The next 18 months proved to be a fertile period in terms of songwriting, and David Sylvian soon found himself with a new collection of material. This time he arranged the songs mainly for acoustic instruments with strings, woodwind and brass. His long time ally Ryuichi Sakamoto worked closely with him on the recordings which were produced at Studio Miraval in the South of France by Steve Nye. As usual Sylvian had put together a crack team of players including Danny Thompson on double bass, Phil Palmer on acoustic guitar, Danny Cummings on percussion, Mark Isham on trumpet and flugelhorn, David Torn on electric guitars, and Steve Jansen on drums and percussion. For all the restrained virtuosity of the band, the resulting album Secrets Of The Beehive, (released in October 1987) highlighted the lyrical content of songs which, while intensely personal, were his most appealing to date.
This was to be the last David Sylvian solo album for 10 years. "After Secrets, music took a bit of a back seat in my life," Sylvian reveals. " I was deeply troubled. There was a whole private search going on." For the next few years he confined himself to joint projects. He worked intermittently with Holger Czukay at the latter's studio in Cologne recording improvised performances with Jaki Liebezeit and Micheal Karoli (both ex Can), and Markus Stockhausen, son of the famous modern composer. The recordings with Czukay surfaced on the Venture record label as "Plight and Premonition" (March 1988) and "Flux and Mutability" (September 1989).
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Packaging 6 panel Digipak on art board, using duo tone type 4 colours and 5th colours. Incorporating images from original vinyl plus extra photos. Includes poster booklet, off-white CD body and non-standard brown gloss CD tray. May also include lyrics to 'Orpheus'. |
Tracklisting 1. September 2. The Boy With The Gun 3. Maria 4. Orpheus 5. The Devil's Own 6. When Poets Dreamed Of Angels 7. Mother And Child 8. Let The Happiness In 9. Waterfront 10. Promise (The Cult Of Eurydice) * (Previously only available on Japanese version) Note: 'Forbidden Colours' is no longer track 10. |
Interview
What was the stand out track for you on the album 'Secrets of The Beehive'?
DS: 'Let The Happiness In'. I liked the piece because it was a kind of composition that fascinated me that in a sense I'd been working towards for a number of years where a piece would start off in a rather melancholic place, introspective place but ultimately resolve in a feeling of celebration, so in other words it lifts the spirit through the process of development. And to me that was something that fascinated me for a long time and I felt that I'd nailed it to some extent with that particular piece, it's the best example of that approach to creating that kind of music. And also I remember writing the piece on a sample keyboard and deciding that it would be best performed by a brass section. And Ryuichi Sakamoto, who was arranging the piece for me, heard it he said 'this is just within the boundaries of possibility for these given brass instruments that we will select'. So it was a real challenge for the players to actually play the thing it was in the very low registers of their given instruments and they had to sustain the notes for very long periods of time. And we did a very good job, I think it was like a first or second take, but they got it, but it was beautiful and it was great. And also I think that Mark Isham on the track gave one of his best performances as a solo trumpet.