Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

S Convergence: Sakamoto, Satie, Stewart, Sylvian

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:29:27 -0700

Item 1: Mrs. Veneer buys Ryuichi Sakamoto's CD of solo piano pieces, BTTB. It's quite beautiful and Sakamoto mostly avoids the New Age clichés that plague so many piano CDs. Some of the pieces are obvious homages to classical works, such as "Opus," which evokes the Gymnopédies of Erik Satie:

04 Opus

Ryuichi Sakamoto

♫ Erik Satie - Gymnopédie No.1 [piano] ♫

Item 2: I learn from Wiel's Time Capsule that Mark Stewart is preparing a new album (his first of new material since 1995!) and tour, and that he has a new video out:

Mark Stewart - Loner

Connection 1: Hey, didn't Mark Stewart include that same Gymnopédie on his 1987 album? Yep, as part of the backing track for "Stranger" (a.k.a. "Stranger Than Love"):

05 Stranger

Mark Stewart

Connection 2: I've heard some of those lyrics before: "Somewhere, there is a place for us". They're from "Somewhere," from West Side Story. David Sylvian recorded a version of that for a TIAA-CREF commercial:

Somewhere (Orchestral Commercial Version)

David Sylvian

Connection 3: Sylvian and Sakamoto's collaborative song "Forbidden Colours," from the movie Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, is perhaps the best-known song by either of them in the US:

Sylvian & Sakamoto - Forbidden Colours

Connection 4: Hey, Mark Stewart did two versions of "Forbidden Colours" on that very same album! Here's the dub version:

07 Forbidden Dub

Mark Stewart

It's all connected!

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Still trumpet time: Mark Isham

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 16:06:38 -0800

Continuing my thread of guys who have played brass instruments on David Sylvian albums, here is Mark Isham, as promised, from his first solo album, Vapor Drawings:

07-Men Before the Mirror

Mark Isham

That's Isham playing everything, unless there are some drums in there that I can't hear, which would be played by Peter Van Hooke. Vapor Drawings was released in 1983 on William Ackerman's Windham Hill label, which both brought New Age music into the mainstream and instigated the New Age backlash. A Sunday Doonesbury cartoon at the time lampooned New Age music by positing the album title Air Pudding--not very far removed from Vapor Drawings. Skimming through this album again I have a hard time finding a focal point in the music; it all seems like background music. It's no surprise, then, that in the intervening two decades Isham has built a career as a movie soundtrack composer, with dozens of titles in his œuvre and no signs of slowing down. He can rock out more than you'd think, though; I once saw him lead his band through a heavy fusion set at Washington's late Bayou nightclub. And of course his trumpet is always a delicious embellishment, as in David Sylvian's "Red Guitar"--

David Sylvian - Red Guitar

When you want that "trumpet heard from afar while sitting in an outdoor Parisian café at twilight, waiting for a lover who is not going to show, or mourning one who has just left forever" sound, Mark Isham's your man. How could I go on about David Sylvian and Mark Isham and not present the pinnacle of their partnership, the song that secured universal recognition of Sylvian's genius (if there is any justice in the world), the sublime "Orpheus"--

David Sylvian - Orpheus

"I wrestle with an outlook on life that shifts between darkness and shadowy light." Jackson Browne has apparently expressed in his lyrics every nuance of emotion that Bob Lefsetz has ever felt, but I get more out of that single line from David Sylvian than from all the Jackson Browne I've ever heard. I have to stop now, before this becomes the All David Sylvian, All the Time blog. But I do reserve the right to bring him up again. Soon.

