DAVID SYLVIAN / AN INVISIBLE BAND
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Let’s have a talk about the most
recent record we’re playing on our radio station, Snowball
Sorrow by 9 horses. I believe a rather long gestation for this record.
Yeah, we started that on back in 2002, Steve,
my
brother and I started it in 2002 and it sort of had a
long an protracted evolution and I got caught up in
other projects along the way and we finally finished
it this summer so it was quite a long journey.
I believe this is the first time you’ve
worked with Steve since Raintree Crow, reputation had that although
it produced some interesting sounds, behind the scenes it proved
a little fractious.
Yeah that’s a kind way of putting it, it
was actually
a very exciting project to be involved in initially
but all the old problems within the relationship of
the band itself kind of reared their heads towards the
end of the project and it just kind of fell apart in a
very negative way but I’ve worked with steve on and
off for the past 5 or 6 years but this is the first
time we’ve got to writing the material together.
9 horses is the name ,that’s 36
legs but there’s actually only been 6 legs involved I believe.
That’s right, Steve my brother and Burnt
Friedman are
the other 2 artists involved in the project.
When did you first encounter Burnt’s
work and indeed the man?
Well I’d been listening to his material
for quite
sometime and really did enjoy it particularly the
material he was working on under the name Flanger, I
thought there was some really wonderful material
produced and I played some of his work to Steve while
we were working together in 2002 and Steve and I have
worked together for so many years and sometimes it
just felt a little comfortable and I began to think
well we might need a 3rd element something to change
the chemistry a little and it was Burnt’s name that
sprung to mind at that point in time. We were very
fortunate to meet Burnt I think it was in 2003 on the
solo tour I was doing, Burnt came to the show in
Cologne and that led us to talk about working together
and the first step was the remixes that Burnt did for
the Blemish remix album and as they proved rather
successful we took the next step and went on to write
some material together and initially these were two
separate projects, the project that I started with
Steve and the project that I was working on with Burnt
and at some point in time it occurred to me that they
could come together and make a much more stronger
project.
So the name 9 horses, what significance
does that have?
Well, while Steve and I can come together musically
and actually speak the same musical vocabulary which
is really fortuitous and a wonderful thing,
philosophically we’re miles apart, so when it came to
finding a name to work under for this project there
was a lot of names came forth and very few were
accepted and basically I think because I tend to work
with names that have a lot of residence in one way or
another for me and Steve wasn’t comfortable with that
so we ultimately went with a name for it’s lack of
meaning rather then for something that resonates on a
number of levels philosophically for me. So I guess
over time if this project continues and I have a
feeling it might, the name might be embued with
meaning over time.
Some of Burnt’s recordings have
been more or less assemblages from performance from all over the
world in different studios and then amalgamating them together under
his direction, were the 3 of you ever in the same studio at the
same time together?
No never and in fact I’ve never performed
material
with Burnt in any context I think I’ve spent a total
of 4 hours in his company on 4 separate occasions, so
all the work that was done with Burnt was done on the
internet or via the mail, he tends to work that way
anyway as you say and I’ve been working that way
progressively over the past 10 years. With the demise
of major labels there’s been a more open community
among artists and musicians which means there’s an
awful lot of contributing going on to one another’s
projects and there’s very little that stands in the
way of that interaction in the past major labels would
always stand in the way and you’d have to write some
permission to work with one another well that’s
dissipating now which gives rise to a wonderful global
community that’s possible to tap into which is really
rather exciting.
Where do the lyrics fit into that equation?
Are they the initiator of the sounds or did they come later, what
was the pattern of this particular album?
Well with the material I wrote with Steve the
material
would come more or less spontaneously and we would be
working in the studio together Steve and I were in the
studio together and something would surface and some
direction would surface and I’d immediately start
jotting down lyrics for that particular piece so the
lyrics are very a part of the whole process. With
Burnt’s work he sent me about 8 or 9 pieces to work on
and I picked 5 that really appealed to me and just
responded to them initially as lyrics and a vocalist
and at a later point took the material over and gave
it direction and orchestrated it to a greater extent.
There are some very unusual rhythms on
this album.
Well I have to say that’s Burnt’s
influence, he’s very
interested in odd time signatures so the material that
he sent me were in quite challenging times to work
with and oddly enough initially the drum patterns on
these demos that Burnt sent to me were performed by
Jackie Levitson, eventually we replaced all Jackie’s
drumming with Steve’s drumming and often Steve’s
drumming was in a different time signature to the
original so again it was a process of evolution but it
was fascinating to work with these time signatures and
it does give the pieces a different slant, a different
feel, it’s quite interesting to work with them.
So after the individual work with your
Blemish album this must have been quite a change, almost like putting
your clothes back on as far as developing this sound with other
people in the room and the sounds developing outside you rather
then all coming from you necessarily.
