reform the group under any guise. What kinship there was (and yes, there certainly was kinship) has long since passed.

26. When you worked with Ryuichi Sakamoto on Dead Bees… I gather that the sessions did not quite go as planned. Did this concern you at all, having always seemed to have such a wonderful natural connection with Ryuichi? Is it a matter of timing and can we hope for any fuller collaborations between you and Ryuichi?

It was a cause of frustration but not concern. Ryuichi and I have worked together on and off over the years and I'm certain this will continue to be the case.

thanks Danny

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 05:29 PM | Permalink

David Sylvian: Questions
prepared by Dr. Darren J. N. Middleton, July 8, 2003

1: I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you, Mr. Sylvian, for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer several questions about religion, especially your delight in Hinduism. I wonder if I might set the scene, as it were, by asking you to look back over your life thus far and then outline the contours of your spiritual journey to date?

I don't think all of the elements that constitute a spiritual journey are necessarily obvious. Childhood influences must play a major part in ones development but how to pinpoint them? There's the issue of environment, key moments of revelation, epiphany, disillusionment, insight, intuition, habits, fears, All appear to play a part in a mind eager for clarification, inspiration, or simply confirmation, going some way towards justifying the intuited awareness of another reality that isn't being owned up to or catered for in the immediate environment or even in the world at large outside of organized religion. I've always carried with me a faith of sorts born out of all the above influences and more. This faith, unshakable as it was, wasn't really questioned in any depth until I'd made it through my teenage years. I then questioned every aspect of what constituted my faith. This was a period of upheaval that I embraced with something akin to relish. A casting out, doing away with any aspect of my life that didn't bear up to close scrutiny. This search led me to look into Gurdjieff's teachings, Sufism, Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism etc etc. At some point or another all of the above held me captivated for a period of time. My faith was restored to me stronger than ever before without the basis of a given set of parameters, without dogma. I was free. I felt free to explore whichever avenue of interest cast its spell and, more importantly, produced results. For me Buddhism held the most persuasive deck of cards. This was the source of knowledge that informed my practice for a number of years without the benefit of a personal teacher. This was ultimately to prove problematic as the practice itself became quite dry and uninspired. At that point I actively searched for a teacher. Surprisingly, this search led me to series of teachers out of India whose background was Hindu based. Although I was never told to redirect the focus of my practice I slowly began to glean the significance, decode the meanings behind the technicolor images of Hindu gods and goddeses, some astoundingly gory in their representations, and was drawn into this enticing world, fascinated by the practices, the devotional aspect of the worship, and the, to my mind, indisputable wisdom of the Vedas.

2: Moving right along: I want to focus on "Forbidden Colours" for a moment. This is one of your early solo recordings, of course, and here you craft and deliver a lyric with multiple Christian allusions. I also note your impressive use of an envelope structure that begins with a plea for belief and ends with the beginnings of belief. Generally speaking, what were your thoughts about Christianity as you approached the writing and recording of this song? Do any of these thoughts remain with you today? If so, what are they? If not, why not?

The song was written during the period I just described where faith itself was under scrutiny. Having been brought up in Christian based schools where classes such as 'scripture', in which the bible was read and studied, were mandatory, my belief system naturally had a Christian bias or cosmology. As the subject of Christianity itself was under scrutiny my writing pursued this enquiry also. The lyric deals with the loss of faith, doubt, suffering, and divine love. Although I've performed the song live in recent years I've had increasing trouble connecting with the piece on a profound level. I believe this is attributable to that fact that a) the Christian symbolism of the piece which no longer holds any real significance for me and b) the issues that arise in my practice are no longer to do with a lack of faith. The notion of a distance from the divine "a lifetime away from you" doesn't hold true for me at all as I know that the divine is available to us in the here and now. It isn't something attained at the time of death etc. etc.

3: In retrospect, what, if anything, is the "new religion" alluded to in "Pulling Punches," featured on your first solo vocal album, Brilliant Trees? A related question: What definition and/or meaning would you attach to the word "religion"?

'New religion' would be a reference to the hybrids that surfaced with advent of the new age movement. Beliefs systems that had gone through something of a filtering process removing all the fat and therefore any potential benefit. A religion that by default pulled its punches.

