Tonight I'm learning how to poll and I surrender: David Sylvian's Dead Bees on a Cake Poll

He sustains the atmosphere wonderfully throughout the whole album, but it's hard to top "I Surrender". It gives me similar vibes to New Grass: either a thousand spirits falling into jazz repose, or a single man.

It just took me 15min to find this record. The last time I moved house I put 80% of the CDs into binders and junked the jewel cases and sleeves; I kept scanning the shelf back and forth... surely I kept all the Sylvian intact? I mean, if the two-part Jean the Birdman single is there, and Approaching Silence and even Damage ffs... But, no, seems it's in a binder and I flipped past it twice.

Anyway, I really didn't much like this in '99 but I'll give it another go (instead of just voting for I Surrender now... I'll vote for I Surrender in 71min instead :) ).

Ah, it's Darkest Dreaming.

these titles look like perfumes no one would wear

The two-disc comp released at the dawn of the century did a poor job choosing track from this thing. I pick "I Surrender."

"A Victim Of Stars" is the best career overview.

The Scent of Magnolia is maybe one of my absolute favourites.

It’s telling, I think, that there’s no real consensus on which track is the best on this. When Dead Bees came out, Sylvian professed to be extremely proud of it – but even at the time it felt uncomfortably derivative of his previous work.

There were elevator music-y things like I Surrender that kind of reminded of his mushier moments on GTE. Darkest Dreaming used the soundbed from his second collaboration with Czukay while Praise cast a similar vibe to Alchemy. God Man, a nod to his dissonant Fripp record. The Shining of Things sounds like any number of his Sakamoto cowrites over the years. And so on.

Looking back, the closest things pointing to a new direction were the bluesy Midnight Sun, which he never really followed up on, and the vocal and dobro tracks he did with Bill Frisell, which are clearly a precursor to his work with Derek Bailey on Blemish. I suppose you could say the gloopy spirituality, free jazz bits and nods to trip hop were new as well but they felt more like crutches than a new direction – ways of reassuring fans that all his twists and turns the previous decade—and melodic bits resting uncomfortably against dissonance—were part of some divine master plan.

One of the criticisms of Everything and Nothing, the two-disc comp that came out a year or so later, was that Sylvian had remixed and re-recorded previous work to sound contemporaneous – as if Sylvian were trying to convince the listener that a song like Ghost and The Scent of Magnolia had sprung from the same font of inspiration. I didn’t necessarily agree with that perspective—E&N’s scope and sequencing made for an engaging listen—but it may be a fair criticism on this record.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

My fave artist's least effective record to these ears.

Overlong, at times overly sentimental, goopy MOR... the fairy dust was wearing off / it was easier to spot the not fully digested influences than it was on his records when I was a kid a decade or so before... Expectations were perhaps too high, as this also came out soooo long after his last couple of "real" records (and both of those were collaborations - some great moments for sure - with a limited number of "real" vocal tracks). Pre-Blemish, it felt like I should be getting used to the idea that Sylvo might end up meaning a lot less to me than he had in the past. Thank heavens he really rallied over the next decade and a half.

Voting: this has to be either "I Surrender", which stays just the right side of smoothed-out 70's jazz-land to me... or "Dobro #1", with its beautifully weary vocal and modest ambitions.

Everything and Nothing vs A Victim of Stars is a discussion I'd def be here for too.

Darkest Dreaming by some margin, IMO. I love Sylvian but was disappointed with this album at the time; I'm more forgiving of it now.

"Everything and Nothing vs A Victim of Stars is a discussion I'd def be here for too."

Do it!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Correct winner.

Also I unapologetically love the oh-so-dated mid-90s veneer of this album. The b-sides from this era are also top notch.