In a sense but I was the director of the project
if
you want to put it that way in that I had the vision
of how I wanted the material to develop and Steve and
Burnt gave me the freedom to oversee the project
although everybody was very active and contributed
enormously. I kind of gave it the direction and bought
in more and more musicians as the project evolved and
I could begin to invision the completed work so I
actually worked on the material extensively alone for
long periods of time, so it didn’t always feel like a
crew project but in the early stages it certainly did,
sitting in the studio working with Steve was really
wonderful and Steve’s a fantastic drummer but also a
fantastic writer and sound designer which I don’t
think he gets enough credit for and he contributed
enormously to the writing of the pieces and to the
final mixes.
There was a 6 week gap there that you
decided not to sit and sun yourself, you decided to do Blemish a
solo album.
Yeah well the material with Steve was progessing
slowly because we were working with a lot of new
technology and there is a bit of a learning curve with
that and although I was pleased with the results there
was something I had to get off my chest and there was
this material which ultimately became Blemish, it was
an album that was built around improvisational
performances on guitar either mine or Derek Bailey’s ’s.I
had a vision of where I wanted to go with it musically and there
was a very powerful content emotionally that I had to work my way
through and it was quite a cathartic experience
and I really given myself just a 6 week window in
which to produce the work so Steve and I could
continue working again after that time and it was
great to work under that time pressure and so I had to
give myself the task of really going with whatever
surfaced, whatever surfaced is what I was going to
work with both musically and lyrically and it was
fascinating and I really enjoyed the whole process.
I used the term dressed or clothed with
this record & the reason that I said that was because when I
first played Blemish to a friend who was a big fan of yours the
response was, “oh he’s so naked.”
Yeah, emotionally it’s pretty raw material
and in
terms of orchastration it’s pretty minimal so it is a
bit like standing naked and it is a little odd to be
putting something like that into the world, it’s quite
raw, quite revealing but that’s the nature of the work
that fascinates me most, it was a challenge to find
the right vocabulary for that content but having found
it I was elated that I had found it, there was this
dichotomy of living through something that was so
powerfully upsetting and trying to document it and at
the same time there was this real high knowing that I
was creating material that I had never heard anything
that sounded like it before so it was thoroughly
exhilarating to work on that material but also quite
distressing.
The closest link I could come up with
is probably the Tilt album by Scott Walker, that has a similar nakedness
exposure about it and also it’s quite deliberately uneasy
listening.
Well that’s a very flattering to draw I
think tilts a
truly wonderful record, they don’t come along very
often and I think in a sense I couldn’t reproduce an
album like blemish for my next outing and I wouldn’t
want to have to live through that experience again any
time soon, projects like these are born out of rather
upsetting experiences, they’re necessary but you
wouldn’t want to have to live through them too many
times.
Speaking of Scott Walker there was a rumour
around that it was muted that you and him would collaborate at a
time, did that have any basis of fact?
Yes, Scott and I met a few times and I’d
written a
piece which I thought suited him and he liked it and
he wanted to elaborate on it and produce a full album
but at that time he was signed to virgin and he was in
a very unfortunate position because he had to abandon
an album with Brian that he had started some years
before, virgin would no longer provide him into the
studio without him providing demos and you know
somebody who’s got stature you just don’t ask them to
provide demos for his work, so he was in a kind of
catch 22 position there and I just wanted to help him
out of jam so I said I would go ahead and help him
work through this situation with Virgin, nothing ever
came of it and ultimately he was bought out of the
contract by another label which was very fortuatus for
him I think and he managed to pull together tilt as a
result which is a tremendous album but it was
interesting meeting him and it was interesting talking
our way through ideas for a project but it was kind of
obvious from the early days that it wasn’t going to
develop into anything concrete.
Two recluses working together would have
been interesting though.
I don’t know about that, he’s just
a tremendous
vocalist, I can’t think of anybody better and if I
could have contributed to a project in any way I would
have been happy to do so but he really didn’t need my
support in the long term.
You mentioned the difficulty of the subject
matter and a phrase came to me when I was listening to Blemish of
“digging in the dirt”,that sense of exposure and also
that sense of exploration of your own psyche simply to find out
those spots that give you a reaction.
Yeah, looking into these very difficult emotions,
these are the emotions we tend to look away from in
life because they’re often too difficult to face or if
we look at them we don’t look too deeply because we
don’t really want to know how deep they go and I’m
pretty much the same way also but when I got into the
studio and closed that door behind me I thought I was
at liberty to go further, I thought I was at liberty
to go even deeper into these negative emotions to see
where they would lead me and to see how one would give
them voice so that was the challenge, to find the
right vocabulary for that kind of content.
As serious as it might sound I’m
sure it was terrific fun working with Derek Bailey, a living musical
treasure, who knows what Derek is going to play next? Unique is
almost an understatement.
Yeah, but unfortunately I wasn’t with Derrick
when he
performed his contribution.
