Anyone else dig David Sylvian ?
I've been an avid fan since the Japan days and haven't been disappointed by any of his releases to date.
Everything and Nothing is a great primer, a sort of Best Of album. Covers a lengthy period and includes a lot of his collaborative works with Robert Fripp, Ryuichi Sakamoto and others.
From some very accessible poppy numbers to some pretty challenging "jazz" and noodley stuff.
The All about Jazz link below gives good insight and has some good links from which to explore further. http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article ... ommended=1
http://www.davidsylvian.com is a good site with links to free MP3's for those who may wish to check him out without flashing the cash.
Also intresting photography and art files to have a look at.
Interested to know if any other Sylvian listeners out here on the forum.
Cheers All.
Gerry
Jazz - What's your bag, man?
Re: Jazz - What's your bag, man?
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"Quality means doing it right when no one is looking" - Henry Ford
Re: Jazz - What's your bag, man?
Oh yeah. I would never have thought of him as Jazz though... I have him filed under "electronica".Gerry D wrote:Anyone else dig David Sylvian ?
I've been an avid fan since the Japan days and haven't been disappointed by any of his releases to date.
Vinyl -anything else is data storage.
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Thorens TD124 Mk1 + Kuzma Stogi 12"arm, HANA Red, Gold Note PH 10 + PSU. ADI-2 Dac, Lector CDP7, Wyred4Sound pre, Airtight ATM1s, Klipsch Heresy IV, Misc Mains, RCA + XLR ICs, Tellurium Q spkr cable
Re: Jazz - What's your bag, man?
Another Sylvian fan, well, that's has to be good news! I have most of his stuff (on vinyl, of course!) including the compilation you talk about Gerry,which,you'll be sad to hear that I'm not very fond of! I prefer the more experimental side of David but I am fond of a lot of the Japan material. My favourites include 'Secrets of the Beehive', 'Dead Bees on a Cake', 'Blemish', 'Manofon',Rain Tree Crow', 'The First Day' and some songs like 'Night Porter' (a take on the Trois Gymnopedies),'Taking Islands in Africa', 'The Tenant', 'After the Bullfight', 'Ghosts', 'Let the Happiness In', 'Nostalgia' etc etc Wonderful music that takes you out there....
I can see where the rather tenuous Jazz connection comes from; Evan Parker guests on the Manofon album and, well, it's not jazz as we know it Jim, is it? But I'm sure if you listen really hard you'll find the jazz connection too :-)Also the improvisatory approach is another er, tenuous link.....
I can see where the rather tenuous Jazz connection comes from; Evan Parker guests on the Manofon album and, well, it's not jazz as we know it Jim, is it? But I'm sure if you listen really hard you'll find the jazz connection too :-)Also the improvisatory approach is another er, tenuous link.....
Re: Jazz - What's your bag, man?
Hi Lads.
I know. I know. Is it Jazz ? Not in the traditional sense perhaps. But 'trad' isn't what we're talking about here ?
I think that improvisation is key in a lot of the later stuff. Yeah. I really like Manafon and Blemish.
But I wouldn't know where to categorize him now.
Rock ? No. Electronic ? No. [Of course Japan fit there.] Blues ? No. And so on ....
I'm reminded of John Covertino. of Calexico, and his solo album.
I would put Calexico into Americana/Rock.
John's solo album, to my mind, is Jazz.
Anyway. delighted to hear that there are other Sylvian fans here.
I like the way that anything he does seems to be done with conviction and a desire to provoke and give pleasure to his audience. Works for me.
And I love how some exploration leads you on to discover other artist previously unknown to me and leads me back to rediscovering Mick Carn, his site has some good downloads too, and Steve Jansen.
They all matured with there output so much.
I think I'm in or around there age !!! Wish I could mature in my output too !
Have a nice weekend All.
Gerry
I know. I know. Is it Jazz ? Not in the traditional sense perhaps. But 'trad' isn't what we're talking about here ?
I think that improvisation is key in a lot of the later stuff. Yeah. I really like Manafon and Blemish.
But I wouldn't know where to categorize him now.
Rock ? No. Electronic ? No. [Of course Japan fit there.] Blues ? No. And so on ....
I'm reminded of John Covertino. of Calexico, and his solo album.
