David Sylvian







Sleepwalkers CD, Compilation, Digipak (UK & US) (2010) + Set of Sylvian Postcards (1 back in stock - July 2018).

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Sleepwalkers
C D  D I G I P A K


All images © Samadhisound/Kristamas Klousch.




UK & US CD Digipack

Price: £50.00 if delivered to a UK address. Buy here. Gallery.


David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak


Label: Samadhisound - sound cd ss020, Samadhisound - 50999 648240 2 4
Format: CD, Compilation, Digipak
Country: UK & US
Released: 27 Sep 2010

Barcode: 5099964824024
Mastering SID Code: IFPI LK97
Mould SID Code: IFPI 9R74
Matrix / Runout: www.takt.eu 2100002609480 6482402


Track Listing
1 –David Sylvian Sleepwalkers 5:16
2 –Nine Horses Money For All 4:08
3 –Steve Jansen Ballad Of A Deadman 5:31
4 –Punkt (2) Angels 4:00
5 –David Sylvian / Ryuichi Sakamoto World Citizen - I Won't Be Disappointed 6:06
6 –David Sylvian Five Lines 3:52
7 –Nine Horses The Day The Earth Stole Heaven 3:17
8 –Steve Jansen Playground Martyrs 2:39
9 –Takagi Masakatsu Featuring David Sylvian Exit / Delete 3:28
10 –Tweaker Featuring David Sylvian Pure Genius 4:02
11 –Nine Horses Wonderful World 5:59
12 –Christian Fennesz Transit 4:52
13 –David Sylvian The World Is Everything 1:43
14 –Arve Henriksen Thermal 2:19
15 –Readymade* Featuring David Sylvian Sugarfuel 4:15
16 –David Sylvian Trauma 5:40

Sources (as per liner notes):
1: David Sylvian, 2007.
2: Taken from the EP 'Money For All' by Nine Horses (2006).
3: Taken from the album 'Slope' by Steve Jansen.
4: Taken from the album 'Crime Scenes' by Punkt (2001). Used courtesy of Punkt.
5: Taken from the album 'Chasm' by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Used courtesy of KAB America / Warner Music Japan
6: David Sylvian, 2010. (New track for this compilation.)
7: Taken from the album 'Snow Borne Sorrow' by Nine Horses (2005).
8: Taken from the album 'Slope' by Steve Jansen (2007).
9: Taken from the album 'Coieda' by Takagi Masakatsu (2004). Used courtesy of WK Tokyo Lab.
10: Taken from the album '2AM Wake Up Call' by Tweaker (2004). Used courtesy of Waxploitation.
11: Taken from the album 'Snow Borne Sorrow' by Nine Horses (2005).
12: Taken from the album 'Venice' by Christian Fennesz (2004). Used courtesy of Touch.
13: David Sylvian, 2007.
14: Taken from the album 'Cartography' by Arve Henriksen (2008). Used courtesy of ECM Records.
15: Taken from the album 'Bold' by Readymade (2001)
16: Bonus track taken from the limited vinyl pressing of 'Blemish'. David Sylvian, 2003.


Like everything else he does, musical iconoclast David Sylvian's idea of a retrospective compilation is very different from the norm. Sleepwalkers is a 16-track, hour-plus collection focused on his many collaborations during the previous decade. Included are alternate takes from his own albums, remixes, reworked material and his contributions to the albums of others.

There is one new cut, pointing to the future: "Five Lines" with Japanese composer Dai Fujikura, is a complex art song with a string quartet. (According to Sylvian, Fujikura is working with him on a completely new, orchestral version of Manafon.)

This new piece is one of the many highlights. Another is "Playground Martyrs," from brother Steve Jansen's album, Slope. While Jansen handles most of the instrumentation and a string arrangement, Sylvian delivers one of the most sonorous vocal performances of his career.

Another track from Slope, "Ballad Of A Deadman," features a duet with Joan Wasser (Joan as Police Woman) on a mutant 12-bar blues.

Thematically, light mixes with dark, and genres criss cross. On "Exit/Delete," from Takagi Masakatsu's Coieda, acoustic guitars, strings and ambient textures create something gauzy and nearly upbeat, while Sylvian delivers a devastating lyric, in equally upmood manner a la Lou Reed's Berlin, about an overdose suicide.

"World Citizen - I Won't Be Disappointed" was co-composed with Ryuichi Sakamoto and was the single from his Chasm release.

The spoken word "Angels," is a collaboration with Jan Bang and Erik Honore from the album Crime Scenes, while "Thermal," another recitation, features Bang, Arve Henricksen and Eivind Aarset.

One of the album's more provocative pieces is "Transit," with Christian Fennesz from the guitarist's Venice release.

