Trivia / David Sylvian

• All-Star Cast: All of his mainline studio releases (excluding Blemish) include a wide array of contributors:
  • Brilliant Trees includes fellow ex Japan members Steve Jansen on drums throughout the whole album and Richard Barbieri contributing synthesiser on "Pulling Punches" and "Weathered Wall", Holger Czukay from Can on guitar and french horn, Jon Hassell on the trumpet on "Weathered Wall" and "Brilliant Trees", and Ryuichi Sakamoto on "Red Guitar" and "Weathered Wall".
  • Alchemy: An Index of Possibilities includes Jansen, Czukay, and Hassell on the "Words with the Shaman" trilogy, and Jansen, Czukay, Sakamoto, and Robert Fripp on "Steel Cathedrals".
  • Gone to Earth continues to have Jansen, Barbieri, and Fripp contribute to certain tracks, with Mel Collins and Bill Nelson on saxophone and guitar, respectively.
  • Secrets of the Beehive has Sakamoto have a hand in every track, on the piano, organ, and synthesiser. Even tracks without his playing still have orchestral arrangements by him. David Torn is also on guitar for a couple of tracks.
  • Dead Bees on a Cake has Jansen return, and Sakamoto contributes electric piano, orchestral arrangements, and "insect noises". New to Sylvian on this album are guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist Bill Frisell ^note Although he only plays acoustic and Dobro guitar on the album, drummer Ged Lynch (of Black Grape), and vocalist Shree Maa on "Praise". Sylvian's then-wife Ingrid Chavez also contributes spoken word vocals on a few tracks.
  • Despite Blemish only featuring Sylvian for most of it, there are still collaborators, namely experimental guitarist Derek Bailey on "The Good Son", "She Is Not", and "How Little We Need to Be Happy", and ambient/glitch musician Christian Fennesz on "A Fire in the Forest". The remix album features Ryoji Ikeda, Burnt Friedman, and future samadhisound musicians Sweet Billy Pilgrim, Akira Rabelais, Jan Bang, and Erik Honoré.
  • Nine Horses' album Snow Borne Sorrow features bandmembers Jansen and Friedman, Sakamoto, saxophonist Theo Travis, singer Stina Nordenstam, and Supersilent trumpeter Arve Henriksen.
  • The lineup for Manafon is essentially a who's-who of the EAI scene, with AMM's pianist John Tilbury and prepared guitarist Keith Rowe, the aformentioned Fennesz, guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama, turntablist and guitarist Otomo Yoshihide, no-input mixing board player Toshimaru Nakamura, sine wave musician Sachiko M, and Polwechsel members Werner Dafeldecker, Michael Moser, and Burkhard Stangl. The remix album also includes performances from Eddie Prévost, Jansen, Günter Müller, Henriksen, Bang and Honoré.
• Attention Deficit Creator Disorder: Sylvian spent so much time collaborating with people like Holger Czukay and Robert Fripp that it took him twelve years to put out a proper follow-up to Secrets of the Beehive.
• Better Export for You:
  • Because Alchemy: An Index of Possibilities wasn't available on CD outside of Japan until the 2003 remasters, the belated US release of Brilliant Trees in 1994 adds on the "Words with the Shaman" trilogy as bonus tracks.
  • Most CD releases of Gone to Earth truncate the two-LP album by cutting out four tracks so that it can fit on one CD. However, Japanese CD releases from 1988 onward include the unabridged album on two discs, the only versions on the format to follow this configuration until the Weatherbox Boxed Set in 1989 and the 2003 remasters.
• Channel Hop: Sylvian initially spent his solo career on Virgin Records, carrying over from the tail end of his time with Japan, before shifting to his own independent label, samadhisound, in 2003. In The New '20s, he would partner with Anglo-German independent label Grönland Records for compilations and archival releases.
• Creator Backlash: He spent a long time trying to distance himself from his former band Japan, especially their first two albums Adolescent Sex and Obscure Alternatives, but he has warmed up in recent years. Whilst he was never completely satisfied with the later period of Japan (except for Quiet Life,) Sylvian still believes "Ghosts" is one of his finest achievements.
• Creator Breakdown: Blemish was deeply informed by Sylvian's divorce from Ingrid Chavez, to whom he'd been married since 1992. Sylvian himself described the album as a form of both therapy and catharsis, helping him cope with the disintegration of his marriage.
• Cut Song:
  • Sylvian re-recorded "Forbidden Colours" with the intention of including it on Brilliant Trees before ultimately leaving it off the album. It would first pop up as the B-Side to "Red Guitar" before being featured on the original CD release of Secrets of the Beehive and the retrospective compilation A Victim of Stars 1982-2012.
  • Sylvian maxed out the budget for Secrets of the Beehive before he could finish "Ride", the track meant to be its centerpiece, hence the album's unusually short runtime of just 34 and a half minutes; the 1984 re-recording of "Forbidden Colours" was stuck on the CD release to compensate. Sylvian would eventually get around to finishing "Ride" for inclusion on the 2000 compilation Everything and Nothing.
