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• SS020: David Sylvian, Sleepwalkers
  

  

  
  
  
• SS020: David Sylvian, Sleepwalkers
  

  David Sylvian's new compilation Sleepwalkers features his greatest collaborations from the ‘00s, including World Citizen with Ryuichi Sakamoto, the Nine Horses project, and the new song Five Lines, a collaboration with Dai Fujikura.

  
  
  
• Sleepwalkers now available for Pre-ordering
  

  As many of you will already be aware, despite relatively continuous work on solo albums, I've maintained strong ties with a number of musicians throughout my life and have continued to produce collaborative work in one context or another. The most important of these in recent times has been the Nine Horses project with Burnt Friedman and Steve Jansen. On this new collection, Sleepwalkers, a selection of collaborative work produced over the last decade or so, I've included compositions by Nine Horses as well as more fleeting flirtations and one offs. Neglected offspring. Represented also is long term friend and writing partner, Ryuichi Sakamoto, as well as more recent, but potentially equally productive, partnerships such as Christian Fennesz, Jan Bang and Erik Honoré, Arve Henriksen and contemporary classical composer Dai Fujikura. Dai and myself are currently putting the finishing touches on a radically reinterpreted version of Manafon that features original orchestration by Dai and a number of fresh compositions which extend the themes of the original album (after one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption: wallace stevens), to be released early 2011.

  In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the work presented here, personally selected, remixed and sequenced and entirely remastered. These are the orphans, abused, estranged, exotic, migrating from diverse corners of the globe, brought together under one roof which they're learning to share despite their differences.

  We contain multitudes. We're nothing if not contradictory.

  (Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life: Aldous Huxley)

  I miss your company.

  Keep listening.
  David

  
  Visit the Sleepwalkers microsite
  Pre-order Sleepwalkers in the Samadhisound store
  Pre-order Sleepwalkers T-shirts and Caps

  
  
  
• Textura Magazine - Akira Rabelais 'Caduceus'
  

  Akira Rabelais: Caduceus
  Samadhisound

  First things first: the word ‘caduceus' refers to the staff entwined with two serpents and bearing a pair of wings at the top that was carried by Mercury as messenger of the gods and that's more familiarly known in a similar form as the emblem associated with the medical profession. So what does that have to do with Caduceus, Akira Rabelais' follow-up to his Samadhisound debut, Spellewauerynsherde? It's not entirely clear, but then again Rabelais's work has always been enigmatic to some degree. Caduceus is superficially similar to bénédiction, draw in that both albums feature processed recordings of guitar (primarily electric, though acoustic strums are heard during “in a cadence of vanishing” on the new release) the composer treated using his personal software, Argeïphontes Lyre. The sounds on Caduceus are considerably more distorted than those heard on the 2003 recording, however, so much so that Samadhisound's founder, David Sylvian, has characterized it as “caustically romantic.”

  The opening piece, “seduced by the silence,” would appear to be a harbinger of what's ahead. For three minutes, metallic shards of guitar groan and screech as panning source tones contort into shapes that find their visual equivalent in Francis Bacon's portraits. But the album hardly relies on one scheme; in fact, it's impossible to predict how each track will sound until it arrives. For every setting that tears the source material into shreds, there's another that opts for a more tranquil presentation, such as the suitably ghostly “with the gift of your small breath.”

  “on the little in-betweens” offers a fleeting contrast in presenting fifteen seconds of harp-like plucks before “then the substanceless blue” warps the instrument all over again, but this time less abrasively when layered textures of treated guitar patterns, some delicate and others rough-hewn, drift into view and then fade. Tendrils stutter and flutter alongside a soft stream of white noise during “comme un ange enivré d'un soleil radieux,” while “where to let our scars fall in love” entraps the guitar playing within a mini-maelstrom where smears of grainy static pulsate and explode. The warbling sounds that introduce “and the permanence of smoke or stars” call to mind the 2001 release Eisoptrophobia—until, that is, the track suddenly mutates into a noise exercise in writhing convulsion, its grinding machinery poised to implode. The album's most violent track is “as fingers trace around the rim of a colourless sky,” which evokes the scarred terrain of a Sergio Leone western when lonesome guitar figures bleed across the desolate landscape. At sixty-four minutes, the album's longer than it needs to be, its major points having been clearly made by about the fifty-minute mark, but Rabelais' work is always deserving of one's attention and Caduceus is certainly no exception.

  September 2010

  Source Article can be viewed here:

  Akira Rabelais in Textura

  
  
  
• Textura Magazine - Jan Bang 'And Poppies From Kandahar'
  

  Jan Bang: ...And Poppies From Kandahar
  Samadhisound

  A true ‘producer' recording , …And Poppies From Kandahar finds Punkt Festival co-founder Jan Bang stitching samples and live playing by distinctive musicians like Jon Hassell, Nils Petter Molvær, and Arve Henriksen into a seamless, forty-six-minute whole. The Kristiansand, Norway-based Bang comes by such associations honestly: he co-produced Henriksen's Cartography and Chiaroscuro releases, and worked on Jon Hassell's Last Night the Moon Came too. One consequence of using such distinctive players is that their presence can overshadow the producer and relegate Bang to the background, even if his is the guiding hand throughout. The presence of Henriksen's fragile falsetto and hushed trumpet playing make “Self Injury,” for instance, sound more like a Henriksen piece than a Jan Bang creation.

  To his credit, the self-described ‘samplist' isn't stingy about sharing composing credits; Hassell and Henricksen both receive co-composing nods on “Passport Control,” for example, even though they appear as sampled, not live, players. Bang's self-effacing personality even carries over into the track titles, which were written by samadhisound founder David Sylvian. Only once does Bang eschew the input of others, specifically during “Suicide Bomber,” a brief clarinet-based collage that, to his credit, opts for mournful quietude rather than the more obvious choice of violent dissonance. Elsewhere, “Passport Control” overlays a looped sample from “Gammler Zen + Hohe Berge” by Germany's Kammerflimmer Kollektief with trumpet samples by Hassell and Henricksen. Orchestral samples of Richard Wagner's music lend “Heidegger's Silence” a deep brooding character, though the turntable contributions of Pal Nyhus give the piece an illbient twist. Continuing on in that classical vein, “Abdication and Coronation” has trumpeter Molvær drape his distinctive murmur over a melody by Robert Schumann.

  Bang strikes an effective balance by not overloading the arrangements and by being circumspect in the elements that he does include, as exemplified by the rather skeletal arrangement used for “The Midwife's Dilemma,” which limits its focus to handclaps, Sidsel Ednresen's vocal musings, and a sample of guitarist Eivind Aarset. For the most part, … And Poppies From Kandahar's eleven experimental mood settings exude a meditative and borderless, even “fourth world” quality. They're appealingly restrained too, with Bang preferring to seduce with meticulously arrangements than bludgeon with aggression, and, at certain moments, such as during the closing “Exile From Paradise” where Hassell's trumpet playing gently drifts, an authentic sense of wonder emerges.

  September 2010

  
  Source Article can be viewed here:
  Jan Bang in Textura