Review: David Sylvian – Brilliant Trees (1984)

Brilliant Trees is David Sylvian’s first solo album.

David Sylvian, a.k.a. David Alan Batt (b.1958), first came to prominence in London as the frontman of the 1974 pop group Japan.

Originally starting out as a glam rock band, the make-up-wearing youngsters, led by Sylvian, struggled on their last few albums on more or less the same pop stage as their contemporaries Duran Duran. The Wanna-be Japanese, however, were a little more artistically ambitious than their rivals, and each member of the band eventually became a very distinctive instrumentalist.

Japan, which broke up in December 1982, reached for greatness, especially with their last albums, but never really achieved it. Japan struggled to the end as a prisoner of the pop format, but Sylvian elegantly breaks free from its shackles on his first solo album. Interestingly, a similar liberation was experienced by virtually every member of Japan in their own projects after the band’s break-up. However, Sylvian’s public profile and commercial success was always greater than that of the other members.

The cover of Sylvian’s first solo album Brilliant Trees clearly indicates that something new is on the way. The androgynous and brash style of the Japanese era has been replaced by a conservative double-breasted Armani suit in which 26-year-old Sylvian poses pensively in a subdued black and white image.

Despite intensive renewal, there are still links to Japan. Brilliant Trees was recorded and mixed by Steve Nye, who worked on the last Japan album Tin Drum. The musicians also include some old Japan colleagues. Richard Barbieri (now a member of Porcupine Tree) plays synthesizers on a few tracks and all the drums on the album are played by Sylvian’s brother Steve Jansen. The only one missing, not so surprisingly, is bassist Mick Karn, with whom Sylvian had a bad falling out in the latter days of Japan.

However, Brilliant Trees was not just made by ”the Japanese”, Sylvian recruited a number of fine and respected musicians. The most famous of these are krautrock pioneer Holger Czukay (Can), trumpeter Jon Hassell, who created his own ”fourth world” style, and Japanese (real one!) Yellow Magic Orchestra visionary Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Czukay’s contribution to the album is a bit difficult to sum up (or even to always perceive) in a few words, but he was here and there, as if disrupting the music with different effects and samples. Hassell, for his part, gets a couple of compositional credits on the album alongside his trumpet playing. Sakamoto had already collaborated with Sylvian on the great ”Forbidden Colors”, but on Brilliant Trees his contribution is limited to piano and keyboards on a few songs.

The album also features acclaimed jazz musicians Kenny Wheeler (flugelhorn), Mark Isham (trumpet) and Danny Thompson (double bass) as well as a few skilled studio musicians.

Of course, the album with this fine line-up of players has some Japan in it, but the result still sounds more like David Bowie doing ECM jazz. So what genre does Brilliant Trees fall into? It’s not pop, and although a large proportion of the musicians on the album are jazz musicians, jazz doesn’t feel like the right definition either. Fusion jazz or jazz-rock (hah, Brilliant Trees don’t really rock!) also seem far-fetched. In the end, Brilliant Trees is one of those albums that effectively escapes genre definitions, interestingly somewhere in between the more obvious definitions. That alone can be considered a great victory for David Sylvian!

Read also: Review: Peter Gabriel – Passion (1989)

”Pulling Punches”, which starts the album with vigor, is the album’s most pop-oriented offering. It is also the only song that is easy to imagine as part of the Japan repertoire. The arrangement would probably have been very different, though. Now, against the very 80s-style bass guitar of ”Pulling Punches”, we hear a contrasting dissonant guitar playing from Phil Palmer that brings to mind Robert Fripp (Fripp would play an important role in Sylvian’s later career). Mark Isham’s trumpet slashes with delightful sharpness towards the end. ”Pulling Punch” is fine art pop that, contrary to its name, doesn’t hold back its punches too much. Surprisingly, ”Pulling Punches” was only the third single released from the album. Personally, I would have chosen this song to blaze the trail.

”Pulling Punches” is an excellent introduction to the album, but it doesn’t really capture the overall mood of the album. The serene second track ”The Ink In the Well” mirrors it a little better, although it doesn’t quite sum up the whole eclectic album. ”The Ink In the Well” is a very elegant, semi-acoustic art song with a delightful sound ushered in by Danny Thompson’s mellifluous double bass. Kenny Wheeler’s flugelhorn joins in with beautiful playfulness on the mid-song jazz section. Sylvian’s at the same time full-bodied warm, yet distant baritone voice sounds particularly wonderful on ’The Ink In The Well’.

The album’s third track ”Nostalgia” begins with a mysteriously sounding synthesizer and a short snippet of ethnic-sounding female vocalization that must have come from Mr. Czukay’s archives. Acoustic guitar strumming and occasional drum beats, creating a wonderful sense of space, accompany Sylvian’s vocals on stage. In the chorus, the melody becomes appropriately nostalgic and melancholy, but Sylvian’s stretching of the word ’nostalgia’ is annoying. Fortunately, the basic sound of the song, with its understated percussion and wavering electric guitar lines, works beautifully and Wheeler gets to shine again with his flugelhorn, playing a subtly buzzing solo in the long instrumental section of the song that continues in a tasty way when Sylvian returns to sigh over the music.