I would put Calexico into Americana/Rock.
John's solo album, to my mind, is Jazz.
Anyway. delighted to hear that there are other Sylvian fans here.
I like the way that anything he does seems to be done with conviction and a desire to provoke and give pleasure to his audience. Works for me.
And I love how some exploration leads you on to discover other artist previously unknown to me and leads me back to rediscovering Mick Carn, his site has some good downloads too, and Steve Jansen.
They all matured with there output so much.
I think I'm in or around there age !!! Wish I could mature in my output too !
Have a nice weekend All.
Gerry
"Quality means doing it right when no one is looking" - Henry Ford
Re: Jazz - What's your bag, man?
Genres? I hate them, always have! Anyway well summed there Gerry and have a nice week end yourself :-)
Re: Jazz - What's your bag, man?
Why?cybot wrote:Genres? I hate them, always have!
"To appreciate the greatness of the Masters is to keep faith in the greatness of humanity." - Wilhelm Furtwängler
Re: Jazz - What's your bag, man?
No particular reason. It's just a pet hate of mine.....Seán wrote:Why?cybot wrote:Genres? I hate them, always have!
Re: Jazz - What's your bag, man?
I've been listening to some Coltrane today, namely, The John Coltrane Quartet Plays, which is one of the man's most underrated studio sets. Coming between Coltrane's two great masterpieces, A Love Supreme and Ascension, it offers a further refinement of the classic quartet's sound as well as - more importantly - clues as to where Coltrane was headed next.
The first two tracks, Chim Chim Cheree - which is a beautiful vehicle for soprano sax - and Brasilia, are effectively a crystallisation of the sound of this band up until this point. The final two tracks - Nature Boy and Song of Praise - represent ways in which Coltrane was moving forward. The Coltrane quartet in 1965 was in a period of transition. McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the way Coltrane's musical ideas were heading and Coltane was starting to feel restless with the sticky webs this great rhythm section were putting down for him. It is worth noting that countless other jazz musicians would have given everything to have a band this good and would have continued to plough the very same furrow for the rest of their natural days, but Coltrane - in a similar way to Miles Davis who dissolved his two great quintets in the Fifties and Sixties despite rapturous critical applause - was cut from a different cloth. The performance of Nature Boy on this album is a good example of this. For this track, Coltrane recruited a second bass player - Art Davis - to play alongside Jimmy Garrison. Davis bows his instrument whilst Garrison plucks the strings of his bass. This introduces an additional layer of texture to the group sound as well as a degree of spaciousness as Tyner sometimes lays out altogether and sometimes simply plays the occasional chord. Jones responds by concentrating on cymbal work. The piece slowly develops from Davis's subtle bowed figures and Tyner's apposite chordal work to an anguished conclusion where Jones' cymbals grow in intensity and Davis's playing becomes more and more vocal. And against this background, Coltrane contributes a passionate, heartfelt solo which gains immeasurable force when placed against a backdrop of such inspired group playing. The track which directly follows this, Song of Praise, follows directly on from an earlier classic, Crescent. It begins with a fantastic Garrison bass solo which - just like his introductions to the performances of Crescent and My Favourite Things on Live in Japan - imbues everything that follows with a meditative grace. Essentially, it is a duet between Coltrane and Jones, the drummer perfectly matching the soloist's train of thought throughout, but it is an instructive example of the band holding back. You keep expecting Jones and Tyner to eventually lock into a chordal groove (which never materialises) and it simply ends serenely and very beautifully.
It's important to highlight Tyner's place in the group at this stage. He is playing less and less and I believe that Coltrane was becoming disenchanted with Tyner's virtuosic flurries of chords and he was looking for a different way of expressing his musical thoughts. That is why we hear Taylor as second bassist on Nature Boy and we immediately register the difference in group dynamic and texture. Looking ahead, we see Tyner's replacement, Alice, who came from a classical background and was able to contribute something fresh to the sound and something more than the virtuosity which McCoy had in abundance. We can also look at the introduction of Pharaoh Sanders and Rashied Ali to the Coltrane group later in 1965, both of whom were as grounded in rhythm and blues as they were in jazz unlike the more conventionally schooled Tyner and Jones. I think Coltrane was actively fashioning a more personal response to the music which concentrated more on primal emotionalism than a formalised musical expression which ultimately gave way to the collective improvisation that we see on Ascension and which harked back to early jazz forms and flew in the face of individual solo improvisation which had become the norm in jazz since the Thirties. My personal speculation is that, had he lived, his journey would have become a more personal one. With Live In Japan, he essentially exhausted the band format as a way forward for his music and the comparatively disappointing final album, Stellar Regions, seems to indicate this. I think that he would have programmed more duet (especially with drummers, with whom he always had a special connection) settings as well as a lot of solo work. But, it is ultimately pointless to speculate on what might have been - better to be thankful for what the great man gave us.
