C/D: David Sylvian's BLEMISH

dissonant acoustic noodling

this is a somewhat unfair dismissal of bailey who worked hard at developing an idiosyncratic, non-tonal (i.e. neither tonal nor atonal) language on guitar. there is definite structure there, it's just more at the micro level. ofc it's fine to intuitively dislike something ... perhaps it helps to approach his work more as pure texture or even as a rhythmic element? in this sense it's not far removed from what, say, keith levene was doing in pil, or arto lindsay in dna

one of the reasons their collaboration is interesting to me is that sylvian was able to tease out some of the harmonic implications of bailey's playing that otherwise might get lost when listening to him in a purely free improvisatory context (see also bailey's ballads and standards where he structures his solo improvisations around conventional jazz tunes)

anyway, i enjoyed this recent post detailing the production of "a fire in the forest". it's to my mind the clear highlight of the album and maybe sylvian's most beautiful song ...

https://sylvianvista.com/2021/09/24/a-fire-in-the-forest/

i posted about this the other day on a different thread but fans of sylvian should check out melaine dalibert's recent solo piano recordings on elsewhere. sylvian designed the cover art for all of the releases and contributed electronic textures to one (linked below). it's really beautiful music

https://elsewheremusic.bandcamp.com/album/night-blossoms

i think if bailey's guitar was working at a more textural level i'd appreciate it more, but when it's the only backing to sylvian's voice, as it is on their tracks on the album, it's just not for me at all

"a fire in the forest" is brilliant, i also really like their other collaboration "venice" from fennesz's transit. i wish they'd done more like those together

yeah an album or something of songs in that style would've been amazing

i hadn't thought about it like this until i read that article but likening their collaboration as a similar process to what sylvian had done decades earlier with "ghosts" makes perfect sense

idk i just finished revisiting this album and the tracks w/ bailey remain startlingly impactful ... just so stark and raw and uncompromising and emotionally direct. easily for me among the highlights of sylvian's career

yeah I disagree as well, the Bailey stuff on here is extremely strong and this album works in multitudes of ways that the follow up did not, for me.

i like blemish a lot, but it isn't something i can listen to very often. i actually prefer the remix album.

have to agree on "a fire in the forest" being the clear highlight. i had a strong obsession with "last songs" for a good chunk of my life (and still do, to a certain degree) and i once declared david sylvian one of the masters of the form. if you go back through his catalogue (solo and otherwise), he seems to have mastered 'wrapping up the whole album in one track.' and i think, probably along with "darkest dreaming" from dead bees on a cake, "a fire in the forest" is maybe his best song in that respect and possibly overall.

here's a super simple, but (imo) super effective re-edit of the remix, that i did for "a fire in the forest" many years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3vc0uR86yI

it was intended for dj'ing and dancefloor sets, but i can't imagine anybody wanting to dance to those lyrics lol.

OK why have I, a Sylvian fan of long standing, never listened to this album? It's FUCKING AMAZING.
I guess I was put off by Dead Bees and never went back.

yeah dunno, but it's a complete 180 from Dead Bees (which I like)

i prefer manafon to the bailey tracks on blemish (though neither is my thing much at all) but i significantly prefer the rest of blemish to manafon.

i love dead bees on a cake, the expanded tracklist from the reissue a few years ago that adds in the outtakes added in is an improvement too.

Dead Bees is lovely but the initial release feels like cafe music to me. I want weird from Sylvian.

The Bailey pieces on Blemish started as improvisations, but the guitar parts were all selected, layered and edited by Sylvian, at which point he wrote melodies and lyrics to complement the guitar pieces; so it's not quite as much "Derek scribbles on David's songs" as it might appear.
That said, the results are amazing on the first Bailey track, "The Good Son", and the remaining two seem a little like more-of-the-same afterthoughts to me. "How Little We Need to Be Happy", as a lyric, is a great set-up for the change towards hopefulness that the album undergoes at that point, but the music doesn't support the emotional arc.

I have to laugh at this post upthread:

My tastes have diverged a lot since then, but this is like the only album from 2003 that I still consistently listen to

― Sonny A. (Keiko), Sunday, June 13, 2004