Orient Pop - La musica dello spirito

Japan doesn’t seems different from the androgynous groups of the end of the ‘70. The David Bowie style is evident in the singer, "the most beautiful man in the world". But little by little the embarrassing quote leaves place to a spirituality’s atmosphere. With David Sylvian the group’s name gets new sense, referring to some aspects of Japanese aesthetics. The name is prophetic. Through a sophisticated stylistic research, Japan recreates the East’s ambient. In the meanwhile the air around is full of Zen Buddhism.
In Tin Drum the boy of Canton, one of the Sylvian’s incarnations, appears (Cantonese Boy). He works in the fields. He’s in Mao Red Army and he belongs to an anonymous crowd where individuality isn’t important. Red Army calls you / Red Army needs you. The boy is marching like everyone else. The song ends with hope: "Only young men broke the wall’’ Only the youth has the mystic inspiration to subvert the values and to make the Chinese revolution a cultural movement more than political.

The synthesized percussion dominates the main tracks and it creates Eastern sounds. The Sylvian’s voice -half Bowie and half Brian Ferry- brings out of reality: with its Western tonality it makes a nice contrast and it allows the fusion of two worlds miles away.
The same framework in Visions Of China. He sings of a strong and lean soldier with a blank mind and no idea of life. The Red China image is a stereotype, as Sylvian admits. It isn’t enough reporting the confusion of a nation because of the values imposed from above. It requires an individualism that gives meaning to life.

It’s curious: the group gives the best in oriental songs and its research moves elsewhere, in the same time the singer consolidates his leadership. Some atmospheres are resumed one last time in the instrumental Temple Of Dawn. The reiterated gong is a drone with bells. All sounds are assigned to digital synthesizers and only on the final the analogics comes, the Prophet 5 or the Oberheim. The timbre blending seems to seal the East and West fusion. The competent use of instruments and the new music allow the listener to access to the sunrise in a Buddhist monastery. The temple’s doors open to the world, leaving the sounds penetrate little by little, in the pregnant silence of the air that brings richer sounds in the final. Japan has never been so close in the tracks of a group that takes its name.

The album’s jewel is Ghosts. The protagonist sings of his identification and about how hard is becoming themselves. Only when the mind’s ghosts seemed to give him a truce, he finds uncomfortable; when he didn’t think to find obstacles he’s swept by the wind of terrifying images and he’s torn by devastating doubts. Sylvian seems to sing about himself or about a common situation in the spiritual research: the destination’s conquest is delayed for a fall or a regression.
Music and lyrics are in symbiosis. The Japan keyboardist admits he’s inspired by Stockhausen for a metal digital sound that looks like no other one instrument. The synthesizer’s timbre inspires melody, adapting to the suspension’s state where the singer’s psyche is. Everything is vague, but this is a strength.
" When my chance came to be king" sings Sylvian, alone more than ever. The easy life because of the youth’s lovers leaves the way to a new awareness, liberated from the ghosts. The protagonist feels there is something that he needs to know, but he has no place to go. Somewhere there is a meaning but he doesn’t know it, in the meanwhile the certainties go away. The confusion brings new developments with it.

Sylvian begins to have nothing to do with the group. The identification process requires to become a soloist. The new experience will change his image outside, deleting the lightness. Sylvian makes another album with Japan where he refers to the new needs (My New Career) and where he creates an alter ego: the night porter. Slipping into darkness, he seems to live in another dimension than the mortals. The instrumental beginning of Night Porter remands to the Satie’s Gymnopédie.
Sylvian leaves the group’s members. This makes a Sylvian’s qualitative leap as composer and singer. The atmosphere will become rarefied, and, for the first time, he’ll feel the need of improvisation. The black phase of his alchemical research is concluded with Japan. Sylvian will treasure the youth’s experience without denying anything. Ghosts will remain a reference point.

Brilliant Trees album’s title refers to the colors and splendor of the new stage of implementation, the albedo. It’s a transition’s period, with a lot of doubts and misgivings. Nevertheless, new chances are discovered. " A better world lies in front of me/A sketch of life in the books I read/Then as I walk where heaven leads/Why am I the last to know? ". Sylvian doesn’t control the transformation. Pulling Punches ends with a hint to the lives gathered together ‘under new religion’.
The Ink in the Well sings of ‘a genius for living’. A new freedom, the excision from the constraints and the free animals run in fields. "Fire at will" comes frequently: the igneous rocks allusion shows a creative power ready to emerge.
In Nostalgia is evident the feature of the new production: the soft atmosphere of synthesizers where musicians improvise. Sylvian proposes a short text that indicates the awareness level. He describes his mind, crowded by voices and images. The Japan’s metaphors are coming back on a more vague and fragmentated weaving. The words don’t pretend to impose themselves on music.

Such a setting is evoked in Weathered Wall, where Ryuichi Sakamoto plays piano and synthesizer. The other respectable guest is Jon Hassell, an oriental sounds lover. His trumpet remainds to the powerful bar of the elephants. The corroded wall by weather and the seasons. According to the aesthetics Japanese dictates, he retrieves everything that is sabi, the time’s patina: all the rotten, old and worthless things. Sylvian leaves the wall as he found it, that’s the metaphor of tears, a lost paradise to burning nostalgia.
The album expresses the meaning research, that sometimes seems to lead to a stagnant water, as in Backwaters. But the traveler knows the path doesn’t stop and the barrier is part of a design. Also this one has a short text that doesn’t interfere with the music. " There are always other possibilities, This way and that."
In a Bach contest managed by the Japanese musician Sakamoto, the Eastern part belongs to Hassell. Sylvian is for a lover, a woman or a higher nume, a god: "And there you stand/Making my life possible/Raise my hands up to heaven/But only you could know/My whole world stands in front of me
By the look in your eyes/By the look in your eyes/My whole life stretches in front of me/Reaching up like a flower/Leading my life back to the soil". The beloved facilitates the Sylvian’s spiritual path. The presence makes doubts to the certainties and to the love of life: "Every plan I've made's/Lost in the scheme of things"
This plant life has lights and shadows. The first ones seem overhanging in vivid hues. The albedo is partial, but a soft charm shows the artistic creation’s possibilities.