Religion: a set of beliefs, practices, and disciplines based on a defined set of human and spiritual values, informed by the wisdom of its literature as recorded by its prophets.

4: References to "age of reason," "nausea," and "iron in my soul" in some of the songs that appear on Brilliant Trees invite comparison to Jean-Paul Sartre, who wrote novels with similar titles. Is there anything in this comparison? If so, do you think Sartre's views on religion are ultimately positive or negative?

My memory of the Sartre books I have read is sketchy at best. I believe the reason for this is that I was ultimately unimpressed by Satre's philosophizing. However, insightfulness into the human condition as revealed by contemporary philosophers and writers is relevant and beneficial when diagnosing the inherent problems therein. There is a practice in Tibetan Buddhism based on debate. The basics of the practice are under attack from the practitioners. This is because a system of belief must hold up under severe scrutiny. It must also produce results. Insightfulness into human nature, and the critical dissention of its beliefs are, I believe, signs of a healthy society.

5: As you know, your song "Weathered Wall" alludes to Jerusalem's Western (sometimes: wailing) Wall. Have you ever visited the Holy City? If so, what were your impressions? Also, the protagonist in "Weathered Wall" sings: "Grieving for the loss of heaven/Weeping for the loss of heaven." The same could be said of the protagonist in your song "Brilliant Trees": "A reason to believe/divorces itself from me." Do such lines hint at a loss of faith on your part, perhaps even a deconversion from a previously held or assumed belief?

I have never visited Jerusalem. Again, the album 'Brilliant trees' was written in a period when my belief system, my faith, came under attack. I wanted to see what remained when all pillars of support were removed. The pieces you mention are explorations along those lines. The narrator of Brilliant trees ultimately finds redemption in human love which for him is linked to the divine.

6: A sense of peaceableness comes through in one of your unrecorded songs, "Nagarkot." In fact, the title, unless I am mistaken, refers to a hilltop "beyond all doubt" and that, from here, your protagonist - you? - plans to proceed out on a "long and perilous journey." Where or what is Nagarkot to you? Does it play any kind of role in your spiritual formation?

The poem was written in response to a trip to India and, more importantly, Nepal back in '84. Seeds were sown that gave me a philosophical grounding of sorts and a renewed sense of spiritual wellbeing (Nagarkot).

7: Your second vocal album, Gone to Earth, hints at a kind of pantheism, or at least suggests that you are trying to integrate the sacred and material world, lyrically speaking. Is this a fair observation?

Fair enough. It is relatively difficult to write about matters of a spiritual nature in popular music. There are many obvious pitfalls. I attempted to focus on love, to merge the experiences of love, human and divine. This created an ambivalence that allowed for multiple readings. I was also somewhat enamored with the Gnostics at this point in time hence the embracing of some of its symbolism and iconography.

8: "Lilith," another unrecorded song, seems replete with ancient and modern allusions and symbols: Lilith, of course, is a feisty woman in ancient Hebrew tradition; shamans are religious specialists; "the will to power" is the title of a book by Friedrich Nietzsche; and, finally, "the holy blood of saints and sheep" suggests martyrdom or else ritual offering. Religiously speaking, what were you trying to accomplish with this song?

The piece certainly appears symptomatic of the eclectic nature of the search for truth and meaning. I have little recollection of the lyric but I'd attempt a definition as 'the power of divine energy embodied in human form. The realization of humanity's potential and/or destiny'.

9: Secrets of the Beehive, your third vocal album, is also riddled with religious references. Many appear to evoke Christian symbols, ideas and themes. What does the Cross ("September") mean to you, for example, and how do you understand talk of Kingdom ("The Boy with the Gun")? Do you, personally, believe in a devil, for example, or do you deny the devil's existence ("The Devil's Own")? What place has Jesus in your spiritual journey ("Mother and Child")?

The Christian symbols no longer have any hold on me. I could speak in the past tense but I don't feel my interpretations of these references differ from most. The point of using them in this context is a short hand of sorts. I don't believe in a devil. I do believe in the force of evil, I believe in the force of love. Heaven and hell are here and now defined by psychological states. We know what hell feels like. We experience on occasion our decent into it. Most of us are fortunate enough to re-emerge. Likewise we also experience heaven by degrees and intensity.