There are two selections here from Snow Borne Sorrow, by Nine Horses, the collaborative project between Burnt Friedman, Jansen and Sylvian; both pieces are lovely but "The Day The Earth Stood Still," with its saxophones and multiple vibraphones is gorgeous.

The title track is an outtake from the Manafon sessions that began as an instrumental handed to Sylvian by Martin Brandlmayr of Polwechsel. Its vocals are scathing, bitter, more extreme than almost anything in Sylvian's catalog.

Sleepwalkers is a provocative and compelling listen, full of moods, shapes, colors, spaces, and textures. Sylvian has created (aestehtically at least) something approaching an entirely new offering from various chapters in his recent musical past. ~ Thom Jurek


The thing that stands out for me on this album is the artwork by Kristamas Klousch. I knew little or next to nothing of her work before this release and then again in Hypergraphia where she features on pages 64 and 65 (more on this work on that link). All I know of the artist now is that she is from Canada and lives in the woods creating Lewis Carroll-esque images of women and girls for the 21st century. A kind of Lewis Carroll on acid. Astonishing. Troubled, troubling, beautiful, ethereal and ghostly.

A woman or women beyond.

The music speaks for itself and is highlighted above. You may be one of 2 parties: 1 that's likes Sylvian in which case you will like the release or the other who dislikes his music and won't. And of those inbetween who say 'David who?' then you won't even know what I'm talking about.

So let's talk about the artwork.

I get the SamadhiSound Cds in 1s or 2s these days when I can be bothered to hunt for them. Because they're no longer made they're getting harder to find and it takes a bit of effort. Whilst getting this one I came across the true story of the Isdal woman. She was found dead in the wintry forest of a hillside above the Isdalen valley near Bergen, Norway in 1970 in weird, strange circumstances. A beautiful woman, alone in the wilderness, filled with sleeping pills and burned alive. Was it suicide or was it murder? The dark mysterious one with eight fake passports or so, numerous wigs to disguise who she was, a host of made up names, and yet with any trace of her real identity erased from her personal possessions. Every possible shearing of her name from her corpse. But by who? And why?

The death scene was macabre with the charred remains of objects the woman had brought with her. And in the days that followed they discovered a history of a restless soul, moving up and down Norway, from hotel to hotel, frequently requesting rooms with balconies; coded notes of her's which the police decoded as times and dates she stayed at places. Moving, always moving. Was she a spy? Who was she?

The police never found out. She was buried without a name in Bergen with police officers the only witnesses as she returned to the earth.

Her last moments on earth was looking up at a foreboding grey sky as night closed in on her life. A howling wind sweeping the hillside and down to this part of the gloomy Isdalen valley few came to was her exit / delete. Perhaps the distant crackling of radios as of Plight or the end of this life Answered Prayers are the coherent callings for a life from the other side.

There was one intriging postscript. Years later (in 2002) a hiker reported seeing a woman at Dodsdalen (Norwegian for The Valley of Death) with his friends on 24 November 1970. She was in an elegant black dress and heels - incongrous on a mountain. When he passed her he saw a face contorted with fear for behind her, following or guiding her, were two men dressed in black. Men without faces or obscured by the sunglasses they wore. He had told all this to the police in 1970 but was told to 'forget about her'. If this is true, if it was her, then it is the last reported sighting of the Isdal woman.

For she vanishes into the past and nearly 50 years later remains there without a name.

But new evidence is emerging. Perhaps soon we will know who the Isdal Woman is. Follow the case @ nrk.no/dokumentar.

In my mind's eye I see that woman in that photo by Kristamas Klousch in Hypergraphia (pages 64 and 65). A woman in the wilderness. I see the ghost of what the Isdal woman used to be in every panel of the artwork of Sleepwalkers. I see something outside of this life, not of this earth, in a corridor in-between.

A woman beyond.


Item Gallery

The first 4 photos are of the actual item. Still sealed. The photos below these are of an earlier item, now sold, but illustrate what is actually in the package.

David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak

David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak David Sylvian Sleepwalkers CD Digipak

David Sylvian Set of 4 Postcards


Buy Item & Condition

Condition: used - very good. Still sealed but digipack has one mark on the back. Plus will send a set of exclusive Sylvian postcards (see photo above).

Price: £50.00 UK Sterling (UK delivery included)

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Sleepwalkers CD, Compilation, Digipak (UK & US) (2010) + Set of Sylvian Postcards.

Buy    Details    Gallery

The Isdal woman

Sylvian Rarities Index

Sylvian CD :: Vinyl :: Memorabilia Price Guide ~ Nov. 16

Biography   Releases Gallery

Photo Gallery   Cds

Perspectives    Search Site

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