If I had pinpoint Coltrane's achievement in music, I think it was his instinctive ability to zone in on a single note - as opposed to a musical phrase - which, to him, encapsulated the spiritual essence of a particular song, and to ruminate on that single note throughout a solo. The poet Philip Larkin once memorably described Coltrane's solos as the picture of a man rocking back and forth in pain between two chords which remains, to me, the single greatest summary of the man's work. This was not a musician who favoured an intellectual approach to his art but one who aimed at channelling the surge of emotions that were pulsing through his heart directly into his music. To me, there is no such thing as a perfect Coltrane solo as there is, for example, a perfect Charlie Parker solo. Parker's absolute achievement was the logical clarity he achieved in his most brilliant work (for example, the heart-rending Lover Man solo from 1946, which, despite the searing emotions running through this great performance, has an extraordinary internal logic of progression which is almost inevitable in its sheer naturalness) which runs counter to what Coltrane was striving for in his life and in his art. There is something akin to sculpture in Coltrane's playing as he chisels away at a solo. "Good" notes and "bad" notes are equally admissible along the way - what was ultimately important to the man was the cumulative emotional force of the music.
The first two tracks, Chim Chim Cheree - which is a beautiful vehicle for soprano sax - and Brasilia, are effectively a crystallisation of the sound of this band up until this point. The final two tracks - Nature Boy and Song of Praise - represent ways in which Coltrane was moving forward. The Coltrane quartet in 1965 was in a period of transition. McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the way Coltrane's musical ideas were heading and Coltane was starting to feel restless with the sticky webs this great rhythm section were putting down for him. It is worth noting that countless other jazz musicians would have given everything to have a band this good and would have continued to plough the very same furrow for the rest of their natural days, but Coltrane - in a similar way to Miles Davis who dissolved his two great quintets in the Fifties and Sixties despite rapturous critical applause - was cut from a different cloth. The performance of Nature Boy on this album is a good example of this. For this track, Coltrane recruited a second bass player - Art Davis - to play alongside Jimmy Garrison. Davis bows his instrument whilst Garrison plucks the strings of his bass. This introduces an additional layer of texture to the group sound as well as a degree of spaciousness as Tyner sometimes lays out altogether and sometimes simply plays the occasional chord. Jones responds by concentrating on cymbal work. The piece slowly develops from Davis's subtle bowed figures and Tyner's apposite chordal work to an anguished conclusion where Jones' cymbals grow in intensity and Davis's playing becomes more and more vocal. And against this background, Coltrane contributes a passionate, heartfelt solo which gains immeasurable force when placed against a backdrop of such inspired group playing. The track which directly follows this, Song of Praise, follows directly on from an earlier classic, Crescent. It begins with a fantastic Garrison bass solo which - just like his introductions to the performances of Crescent and My Favourite Things on Live in Japan - imbues everything that follows with a meditative grace. Essentially, it is a duet between Coltrane and Jones, the drummer perfectly matching the soloist's train of thought throughout, but it is an instructive example of the band holding back. You keep expecting Jones and Tyner to eventually lock into a chordal groove (which never materialises) and it simply ends serenely and very beautifully.
