David Sylvian
Good Son vs. The Only Daughter

THE REVIEW

Already two years ago, the release of "Blemish" on the newly born (and founded by himself) Samadhi Sound once again divided the large following of this artist, perhaps the last one left on the planet to whom it is impossible to attach any label.
The continuous maturation of David Sylvian as an artist and as a man constantly leaves me astonished. Listening to "Good Son vs. the Only Daughter", I finally realize how blind and deaf the Virgin producers must have been to let him slip away right after the release, in 2002, of the spectacular and ethereal "Camphor", evidently so distant from the concept of "masterpiece" that unfortunately many record executives identify with the first place on the charts.
If in "Blemish" we had reached extreme minimalism, also a result of the meeting between Sylvian and another man who seems to have stepped out of a science fiction film, namely Christian Fennesz, in the latest effort by the British artist, which is nothing more than the previous album's songs remixed by a handful of Japanese DJs close to Ryuichi Sakamoto (and therefore to Sylvian himself), one can see, as clear as an open wound, the disarming ease with which this man seems to have understood everything 15-20 years ahead of the rest of the world.

Suspension, a sense of emptiness, melodies on the edge of listenability, and lyrics that seem constantly more spit out by an oracle than by a human being, all combined with the excellent work done by the DJs from the Land of the Rising Sun (on which I have no doubt there was Sylvian’s own mediating oversight) make this album a work that will sell about 10,000 copies, but will, in various corners of the world, make about 10,000 people bitterly aware of the transience of life, carrying them on that cloud elevated to a hermitage on which for years now David Sylvian, his guru, and a very select circle of geniuses (Sakamoto and Fripp at the forefront) float inexorably, ready occasionally to provide us with acid rains that have the now almost extinct power to make us reflect from the first to the last second of listening.

Best track: How Little We Need to Be Happy (remixed by Tatsuhiko Asano).