Before embarking on his next solo album, Sylvian revisited his interest in the visual arts, first with a limited edition book of polaroid collages titled Perspectives, then in a documentary video loosely based on an exhibition of the photographs which took place in Tokyo. The soundtrack for this video, Preparation For A Journey, featured performances by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Masami Tsuchiya and Steve Jansen, along with traditional pieces by the now popular Bulgarian women's choir. Back in London Sylvian re-worked part of the soundtrack with Holger Czukay, Robert Fripp and Kenny Wheeler under the new title Steel Cathedrals. This was released at the end of 1985 as part of an E.P. which also included a new instrumental piece, recorded with Jon Hassell, Words With The Shaman. "After Brilliant Trees I really wanted to further explore the relationship with Jon Hassell and Holger Czukay developing themes which surfaced during the recording of that album" Sylvian explains,"as everything I do tends to contain the seeds for the next project."
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Packaging 6 panel digipak with 5th colour gold used throughout the artwork plus extra new photo. 4 colour red CD plus non-standard gold CD tray. |
Tracklisting 1. Words With The Shaman - Part 1 (Ancient Evening) 2. Words With The Shaman - Part 2 (Incantation) 3. Words With The Shaman - Part 3 (Awakening (Songs From The Treetops)) 4. Preparations For A Journey *(Previously available on cassette version of 'Alchemy') 5. The Stigma Of Childhood (Kin) * (B-side to Pop Song) 6. A Brief Conversation Ending In Divorce *(B-side to Pop Song) 7. Steel Cathedrals * (Previously available on cassette version of 'Alchemy' and 'Weatherbox') |
Interview
Moving on to 'Alchemy An Index of Possibilities' - 'Steel Cathedrals' and 'Preparations for a Journey' were previously only available on cassette does that make you laugh in today's culture? With the old ipod
DS: (laughs) There was a hesitation to put them out on anything other than cassette at the time because the initial recordings were made in Japan as part of a documentary soundtrack. And we asked for the material to be sent over to the UK so I could continue working on it for my own project, and they sent rather bad copies over of the original masters. There was a high level of hiss on the main tracks. And I went on to add a lot more instrumentally to these pieces and there was just a concern that people would be upset with the sound quality of these pieces. So in the end we just put it out on cassette because it was more forgiving (laughs). In a sense you couldn't really tell just how bad the sound quality was on cassette whereas on vinyl it would be a lot more apparent. I'm glad it is out on CD, it was released as part of a box set back in '91, so it has been available on CD before.
Is that frustrating to you that you presumably at some point notice that the quality wasn't that good
DS: It was enormously frustrating. I recognised it straight away when we got the copies sent over from Japan but it didn't prevent me from wanting to work on it because I was really curious about where I could take the piece. But there was nothing I could do to solve the problem at that time, now technology's improved and you can actually deal with this kind of surface hiss and all the rest of it a lot better than you once could. So it's possible to clean them up.
Has it been cleaned up?
DS: It's been cleaned up but you can still hear there's something to be desired.
It might be like a phantom limb syndrome for you.
DS: (laughs)