David Sylvian
Brilliant Trees

On board an invisible sailboat that pulses beneath the skin with infinite routes. Sylvian enchants from the silent cover, created by Yuka Fujii in a moment of great intimacy and reflection. Sylvian wanted the image to convey the same delicacy and depth as the music, and he succeeded: the shot has become iconic, almost a visual extension of the sound of Brilliant Trees.

On the cover, the artist wanders through a meadow like a metropolitan flâneur in exile, enchanted by the filigree of the invisible.

Brilliant Trees is the first solo album by David Sylvian, released on June 25, 1984; after the disbandment of Japan, Sylvian took time to explore a more intimate and experimental artistic direction.

The album was recorded between Berlin and London, with the collaboration of musicians like Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jon Hassell, Holger Czukay, and Steve Jansen, Sylvian's brother and former drummer of Japan. The entire album is characterized by a constant electric charge that filters through the chords, as if to remind that this beauty cannot truly walk in the right places without wearing black gloves.

Musically, it is a refined fusion of art rock, jazz, ambient, and avant-garde atmospheres. The lyrics reflect Sylvian's interest in philosophy and spirituality, with references to thinkers and artists like Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau, and Pablo Picasso. Each track is like an inner journey, suspended between contemplation and existential search. But also a collage of various bursts of pure art, as when Holger Czukay, former member of Can, brought unconventional instruments and electronic equipment to the studio; in some tracks, like Brilliant Trees, mysterious and indefinable sounds can be heard coming from his sound experiments.

The album opens with a threshold that surprises in the search not only musically but metaphysically: the intro of "Pulling Punches" is the revealing curtain where Sylvian sings as if deciphering the lines on the hand of time, his vocal tone a seismograph of vibrating moods. And what to say about the aquatic stasis of Backwaters, of that slow and harmonious flicker like the sprout of a flower, which seems to be born from a dream interrupted in the waiting room of a brothel for fallen angels.

The recordings take place between Berlin (at Hansa Studios, where Bowie also recorded) and London. Sylvian assembles a team of champions: Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jon Hassell, Holger Czukay, Steve Jansen, Richard Barbieri, Mark Isham, Kenny Wheeler, Danny Thompson. Each brings a different sound world: jazz, electronics, ambient, contemporary music. Sylvian leaves them great freedom, focusing on artistic direction and sound quality.

Producer Steve Nye is fundamental: he builds a crystalline, detailed sound where each instrument has space to breathe. The whole album seems to have been recorded not on magnetic tape but on glass plates, sensitive to the listener's breath and mood.

In 1984, the album surprises everyone: it is sophisticated, deep, out of fashion. Yet it also works commercially, reaching fourth place in the UK charts. It is the beginning of a solo journey that will take Sylvian further from the confines of pop.

It is surprising how the pop perfection of Red Guitar, that jazzy rhythm that commands while giving the impression of accompanying, that cubist and abstract tango embellished by the video directed by Anton Corbijn shot in black and white and inspired by the surrealistic aesthetic of Angus McBean.