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!

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

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.

Send to a friend

Trumpet time: Nils Petter Molvaer

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:45:26 -0800

Last week I remembered I like Steve Tibbetts, so I added a Steve Tibbetts station to my Pandora account. I was listening to it yesterday when I heard an unfamiliar Jon Hassell song. Or so I thought--it turned out to be by Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer, a former Tibbetts labelmate at ECM. I bought Molvaer's ECM album Khmer a few years ago, but I never took to it. The backing tracks sound like rudimentary techno and hip-hop loops, dooming the album to the fate of so many hybrids, i.e. not being as good as any of the individual genres that it combines. On the other hand, I did like his playing on one of Bill Laswell's Sacred System albums. But the song I heard on Pandora is from Er, Molvaer's 2005 album, and it's his best work yet. On several tracks he's obviously going for a Jon Hassell group sound, but his own tone and modalities are different than Hassell's. Then there's the song I can't stop playing, "Only These Things Count"--

04 - Only These things Count

Nils Petter Molvaer

That's Sidsel Edresen singing, with a voice like a cross between... Nico and Dewey Bunnell (of America)? And it's beautiful! (Now I'm tracking down her own albums.) The song feels like a thick down comforter with a golden brown velvet cover, draped over a sofa and just inviting you to plunge in, wrap it around yourself and luxuriate in the softness and texture. That's what I get from it, anyway. It also feels like a David Sylvian song, one of the ones with Mark Isham playing trumpet. The song it reminds me of the most is "Thalheim" from Dead Bees on a Cake:

04 - Thalheim

David Sylvian

Okay, that's not Mark Isham playing the trumpet, it's Kenny Wheeler playing the fluegelhorn. Not only that, Kenny Wheeler has been recording with David Sylvian just as long as Mark Isham has: both played on his first solo album, 1984's Brilliant Trees. That album initially disappointed me: I was so enamored with the electronic sounds of Japan that I had trouble accepting the mostly-acoustic instrumentation of Trees, and I didn't buy a copy for over ten years. I always liked "The Ink in the Well," though, and it features... Kenny Wheeler on fluegelhorn!

David Sylvian - The Ink In The Well

Coming up: equal time for Mark Isham.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend