David Sylvian
Brilliant Trees

Question: who remembers how the first Duran Duran sounded? I think everyone (at least those who are my age or thereabouts). Another question: who remembers how Japan sounded? Already fewer people. Glam pop that eventually evolved into a strange, more sophisticated and chic laboratory. Third question: who knows David Sylvian? Those who know Japan, obviously! Silly questions aside, what I’m about to review is the second solo album of the leader of the aforementioned group after it disbanded. The year is 1984, and Sylvian surprises everyone with a record that was prodigious at its time, a clear break from the Japan formula, using an artistic language, a palette with very different colors from those before.

Are you familiar with certain paintings of Renoir, like the "Grenouillère"? Those snapshots of common life, an instant frozen in time and space, with those splendid plays of light and those sparks of sunshine dancing on the lake’s waves, among the tree fronds and on people's clothes? Imagine such a rarefied air, such a suspended and sunny atmosphere, and transpose it into music: only then will you approach the mental images generated by certain songs contained in "Brilliant Trees".

"Pulling Punches" is sophisticated and cultured pop, moving nimbly among melodic lines halfway between jazzy and certain distant oriental echoes, a recipe that, if you will, recalls Japan. However, with the next track comes the break.

The hazy "The Ink In The Well" is a spectacular sweep of subtle brushstrokes on a canvas that gradually acquires the features of a typical Japanese art painting. The peach trees let fall their petals, which, carried by a gentle breeze, lightly rest on a little pond topped by a small bridge, on whose railing leans a lone man, observing such natural beauty. Everything seems immobile and eternal, a superhuman calm reigns over the whole landscape, perhaps Nirvana.

I mentioned Renoir before: here you have "Nostalgia". The light guitar touches seem to mimic the gentle tremor of the water and the sunlight reflections; the atmosphere, if you will, is even more rarefied and relaxed, time is stretched to the limit, the track almost invites us to stop, to take our time to look around and back. The rhythm continues with these stylistic features to the beautiful, intense finale, which almost tempts one to listen to the track again.

From this description, useful interpretations can also be drawn for "Weathered Wall" and "Backwaters". The first of the two is very nocturnal and intimate, perhaps more static and contemplative than "Nostalgia" but no less beautiful for that. Slightly darker is "Backwaters", thanks to a very strange distorted bass and a voice much deeper and more controlled than usual.

It ends beautifully with the title track, the third beautiful manifesto of Sylvian's new course poetic. The air is that fresh of a summer morning in the open countryside, with fields and woods opening before you and you on a promontory, contemplating it all. By now we are at the peak of the disintegration of the self and its panical fusion with the whole, in an ethereal and powdery calm rarely reached, in my opinion, by other authors.

Sylvian’s music is not for everyone. Due to its sought-after characteristics, vaguely cultured, with a (obviously) new romantic and new age flavor, it does not lend itself to quick listening, but requires all the calm in the world. After a hard day, lie down for a moment, put on the record, and wander into the clearing of brilliant trees drawn by Sylvian's soft brush: you will get lost, but you'll find yourself again, even if just for a moment.