10: Other recordings from the Secrets of the Beehive sessions, such as "Promise (the cult of Eurydice)" and "Ride," speak of angels, chapels, rosaries and ravaged souls. After these songs, though, I sense a paradigm shift, for you appear to leave behind the subtle Christian references, and, as we now know, you change direction and begin evoking Shiva, a member of the Hindu pantheon, and Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, also a member of the Hindu pantheon. Spiritually speaking, did you experience a paradigm shift, or new "ashrama" (stage of life), after recording and promoting Secrets of the Beehive?

The period following on from Beehive was the hardest of my life. That decent into hell I spoke of. Great mental suffering. Yes, what felt like a monumental shift in awareness and development took place after 4 years of darkness (a darkness in which, although denied light, I never lost awareness of the light that underpins all existence). It was at this stage after numerous attempts had been made to understand the nature of the experience I was going through (including a beneficial period of psychoanalysis) that I found the first of my teachers, hence the shift in iconography which you correctly point out. Prior to this period though was the Rain Tree Crow project. This is an important document for me as it denotes the end of many intimate relationships including my association with Christianity : I touched his hand/it burned like coal/ I put paid to the devil/ and I saw the mountain fall/ Fall on".

11: Dead Bees on a Cake, the long-awaited follow-up to Secrets of the Beehive, showcased Hindu and Buddhist themes. For many of your listeners, for example, it helped to put Thalheim on their cultural map. What does Thalheim mean to you? When did you make the pilgrimage there, and what did you discover?

I visited Thalheim for the first time in '92 I believe it was. Oh god, what did it mean to me? It was the beginning of the journey in earnest. It was the rebirth of love. I can't do better than that I'm afraid.

12: Since Hinduism is rooted in the life and culture of India, have you ever visited India? If so, what were your impressions, religiously speaking? In America, do you have any contact with the Indian diaspora?

I have visited India. I lived in a ashram during my second stay there. I think it's fair to say I have only experienced India in the religious sense. India is after all a religious experience. I do have peripheral links to a part of the Indian community here in the States courtesy of my Guru but I wouldn't want to over state that.

13: How important is mindfulness to you? What place does it have in your overall thinking about yourself?

It plays a role of great importance in my daily life although like most aspirants I fall short of my own expectations in this respect.

14: Do you believe there is no self? If so, are you comfortable with saying that people are collections of different perceptions in flux? If not, how would you define the idea of "no self," and how does this idea shape your views on morality, for example, and moral responsibility, or life after death?

The ego is an illusion. Absolutely. Your second statement strikes me as too general even if true of the mind. It doesn't help me to view life in this respect. Once we have created a basis, a foundation of love and compassion from which to work (heart over mind) we can view the world with greater understanding. Understanding something intellectually (mind) and experiencing it as truth (heart) are very different things. Once an experience of the truth has been attained then the last part of your question is answered intuitively. Not a question of moral or immoral but a question of truth. Truth as experienced not as intellectual conception. 'No self' is for me an act of surrender. This act is a form of meditation that is reaffirmed with every breath. I don't think in terms of life after death. There is only life.

15: Some might say that "God" is an oversoiled word. How do you respond to this remark? And how, if at all, do you give meaning to this word?

It's is difficult for us to embrace the formless, we who have taken form. For some it's possible but for most of us a more suitable path might be one of devotion. The nurturing of love above and beyond oneself. Our focal point might me a mountain, a tree, or a more traditional embodiment of divinity such as Christ, Krishna, Buddha etc. However, in the final stages of realization even the concept or form of god must be relinquished. Ultimately there is only the formless consciousness. Divine love.

God is a loaded word. It is high time for a new vocabulary with which to maintain this dialogue on the spiritual.

16: Do women and men have all the potential they need in themselves to make sense of and live out their existence, or is the truth's source in a higher, transcendent realm of meaning?

We exist in that higher realm of meaning but we remain ignorant of it. It is the goal of this journey to recognize and experience this truth. Ultimately, yes, we are That.

Posted by PhilipMarshall at 05:31 PM | Permalink