David Sylvian "Gone To Earth" double LP

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/david_sylvian/gone_to_earth/

I am sure Sounds magazine gave Gone to Earth a 5 stars review.

i dunno, there's a weird vintage-80s pop-bass white-funk thing that doesn't jibe with the rest of the arrangement a lot of the time.

i wasn't thinking of japan... just his solo records...

Yes let's pull out Secrets of the Beehive.

Anyway I have Joy Division's Closer playing at full volume "Colony". But no one cares. Anyway...

This is a David Sylvian thread. And some bastard is smoking cigarettes outside and I want to kill them. But the 'rettes will do it for me.

Can were barely a glimmer in my eye when I first bought that album. I mean Can meant nothing to me. Wow.

Gave this a spin in light of the recent "Brilliant Trees" poll. Yes, it's got Mr. Nelson and Mr. Fripp all over it, but it still comes in behind "Secrets" and "Trees" as far as his 80s solo albums are concerned. The tunes just aren't as memorable. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's damn good though.

Not to mention "Alchemy" - I think I've played that more than GTE.

Laughter and Forgetting and Silver Moon kill me....

Interesting timing...picked this up for a dollar yesterday.

No can't enthuse about this as much as SOTB or BT...still pretty great and 'Before The Bullfight" is quite lovely...

Amazingly enough I discovered this album from seeing the "Silver Moon" video on VH1.

Excellent nightly writing music.

one of the first albums I always put on when the weather changes in the fall!

This may be the best album he ever did. The most impressive thing is how the vocal and the instrumental disc work together as one piece you can listen to entirely in sequence, not merely discrete "pop" and "ambient" records. Despite the differences, it's as if "the story continues" from one part to the other, like in 2001. Partly this continuity is due to Fripp and Nelson playing lead guitar on both halves.

Emotionally, the songs are sunnier than on his other albums. The instrumentals are also unusual in his body of work in that they are mostly based on chord changes or melodic sequences. There isn't any of the quasi-tribal rhythm from Alchemy or the Czukay collaborations.

it rules

I can listen to this all night.

the ambient half of this album is like, one of my favorite things ever.

pop half not bad either.

Happy 40th. The Quietus with an appreciation:

https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/no-longer-lost-david-sylvians-gone-to-earth-at-40/

A worthwhile read -- and about the music.

Aw lovely. What a fascinating record.

My god, it had never crossed my mind that there might be a music video from this album. It's ... what you might expect?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRtuPtmZs_o

Happy Anniversary to this beauty!

at the time I first heard it back in high school I received it as the final word on what adults making art should sound like, the opposite of rock and roll, but also the most refined approach to repose in sound that could exist. I would later find artists who went even further, but sides 3&4 are still the reference soundtrack to the first cold and sunny autumn day of the year

one of my favorite records ever

have never decided whether this is his masterpiece or secrets of the beehive is. I heard beehive first but this thing blew me out of the water when i picked it up a month or two later (and that was the edited 1 CD version)

it had never crossed my mind that there might be a music video from this album.

I was pleasantly surprised a while back to discover that a video was made in 1987 for "Orpheus". Sylvian literally appears in it only as a shadow. This is vmic for him by that point, but must have exasperated his long-suffering record company.

riyl gone to earth->rain tree crow

xp !!

“Red Guitar” video is great, too.

just about the perfect time of year to come back to this one, evokes crunchy orange/brown leaves on the ground and cool afternoons

for me anyway, northern hemisphere

secrets of the beehive is my favourite but it's always going to be sort of tragic that "ride" didn't make the album because he ran out of budget

I made a playlist that inserts it as the third song and also appends both Promise and Forbidden Colours at the end

but the rest of the tracks are from Van Halen’s Diver Down - interesting!

"Camp Fire: Coyote Country" is one of the most beautiful songs recorded. Sylvian's so talented at creating soundscapes.

