release date: Mar. 1, 1988
format: digital
[album rate: 2,5 / 5] [2,65]
producer: David Sylvian, Holger Czukay
label: Venture / Virgin Records - nationality: England, UK
Tracklist: 1. "Plight (The Spiralling of Winter Ghosts)" - 2. "Premonition (Giant Empty Iron Vessel)"
1st collaboration album by David Sylvian & Holger Czukay. The album is Sylvian's first after his highly successful album Secrets of the Beehive (1987) but this has only little in common with that as it's an instrumental release consisting of two tracks: "Plight" (of more than 18 minutes) and "Premonition" (more than 16 minutes), both composed by Sylvian and Czukay. Holger Czukay is a German artist who played guitar and bass in the German (primarily 1970s) experimental, krautrock and psychedelic rock band Can. There's nothing of those styles involved in this except from experimental, and neither is there Sylvian's usual sophisti-pop, art pop nor jazz fusion to it, but it's more of an ambient album with the addition of sound collages, which isn't really my favourite. The release only demonstrates Sylvian's broad stylistic approach but also his reluctance to popular mainstream music. As his former band, Japan found itself on the verge of an international commercial breakthrough, the band split, and Sylvian took up his long and wide-embracing solo career. His 1984 and '87 solo albums only gained positive feedback from (almost) everyone in the music business but he sought other values than fame and glory with his music, which this basically serves to demonstrate. It's brave, it's honest to the bone, yes, but really not for the broader masses. Czukay is credited for playing organ, piano, shortwave radio, and for... "treatments", and Sylvian for playing electric guitar, keyboards, piano, vibraphone, and harmonium. Aside from the two main artists, also Can-drummer Jaki Liebezeit is credited for handling "infra sound", and Karl Lippegaus for "radio tuning".
I basically find this a difficult listen and don't enjoy the album that much, but with Sylvian there's always "something" to it, which almost never makes it a lesser release. After all, it might be brilliant for meditating, and my experiences with his music always has me letting a door open to it, 'cause I may find myself in a certain mood one day where his music makes sense upon returning to some of his more experimental music.
[ allmusic.com 4 / 5 stars ]
