C/D: David Sylvian's BLEMISH

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