I love Brilliant Trees but have never checked out this album, will do it soon

found this old promo stuffed into the jacket of my gone to earth lp:
https://i.postimg.cc/rzXt5M2L/20260908-142714.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/v81q7hwW/20260908-142737.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/y6JQhjCc/20260908-142803.jpg

I see the hand of Vaughan Oliver there

My first Sylvian record, I came to it via Fripp (literally, as the vinyl was in the King Crimson section at the record store). A sentimental favorite but also I realize today an affirmation of Sylvian’s gift for taking other people’s signatures—in this case, Fripp’s language and to a lesser extent the Kenny Wheeler ECM sound—and if not “making it his own” exactly, deftly using it to backdrop something that could only be him. Sylvian really did this throughout his career – from the Hassell material on Brilliant Trees/Words With the Shaman all the way to Manfon, where the vocal lines that sit on top could be from any point of his catalogue. And it works very well here.

100%. Certainly a magpie of mood. The music of Hassell, Davis/Evans, Feldman, Drake, all manner of electro-acoustic folk. All deployed in service of Sylvian's otherwise unique disposition.

He was an astute chooser of collaborators, starting with Japan. Pity it seems his interpersonal style didn't lead to lasting partnerships.

There were many that lasted for multiple projects at least? He really did like to move on though. Not really a comfort food guy, eh?

I'm not sure that DS is much different in that regard than other solo performers with extensive careers.

Totally. Solo performers for a reason, I suppose!

New album next Feb:

https://thequietus.com/news/david-sylvian-details-new-album-the-distance-between-the-killer-and-the-killing/

what's with the Gandalf hair

you answered your own question!

his contemporary work is interesting but my search for stuff that sounds like 3/4 of Gone to Earth continues

sides 3/4 that is

Personally I'd prefer stuff that sounds like sides 1/2 of Gone to Earth

Bummed that it's entirely instrumental, but since

the 46 min instrumental is unlike anything tackled by sylvian before and is seen by sylvian himself as the official follow up to his 2009 album 'manafon'

I'm game.

There are also a lot of mentions of "voice" and Sylvian's "voice speaking through the music", so, perhaps some odd vocal stuff going on here?
I mean, lots of his "instrumental" stuff has voices, but, Yoshihide did mention Sylvian's voice in particular. Unless he means voice as in style or whatever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Plenty said about the album in an essay here:
https://www.davidsylvian.com/the_distance_between_the_killer_and_the_killing/essay.html

After reading the essay, it seems like voice really means artistic voice.
Still, very much looking forward to this.

do you FEEL like we do? MANAFON!

didn't I read somewhere that Sylvian can't really sing anymore for one reason or the other?

That Sweet Paulownia Wood track he did for the Sakamoto tribute was a recent vocal? 2022? His voice was different but still great. And that Lucrecia Dalt track (more spoken than sung).

I like when I see something unmistakably suburban London on his IG. Like he’s popped home to see family. (Though the last one was visibly NW rather than Catford-Lewisham). And he never puts dates on things so who knows.

search for stuff that sounds like 3/4 of Gone to Earth

Eno‘s Another Green World would be a start

Some of Bill Nelson's ambient work reminds me of Sylvian's. Try "Chance Encounters In The Garden Of Light".

David Sylvian occupies a rare shelf for me, alongside David Grubbs— improving enormously as they age. I was introduced to Japan very young and always felt it was Diet Music, an approximation of something else (something better)— I get on the bus with Rain Tree Crow. Blemish through Manafon is where I get worshipful.

Gone To Earth sticks out to me as being the record of which there were the most used copies at any given record shop. I avoided it for years, but if you’re looking for “more of the instrumental stuff”… try Eno’s widely maligned “The Drop”, which is better than they say, and shares much of the same DNA as Gone To Earth, kind of like if Sylvian hired Angelo Badalamenti or something

Is Nooten/Brook Sleeps With the Fishes way off base as a RIYL for sides 3/4 of Gone To Earth?

Blemish through Manafon is where I get worshipful.

otm, "worshipful" is the word — Snow Borne Sorrow as well, to an only slightly lesser degree