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Ghosts of high school: Japan

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:06:16 -0800

I rarely remember to search for my old favorites on YouTube, so it often happens that I happen upon them while blog surfing. That's how I just turned up a couple lip-synching performances by Japan of the first song I ever heard by them, "Ghosts." Having discovered New Wave and WHFS in 1981, it seemed there was a whole aternate universe of music to catch up on, and the only way to do it was to listen to HFS as much as possible, often long into the night. It was late at night when I first heard "Ghosts"; I thought it was Bryan Ferry, but the arrangement was way futuristic, unlike anything I'd heard from him before. I was fascinated with Bryan Ferry at the time (still am); I had always taken singers for granted before then, but his unique vocal style made me pay attention and realize that he was doing something artistic, and by extension, so do all singers. Looking back on David Sylvian's career I see that his Ferryisms were just one stop in a long stylistic journey, and that he has always had a lot more power in his voice than Ferry. Likewise, the weird synth burbles of "Ghosts" were the terminal point in Japan's evolution, their sound having started with glam rock and progressed through eurodisco, new romanticism, and dark balladry. Hearing "Ghosts" again I think it sounds as fresh as ever, with lyrics that have stuck with me over the decades (despite my ignorance of lyrics in general):

Just when I think I'm winning
When I've opened every door
The ghosts of my life grow wilder than before
Just when I thought I could not be stopped
When my chance came to be king
The ghosts of my life grow wilder than the wind

Here are two choices of video, both to the album track, one from Old Grey Whistle Test, in color with some cheesy effects, the other in black and white from I-don't-know-where, focused almost exclusively on Sylvian. In both videos he's wearing more makeup than a Maybelline man.

Japan: Ghosts

Japan - Ghosts

Well, no matter what the rest of them are doing, Steve Jansen is not mallet-synching, they're definitely making contact.

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C'est Sheik

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:22:59 -0800

Duncan Sheik is in the air: I heard "She Runs Away" at Rite Aid on Monday, then again at Citgo on Tuesday. Now that I think about it, I hear him in the grocery store a lot. He must be making a tidy sum on royalties, and he certainly doesn't need more exposure from a no-name blogger, but I like him so much I'm going to present the video for "She Runs Away" anyway:

Duncan Sheik - She Runs Away (Video)

I discovered Duncan Sheik back when his first album came out. I heard "Barely Breathing" on the radio (who didn't?) and liked it, and when the CD showed up on the BMG website for five or six dollars I went ahead and ordered it. From the very first track ("She Runs Away"!) I was hooked, because it was apparent that Sheik was a David Sylvian fan and was carrying on the song-oriented work that Sylvian had abandoned (at the time) in favor of ambient music (yawn). The snare drum sound on "She Runs Away"--that's straight out of Secrets of the Beehive! The chord changes in the bridge of "Barely Breathing"--pure Sylvian! So I became a fan (because I was a Sylvian fan; there's another post to write), and I roped Mrs. Veneer into my fandom, and we had the pleasure of seeing him from a front table at the Birchmere in August 2005. It was a wonderful show, we got to meet him afterwards, he was incredibly warm; the whole thing was such a great experience that when he played the Birchmere again in February 2006, we took the kids to see him, he played their favorite song of his ("Serena"), and my favorite ("Such Reveries") in the encore, and he did another meet-and-greet afterwards so the kids got to meet him too, and it was a fabulous and memorable night all around. Not only that, his lead guitarist of choice, Gerry "Spooky Ghost" Leonard (in the video above) is a treasure in his own right, and I'll expand on that proclamation at some point.

Duncan doesn't play "Serena" very often, so how was it that we were treated to it? It was all the work of a group of drunk girls at the next table, who between songs kept shouting "Play Serena!" Then at one point a waitress, in her passage along the front of the stage, passed Duncan a note, which he read aloud to us: "It's our friend's birthday, and her name is Serena, so could you please sing Serena?" At which point another audience member piped up, "I have a sister named Half-Life!" (another of his songs) to the general amusement of everyone. No one in the room believed the Serena birthday story, but the band played Serena anyway, and really rocked out on it. Doug Yowell even broke a drumstick (not a regular drumstick, but one that looks like something you use to clean a wok)! They didn't play "Half-Life," though, and Duncan merely wagged a finger at a request for "Barely Breathing." Oh, well. I'll close with a "video" for "Serena"--

Duncan Sheik - Serena

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