release date: Apr. 20, 1991
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,48]
producer: Rain Tree Crow
label: Virgin Records - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Big Wheels in Shanty Town" - 4. "Red Earth (As Summertime Ends)" - 8. "Blackwater" (4 / 5) - 10. "Blackcrow Hits Shoe Shine City"
1st and only full studio album by Rain Tree Crow, a band completely identical to the line-up of the British new wave, sophisti-pop and new romantic band, Japan, which had disbanded in 1982, and therefore it's difficult to label this as a debut. The message is clear then: to mark that the music is not to be confused with the new romantic and synth pop style of the former band, the band members may have decided to make music together again (they regrouped in '89) but as a new band. Rain Tree Crow consists of vocalist David Sylvian who is also credited on guitar & keyboards, Richard Barbieri on keyboards, Mick Karn on bass, saxophone & bass clarinet, and with (Sylvian's younger brother) Steve Jansen on drums. Ironically, the four split after the release of their only album in almost ten years, apparently, due to tensions between Sylvian and the other members of the band who found that he wanted too much control, ultimately, making it a project of his own - the irony is that the same conflict had led the quartet to the disbandment of Japan in '82.
Anyway, the music here is not what made Japan a famous new romantic and synth pop band bond to the 80s but the result of fine musicianship. Karn's bass-lines are like unique fingerprints and a strong trademark of his lifting any music to something else than the ordinary, and Barbieri contributes nicely with his synth-notes, but Jansen is like Karn's musical twin, who lays the perfect match to Barbieri and Karn with anything but traditional drum-lines, and on top of it all, you find Sylvian's melancholic crooning, which makes it all sound more like his solo releases. All in all, it's actually a fine and tight album, and it's quite surprising to read in inlay that: "The majority of the material on this album was written as a result of group improvisations. There were no pre-rehearsals; the improvisation took place in the recording studio and much of the finished work contains original elements of those initial performances."
[ allmusic.com 4 / 5 stars ]