It's important to highlight Tyner's place in the group at this stage. He is playing less and less and I believe that Coltrane was becoming disenchanted with Tyner's virtuosic flurries of chords and he was looking for a different way of expressing his musical thoughts. That is why we hear Taylor as second bassist on Nature Boy and we immediately register the difference in group dynamic and texture. Looking ahead, we see Tyner's replacement, Alice, who came from a classical background and was able to contribute something fresh to the sound and something more than the virtuosity which McCoy had in abundance. We can also look at the introduction of Pharaoh Sanders and Rashied Ali to the Coltrane group later in 1965, both of whom were as grounded in rhythm and blues as they were in jazz unlike the more conventionally schooled Tyner and Jones. I think Coltrane was actively fashioning a more personal response to the music which concentrated more on primal emotionalism than a formalised musical expression which ultimately gave way to the collective improvisation that we see on Ascension and which harked back to early jazz forms and flew in the face of individual solo improvisation which had become the norm in jazz since the Thirties. My personal speculation is that, had he lived, his journey would have become a more personal one. With Live In Japan, he essentially exhausted the band format as a way forward for his music and the comparatively disappointing final album, Stellar Regions, seems to indicate this. I think that he would have programmed more duet (especially with drummers, with whom he always had a special connection) settings as well as a lot of solo work. But, it is ultimately pointless to speculate on what might have been - better to be thankful for what the great man gave us.
If I had pinpoint Coltrane's achievement in music, I think it was his instinctive ability to zone in on a single note - as opposed to a musical phrase - which, to him, encapsulated the spiritual essence of a particular song, and to ruminate on that single note throughout a solo. The poet Philip Larkin once memorably described Coltrane's solos as the picture of a man rocking back and forth in pain between two chords which remains, to me, the single greatest summary of the man's work. This was not a musician who favoured an intellectual approach to his art but one who aimed at channelling the surge of emotions that were pulsing through his heart directly into his music. To me, there is no such thing as a perfect Coltrane solo as there is, for example, a perfect Charlie Parker solo. Parker's absolute achievement was the logical clarity he achieved in his most brilliant work (for example, the heart-rending Lover Man solo from 1946, which, despite the searing emotions running through this great performance, has an extraordinary internal logic of progression which is almost inevitable in its sheer naturalness) which runs counter to what Coltrane was striving for in his life and in his art. There is something akin to sculpture in Coltrane's playing as he chisels away at a solo. "Good" notes and "bad" notes are equally admissible along the way - what was ultimately important to the man was the cumulative emotional force of the music.
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Re: Jazz - What's your bag, man?
Inspired by Paul's piece on Coltrane I decided to spend some time this weekend listening to some of his albums including the only live material I possess of Coltrane.To tell the truth,even though I admire his music,I never really 'got it'. After reading Paul's piece I'm a little bit nearer to understanding him and what drove him to keep on searching and searching and searching.... On the first Village Vanguard set ('61) his playing on 'Chasin' the Trane' is positively cathartic and I can only begin to understand Philip Larkin's description of Coltrane's playing: "the picture of a man rocking back and forth in pain between two chords".... However, on the second Vanguard set ('66) Coltrane has the look of a sick man and I feel that his sidekick Pharoah Sander's solos are the most amazing in all of Jazz thus eclipsing the great Coltrane, especially in this setting....he (Sanders) actually sounds like a man possessed; trying to strip himself to the marrow of being and brilliantly captured by the recording engineer/producer (Rudy Van Gelder/ Bob Thiele - I assume, as there's no info on the sleeve).
Miles Davis once said that "When he (Coltrane) was with me the first time, people used to tell me to fire him.They said he wasn't playing anything.I know what I want though.I also don't understand this talk of Coltrane being difficult to understand. What he does, for example, is to play five notes of a chord and then keep changing it around, trying to see how many different ways it can sound. It's explaining something five different ways.And that sound of his is connected with what he's doing with the chords at any given time."
Miles Davis once said that "When he (Coltrane) was with me the first time, people used to tell me to fire him.They said he wasn't playing anything.I know what I want though.I also don't understand this talk of Coltrane being difficult to understand. What he does, for example, is to play five notes of a chord and then keep changing it around, trying to see how many different ways it can sound. It's explaining something five different ways.And that sound of his is connected with what he's doing with the chords at any given time."
Re: Jazz - What's your bag, man?
MCQ:
that is one hell of a post. Makes me look at Coltrane all over again from a new light.
Well done and this should be mandatory reading.
Thanks!
that is one hell of a post. Makes me look at Coltrane all over again from a new light.
Well done and this should be mandatory reading.
Thanks!
Do or do not, there is no try