  • "The Scent of Magnolia", "Cover Me with Flowers", "Albuquerque (Dobro #6)", and "Aparna and Nimisha (Dobro # 5)" were all recorded during the Dead Bees on a Cake sessions with the intention of including them on the album; however, they were all ultimately left off. They would all see release on the rarities and outtakes collection Everything and Nothing the following year, with "The Scent of Magnolia" being released as a single to promote it, before being added back onto the album via the Record Store Day 2018 double-LP reissue.
• Died During Production: English poet Robert Graves recorded a reading of one of his poems for "Upon this Earth", but died the year before its parent album, Gone to Earth, released.
• Follow the Leader: Sylvian himself was heavily inspired by the New York Dolls, David Bowie, and Roxy Music. Asian and jazz influences influenced him more and more as he went on. His detractors constantly mention the Roxy Music influence. Duran Duran were heavily inspired by Japan and are often considered to be their spiritual successors. The band were recording their self titled debut near where Japan were recording Gentlemen Take Polaroids, and rumour has it that the Duran boys chose that studio just so they could meet Japan.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • For a time, the entirety of Gone to Earth was unavailable on CD format outside of Japan except for the Weatherbox Boxed Set, which included his first four albums and was limited to 5000 copies. Outside of the box, an edited 13-song version was available on one CD. All 17 songs (across 2 CDs) were finally made available together worldwide in 2003.
  • Despite fan requests, his jazzy B-side "Blue of Noon" has never appeared on CD, which is largely because he overlooked it for Everything and Nothing and is no longer with Virgin. Several Japan tracks (various single mixes and fan club flexidiscs) have never appeared on CD either, but it's unlikely he particularly cares about that. A pre-Adolescent Sex rehearsal session has not been released on CD and probably never will.
  • The original version of "Some Kind of Fool" (a Gentlemen Take Polaroids outtake pulled at the last minute and eventually re-voiced for Everything And Nothing) is unlikely to appear on CD, though crude fan recordings of it being played at a Bamboo Party in the '80s circulate.
  • An unusual example exists in the case of his pre-Dead Bees on a Cake albums— specifically their artwork. The masters for the album art wound up lost after a number of years, and as a result, recent reissues of them use archival promotional photographs of Sylvian (with the front cover of Brilliant Trees specifically using the uncropped version of the photograph included on the original album art).
• Late Export for You: Brilliant Trees went unreleased in the US until 1994, when it was combined with the Words with the Shaman EP.
• Line to God: Sylvian maintains an official Twitter account and replies frequently, though with the caveat of it constantly cycling in and out of deletion (or at least protection).
• No Export for You:
  • As noted above, his popularity in Japan means he has released exclusives over there. Among them are the only 2 CD edition of the complete Exorcising Ghosts compilation (the CD release elsewhere was a 1 CD distillation), the original 2 CD edition of Gone to Earth (belatedly released elsewhere in Weatherbox and eventually in the remasters), the Japan compilation The Singles (which contains a number of previously vinyl exclusives not found anywhere else), and several flexidiscs for the Japanese fan club.
  • Brilliant Trees/Words with the Shaman, an US-oriented CD reissue of Brilliant Trees that tacked on the Words with the Shaman EP as bonus tracks, was never released outside of America. The EP is, however, included on Alchemy: An Index of Possibilities, which conversely was never released Stateside.
• Reclusive Artist: He's stated in interviews that he has a hard time even just going to the grocery store.
• Sequel Gap:
  • Discounting collaborations and other side projects, 1999's Dead Bees on a Cake was his first studio album since Secrets of the Beehive 12 years prior.
  • There's a Light That Enters Houses with No Other House in Sight released five years after its predecessor, Manafon, owed to Sylvian retreating further and further from the public eye as he grew older. Tellingly, Sylvian hasn't put out another album since this one came out.
• Short Run in Peru: The collaborations compilation Sleepwalkers was released in Japan six days before the rest of the world.
• Similarly Named Works:
  • The Velvet Underground and Simple Minds both recorded different songs called "European Son," although the Japan title was probably inspired by the Velvets' song. Many bands have recorded songs called "Ghosts."
  • Sylvian and Nick Drake both have songs titled "River Man."
• What Could Have Been: In a 1994 interview, Sylvian stated that King Crimson guitarist and de-facto bandleader Robert Fripp approached him in 1991 and asked him to join a second revival of the band as vocalist, coming off the pair's collaborations on Gone to Earth. Sylvian denied the offer, which led Fripp to resurrect the '80s lineup of King Crimson instead, but met him halfway with the 1993 collaborative album The First Day. Two of the other personnel on that album would go on to work with the second King Crimson revival, with Trey Gunn joining the lineup and David Bottrill co-producing THRAK.
• Writer Revolt: When a then-career-spanning Boxed Set called Weatherbox was put out, Virgin Records demanded for a new hit single to go with it. He came up with "Pop Song," which consists of a unconventional mallet-on-piano-strings bass part, no drums, and a synthesizer set on flute that is flying across the keyboard with two open palms. To top it all off, the single wasn't included on the set (it would eventually appear on the compilations Everything and Nothing and A Victim of Stars 1982-2012).

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