DAVID SYLVIAN - Died In The Wool

What can you associate with death to make it less painful? Perhaps a warm embrace, like that of a woollen blanket. That's how "Died In The Wool" wraps around the fabric of "Manafon", warming up the emotions that had been hidden behind essential, innovative arrangements that only time will make familiar.

Not just another round of remixes, nor a speculative pamphlet assembled in an attempt to explain the immeasurable, David Sylvian is a man in constant search of sonic stimuli, and his encounter with Dai Fujikura is the seed of this project. An album that comes together gradually, built on the threads of a brief collaboration that grows into a more complex whole, symphonic drones that soften the jagged architecture of the original tracks, feelings that distil cerebral impulses, bringing together a sense of beauty that's more classical and free from the seed of improvisation.

Twelve tracks, only five of which already appeared on "Manafon", with the rest born from the ashes of tracks cut from the project and from original ideas by Dai Fujikura. "Random Acts of Senseless Violence" is the first fruit of the collaboration, appearing on the Japanese edition and the vinyl version of "Manafon"; the orchestrations take care over every detail, small nuances that celebrate technique and inspiration, while the voice becomes a pure instrument.

The emotional centrality of the voice, underlined by Dai Fujikura's work, is the real strength of "Died In The Wool". The album flows with symphonic-avant-garde tones, between samples of Arve Henriksen, which immerse "A Certain Slant of Light" in a sea of perfect lyricism, and Emily Dickinson poems that brush against emotional apotheosis in "I Should Not Dare", with precious sonic droplets orchestrated by Christian Fennesz and Jan Bang.

What leaves one slightly puzzled is the realization that the best things on "Died In The Wool" aren't the reworkings of the already-released tracks, but the new compositions, the fruit of this intriguing collaboration with the Japanese musician and of other small-scale projects, which accompany David Sylvian's restless artistic verve.

The vocal dissonance that characterized "Manafon" has partly vanished; the visions reminiscent of "Blemish" have rekindled the emotion that lay hidden behind the last monumental sonic constructions, and the whole seems to reconcile the artist with his more romantic, persuasive side, as demonstrated by the closing "The Last Days Of December".

Ultimately, "Died In The Wool" rises above the usual pitfalls of any collection of rarities and reworkings; the five tracks from "Manafon" ("Small Metal Gods", "Random Acts Of Senseless Violence", "Snow White In Appalachia", "Emily Dickinson" and "The Greatest Living Englishman"), the outtake ("Anomaly At Taw Head (A Haunting)"), the two Emily Dickinson poems ("I Should Not Dare", "A Certain Slant Of Light") and the new compositions with Dai Fujikura ("The Last Days Of December", "Died In The Wool") form a single body of work, one that generously welcomes the single track on the second disc, "When We Return You Won't Recognize Us", an audio installation presented in 2009 for the Canary Islands biennial.

David Sylvian keeps sowing sonic seeds whose fruits will be gathered over time, and which are increasingly hard to ignore.

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21/06/2011