On the Periphery: David Sylvian - A Biography: The Solo Years by Christopher Young

Author:Christopher Young [Young, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw, mobi
Publisher: Malin Publishing Ltd
Published: 2015-05-05T22:00:00+00:00

10

Once The Bullet Leaves

In September 1999, the fruits of Sylvian’s contribution to Russell Mill’s second musical collage album, Pearl and Umbra, was released. This album was recorded in short intense blocks at Mills’ Shed Studio at his house in Cumbria, and at Sound Studio in London. Sylvian’s vocal contribution was to the song Rooms of the Sixteen Shimmers, recorded at the Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, California. The entire album took about 30 days to complete spread out into two, three, of four day blocks, with sometimes weeks between sessions. Pearl and Umbra did not have a single theme, but each track had a core idea that was explored in various ways. The overall feeling of the album was a sense of menace, a direct result of Mill’s artistic fascination with the films of Tarkovsky, the poems of Heaney, and the writings of Ted Hughes among others.

Mills initially approached most of the contributors on the album to give him sounds that would surprise him, anything so long as it was not already in the public domain. Sylvian, however, provided vocals for Rooms With the Sixteen Shimmers in response to about five alternatives rough mixes that Mills sent to him in the States. He chose the track, wrote the lyrics (even incorporating Mill’s working title), without any discussion, with complete freedom of choice as Mills confirmed. “Sylvian’s choice of track was open. Of course, I wanted a vocal from him as I love his voice and delivery and am smart enough to know that his voice will appeal to a large fan base, but I was also prepared for him to respond with shouting, coughing, slapping Formica, whatever he chose to do.” 108 The first Mills knew of Sylvian’s contribution was when he received the DATs of it, so he had no idea of the form of lyrics he’d written. Mills was in a relatively unique position to judge the changes in Sylvian over the years, and noticed that when working on Pearl and Umbra he seemed more discerning and thoughtful than he had in previous years. He also noticed that his spiritual change had calmed him, and he seemed happier. He exhibited according to Mills “…a oneness which I think was absent or which he was struggling to find but this is just my impression garnered from our talks and correspondence.” 108

In October 1999, Virgin chose to release the instrumental works recorded by Sylvian some years previously, under the title Approaching Silence. The music on this release included the compositions The Beekeepers Apprentice and Epiphany (which had been recorded in September 1990 and released in 1991, originally composed for the Mills and Sylvian installation Ember Glance: The Permanence of Memory), and Approaching Silence (composed for the 1994 Sylvian / Fripp installation Redemption: Approaching Silence). It was the year after this in 2000 that Sylvian, Chavez, and the children moved from Sonoma to New Hampshire, buying a ramshackle property perched on a mountain-side in Temple, which they proceeded to convert into a dwelling for their family and a studio.

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