Title: There's a light that enters houses with no other house in sight
Artiste: David Sylvian
Genre: Experimental
Familiarity: Little; heard some Japan and my sister had his greatest hits (the one with the dog on the front). Other than that, nothing.
Track 1 (Love): Just doesn't work here as it's all one track. I hear “Rain birds” in the opening part, then the spoken vocal sounds a little slurred and maybe meant to be sleepy, but it's pretty good. The ambient sounds are well done: rain on the rooftops, steps on the landing, breathing etc. Kind of an oriental twist to the music around the twenty-fifth minute (it runs for just over an hour) then the piano gets very ominous all on its own in minute twenty-six. Kind of like listening to an audio book alone in a dark house while the rain lashes down outside and the wind howls, and you have no idea who you are, where you are or how you got there, or indeed if you'll ever make it out of there.
Some violin now, and the vocal weaves in and out of the music like a drunk man or a sleepwalker trying to find his way out of this weird house he seems to have found himself in. Thirty-seven minutes in now and we have some very weird, brokenup vocals which would have me running for the exit, if I knew where it was. Spoo-ky! Bells now, then the vocals settle, partially (still fragmented in the background) but in the forty-seventh minute almost everything fades away and we're left with sounds of dripping water, creaking floorboards and other, less identifiable noises, before suddenly a single, dark piano note rings through the stillness, soon followed by others as Sylvian re-establishes the sombre and disquieting mood of the piece.
A wild, weird, almost screeching sound rises up out of the dark, like the restless spirit of some doomed soul fated to tread these halls forever, always seeking egress but never finding it. It moans and cries, lamenting its lot with a bitter malice in its voice, as the piano keeps its slow cadence like some metronome of the soul. Now there's the creaking of doors and a more dissonant piano, as if the spirit is panicking (can spirits panic? Maybe we're transferring our fears onto it) as the drawling voice returns, scaring what's left of our wits out of us. He's talking about crucifixes now, but we really don't hear the words, as we're just gently rocking back and forth in the corner repeating over and over to ourself “It's just a dream! It's just a dream!” Is it?
As he stops speaking, with the title of the album his final words, something screams at us and we duck back into the safety/horror of the shadows, trying to make ourselves as small as possible. Weird sounds permeate the air, like morse code or electrical impulses or something. A last mournful violin accompanies the final vocal, which we thought already delivered. We feel our eyes begin to drift shut. Mustn't fall asleep. Must stay awake. Must. Not ......
End result: Atmospheric to the max. I would have preferred a more perhaps dark or even energetic vocal; this seemed a little bored to me, but what do I know? Very impressive.
So, Love or Hate? No way would I hate this. This is a
Love.
Chances of a full review: 0/10, as I think I pretty much did that already above.