”Red Guitar” returns a little to the more upbeat mood of the first track, again sounding somewhat pop. ”Red Guitar” was the album’s first single and became the biggest hit of Sylvian’s career, peaking at number 17 on the UK singles charts. So maybe the choice of single was right after all, although I still think ”Pulling Punches” is the better song. Not that there’s anything really wrong with ”Red Guitar” either. It’s a great song too. Its rubbery bass guitar (which reminds me a bit of Sylvian’s nemesis Mick Karn!) and rhythmic piano add a nice swing to the song. Occasionally Sakamoto’s piano sweetly glides against the overall harmony of the song in a style somewhat similar to Mike Garson on Bowie’s ”Aladdin Sane”. Unfortunately, this aspect of the song is not developed further.

Read also: Review: Robert Fripp – Exposure (1979)

”Weathered Wall”, which starts the more abstract and experimental B-side of the album, begins with heavily reverberated stomping drums that are soon joined by Jon Hassell’s electronically processed sighing trumpet that sometimes sounds like a bamboo flute. ”Weathered Wall” was co-written with Hassel, a specialist in ethnic ambient jazz. With a rather minimalist background and a slightly forced Sylvian vocal melody, the song has a dreamlike magic, but in the end it remains a rather static mess.

The penultimate song, ”Backwaters”, is supported by a quirky five-note synth bass pattern and a synth track that constantly buzzes and hums in the background. In the mid-section, the song is enlivened by the bell-like synthesizers. Jansen’s sparse but emphatically snappy drumming brings a liveliness to an otherwise artificial sound. More electronic than the rest of the album, ”Backwaters” is an interesting experiment.

So far, all the songs on the album have run pretty evenly in the five-minute range, but the closing title track stretches to over eight minutes. ’Brilliant Trees’ is also a joint composition by Sylvian and Hassell and features the trumpeter’s typical world music influences. ’Brilliant Trees’ puts Sylvian’s vocals in the foreground, often with only Hassell’s trumpet and a humming synthesizer in the background. The song seems to aim for a delicate and devotional mood, but it plays too intermittently and Sylvian’s vocals are too overpowering for me to fully immerse myself in it. In the long instrumental outro of the second half, Hassell’s trumpet is joined by several tracks of some kind of ethnic percussion instruments. ’Brilliant Trees’ may not quite live up to its considerable duration, but it’s still quite a fascinating sonic gem. In the end, both ’Weathered Wall’ and ’Brilliant Trees’ leave you with the feeling that the styles of Hassel and Sylvian were not really brought together in a completely natural way.

Read also:

Brilliant Trees is crowned by the excellent sounds that producer Nye has conjured up for it. Especially the songs where the snappy, powerful bass guitar combines with the tight and well-measured drums sound great, but the overall sound is also pleasantly rounded and dynamic at the same time. The 80’s can be heard in its sounds, but not too much; the whole is organic, thanks of course in part to the stroke of genius of using jazz musicians so heavily.

Brilliant Trees went straight to number four in the UK album charts, the highest result of Sylvian’s career so far. However, it was not a huge success; it took ten years to reach the gold record sales of 100 000 copies (not a huge achievement, especially considering that the album had cost a whopping £100 000 to make). Despite the record company’s hopes, Sylvian never became a nationwide darling and remained somewhat in a curious limbo. For a pop star, his albums sold poorly but, by avant-garde standards, lavishly.

Brilliant Trees is a great start to Sylvian’s solo career. It easily sweeps the floor with the entire Japan oeuvre and paves the way for even better albums to come.

Best tracks: ”Pulling Punches”, ”The Ink In the Well”, ”Nostalgia”, ”Red Guitar”

Rating: 4 out of 5.
Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI
Read also: Review: Steven Wilson – The Harmony Codex (2023)

Tracks

  1. ”Pulling Punches” 5:02
  2. ”The Ink in the Well” 4:30
  3. ”Nostalgia” 5:41
  4. ”Red Guitar” 5:09
  5. ”Weathered Wall” 5:44
  6. ”Backwaters” 4:52
  7. ”Brilliant Trees” 8:39

Musicians

David Sylvian: vocals, guitar, piano (processed), tapes, synthesizer, percussion Richard Barbieri: synthesizer (1, 5) Wayne Brathwaite: bass guitar (1, 4) Holger Czukay: French horn, voice, guitar, dictaphone. Ronny Drayton: guitar (1, 4) Jon Hassell: trumpet (5, 7) Mark Isham: trumpet (1, 4) Steve Jansen: drums, synthesizer, percussion Steve Nye: synthesizer (3, 4) Phil Palmer: guitar (1, 4) Ryuichi Sakamoto: synthesizer/piano (4, 5, 7) Danny Thompson: double bass (2) Kenny Wheeler: flugelhorn (2, 3)

Producer: David Sylvian, Steve Nye
Label: Virgin

Jätä kommentti

Website Built with WordPress.com.

Ylös ↑