Really? So this was another distant relationship?
It was, I spoke to him briefly prior to him going
into
the studio in London and I was working in the states
with Blemish at the time, so I didn’t have time to go
over and work with him and what would I do other then
give some indication as to what I was looking for,
Derek just does what he does and he basically
performed for about an hour and recorded for about an
hour a multitude of pieces, sent them over and on
first listen I pulled out this 3 pieces that you hear
on the album as potential pieces that I could respond
to, there were others that it would be impossible for
me to respond to as a vocalist but these afforded an
enormous challenge and I worked on them the same way
that I worked on the other improvisations that I was
working on guitar which was on the second listen I
started jotting down words, third listen, forth listen
and there was a whole set of lyrics and I was ready to
start recording and it was a very immediate response
to what was there and this was what was thrilling for
me to see the whole process.
Improvisation on record takes an enormous
amount of courage, it’s a real risk, throwing your music against
fate.
Ultimately it becomes what’s most exciting
about the
recording process, if you have pre-written material
prior to going into the studio, you’ve also got the
orchastration more or less together in your mind and
it can become a bit of a technical process putting the
whole thing together or searching for the odds and
ends that aren’t quite in place, it’s not as exciting
and thrilling as improvisation because somehow you
manage to capture something that is very much of the
moment and there’s some truth in that, there’s some
essence that is sometimes lost on material that you
labour over for long periods of time.
So what is David Sylvian’s muse?
How’s does the character of your muse work? Are you someone
who works musically everyday or someone who requires a project for
things to congeal around?
I don’t need to work everyday, I like the
period of
gestation which is carrying ideas around with me for
long periods of time allowing them to evolve in my
mind into a notion to the musical direction, to the
emotional content to the basic themes of a project and
the longer I let them gestate the more clear they
become over time, not nessecerily in terms of the
actual musical arrangement of the pieces but just the
clarity of the vision of where that particular vision
might be leading me and the stronger it comes through
the more ready I feel to get to work on it and really
that’s what happens with blemish and I carry the
notion of blemish around with me for almost a year and
then I just felt more then ready to get to work on it
at that point in time that as we described earlier
working with Steve and I just took that 6 weeks out to
sit on it and really give it the form that it now
demanded, so I enjoy that period of gestation, it’s a
wonderful creative, evocative and exciting period and
probably the most exciting aspect of the whole process
including the writing and completion of the work.
Following up Blemish was The Only Daughter
remix album. I was talking to a musician once who said that giving
his material to remixer was a bit like sacrificing his children.
For the most part he’s right.
Although I thought these remixes rather
then diluting or simply extending the feel actually in many cases
amplified the feeling and the emotional core of the material.
Well that’s what I was looking for, there
was a couple
of reasons why I got into it, I thought the material
lent itself to remixing, that was the first decision,
the first realisation, almost like acapella pieces
they can be taken in a multitude of different
directions and aspects of a given piece could be
explored, there could be an emotional core to a piece,
someone might want to take just one line from a song
and that would be fine with me and really explore that
line and see where it leads them so I thought that the
material would be up for remodeling in that respect
and exploring in a different context and then there
was the notion of working with musicians that I was
looking for potentially a working relationship with
them down the road and this would be a means of
testing the waters and as I said initially working
with Burnt we were working on the remixes and that
ultimately led to a full on collabration and that
might be true of some of the other artists that I
choose to get involved with on the remix album, there
might be further collaborations down the road that are
a little more in depth then remix work.
Now I imagine just by our conversation
so far that there are often various pots on the stove bubbling away
in various areas of your creative world. What do you think we may
hear next from you in terms of a record?
Well the next project will likely be a solo album,
a
follow up to Blemish, I would like to work again with
improvisation and pursue that avenue a little further,
I’m not sure where that’s going to lead me but I did
do some sessions with some friends about a year ago in
Vienna and I’m yet to go back and really explore those
so I’ll be listening to those and seeing if there’s
anything there in terms of direction that will work
out to lead me to doing a solo album and I have a
feeling that 9 horses will continue to evolve, we
haven’t really sat down and spoken about this amongst
the three of us but I can imagine there’s some more
work to be done there, that 9 horses might take on a
life of it’s own as well.
What about live work? Will there likely
be a live David Sylvian experience that may well come to Australia?
I’ve wanted to come to Australia for so
long, it’s
just never been financially possible to get over there
with the band, I’ve actually reached a point in my
life where I’m not sure if I’m going to continue
performing live. I guess I’m kind of sitting that one
out, trying to feel my way through it intuitively
whether to stop or whether there’s a couple of tours
left in me. I have enjoyed touring over the past
decade or so and it’s been enormously exhilarating the
different line ups, the different contexts that I’ve
been able to work in but I’m not sure it will continue
to be so for much longer. So there may be one or more
tours left max but it may be over I’m not sure.
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