JAPAN

Random and bite-sized facts on Japan . Totally random but totally fascinating if you're into the Japan side of life.

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David Sylvian’s *Brilliant Trees* Vinyl LP

Rather than simply bringing in Sakamoto to add keyboards, David Sylvian tailored arrangements around the musicians he invited to record the album. Sakamoto played piano and synthesiser on three tracks, including “Red Guitar”, “Weathered Wall” and “Brilliant Trees”. Their collaboration had already developed through “Bamboo Houses” and “Bamboo Music”, followed by “Forbidden Colours” for *Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence*. Sylvian later said that working on “Forbidden Colours” helped unlock a new flow of songwriting, opening the way for his first solo album.

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David Sylvian built “Brilliant Trees” around Jon Hassell’s trumpet before they had even met

While preparing his 1984 solo album 'Brilliant Trees', David Sylvian arranged the title track at home on a four-track recorder. He laid down an organ part and found a synthesiser sound that reminded him of Jon Hassell’s trumpet. Sylvian then built the song’s closing section around the idea of Hassell playing it, even though he had not yet made contact with the American trumpeter. Hassell eventually joined the sessions, becoming one of the album’s key collaborators.

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JAPAN - TOTP GHOSTS

David Sylvian still from Japan 'Ghosts' TOTP appearance.

TOTP

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THE BEATLES, SYLVIAN AND ANGUS McBEAN

The link between David Sylvian and The Beatles is photographer Angus McBean. McBean took The Beatles' famous "Please Please Me" cover photograph in 1963, then recreated the balcony photograph with the band in 1969. 15 years later, Sylvian partially based his "Red Guitar" video on McBean's 1938 surrealist photograph of actress Flora Robson. The video was directed by Anton Corbijn, who contacted McBean for permission to use the image. McBean ended up appearing in the video himself.

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Japan (the band)
Giorgio Moroder — fresh off an Oscar for the Midnight Express score and his groundbreaking work on Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" — chose Japan's "Life in Tokyo" as his own follow-up project in 1979, recorded at Rusk Sound Studios in Los Angeles. The song flopped twice before finally becoming a hit on its third release in 1982. Its driving arpeggiated bassline came from an accidental studio discovery: engineer added a delay while mixing, and that alone created the sound. 🎹🇯🇵

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Bamboo began as a fanzine for Japan's fans, run by Debi Zornes and Howard Sawyer, but it became much more than a typical fan publication. Its interviews and information followed the band members into their post-Japan careers, covering Mick Karn, Steve Jansen, Richard Barbieri and Rob Dean as well as David Sylvian.

Bamboo was unusually well connected to the musicians it covered. Debi Zornes and Howard Sawyer interviewed people such as guitarist David Rhodes and producer John Punter, while the fanzine also published material supplied or translated from other sources. One surviving 1985 interview with Rhodes even begins with the writers visiting him at his South London home.

The fanzine was still following the Japan story years after the band had split. In its Summer 1989 issue, Bamboo carried one of the earliest hints that the four members of Japan were getting back together. The news appeared almost casually in its regular “Latest News” section rather than being presented as a major announcement.

Bamboo eventually became part of a much wider musical network. Rob Dean recalled that the fanzine's annual gatherings at the 100 Club in London's Oxford Street provided the setting for what became Sinéad O'Connor's first public UK performance. Dean played guitar with her at the event before she had made her public debut.

The importance of Bamboo wasn't limited to the musicians themselves. David Sylvian later recalled that, before the internet, fans could follow the careers of the former Japan members through the fanzine. One reader remembered eagerly searching for each new issue in London's Virgin Megastore and keeping the complete set of A5 editions.

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“Sons of Pioneers” was the only song on Tin Drum to give Mick Karn a co-writing credit. Karn's bassline was actually the starting point for the track, with the rest of Japan building the music around it.

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David Sylvian's “Wave” went through a remarkable transformation before it reached Gone to Earth.

Sylvian said it originally had a completely different melody and lyrics, and began as a jazz-influenced piece.

An earlier version featured John Taylor on piano, Steve Jansen on drums and Ian Maidman on bass.

Then Robert Fripp was brought in. He remembered that the piece was originally called “The Holy Blood of Saints and Sheep”.

By the time it became “Wave”, Sylvian had transformed the song almost completely.

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They didn't set out to make a Chinese album

During an interview around Tin Drum, Richard Barbieri said they were simply interested in different atmospheres and places. Mick Karn added that Chinese influences had been “cropping up” in small ways while they were writing. The Chinese character of the album emerged rather than being the original plan.

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The band actually disliked how perfect Polaroids sounded

Japan themselves criticised the production of Gentlemen Take Polaroids. Sylvian said they felt it was too perfect in its production and layout. Steve Jansen explained that on Tin Drum the sound was deliberately more “obtrusive” — a conscious move away from the washed-out quality of the previous album.

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“Still Life in Mobile Homes” has a recording oddity

Steve Jansen later identified “Still Life in Mobile Homes” as the only Tin Drum drum track recorded piecemeal. That's a lovely obscure detail because the album is often discussed as though its highly controlled sound came from one uniform recording method.

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Mick Karn
Mick Karn's 1982 debut solo album Titles, recorded and released as Japan were splitting up, brought former bandmates Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri back in as session musicians — alongside guitarist David Rhodes. Karn considered the album's finished track order to be exactly the order the songs were actually recorded in. 🎷🎹

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DAVID SYLVIAN — he wrote parts for musicians before he'd even met some of them. For the title track of Brilliant Trees, Sylvian created the entire ending on a four-track machine at home using a synthesizer sound resembling Jon Hassell's trumpet. He then wrote the section specifically for Hassell — before they'd ever worked together.

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DAVID SYLVIAN — Holger Czukay was his deliberate “wild card”. Sylvian didn't know exactly what Czukay would contribute to Brilliant Trees. He invited him partly because working alone could leave him stuck for ideas and he wanted someone to bounce ideas off. Czukay ended up using an IBM Dictaphone to introduce found sounds.

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DAVID SYLVIAN — he liked leaving accidents in the music. While making Brilliant Trees, Holger Czukay ran short-wave radio through the studio while Sylvian was playing. The radio wasn't simply an effect added afterwards: Sylvian and Czukay sometimes responded to what they were hearing as they recorded.

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DAVID SYLVIAN — “Red Guitar” began with chords he couldn't identify. Sylvian said he returned to piano and guitar when writing Brilliant Trees, inventing chords without knowing what they were. He described the process as “working in the dark” — listening and searching for what sounded right.

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PAUL VINCENT LAWFORD: FROM RHYTHM PROGRAMMING TO CONGAS

Paul Vincent Lawford was an original member of Dali's Car alongside Mick Karn and Peter Murphy. On the duo's 1984 album The Waking Hour, Lawford was associated with the album's programmed rhythms rather than a conventional live-drum performance. Mick Karn later recalled that Lawford had originally been intended to play live drums, but nerves affected his performance in the studio.

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HE RETURNED FOR DALI'S CAR'S FINAL RECORDINGS

Lawford returned when Karn and Murphy revived Dali's Car in 2010. On the recordings eventually released as the 2012 EP InGladAloneness, Lawford played congas, while Japan's Steve Jansen played drums. The EP was released after Karn's death in January 2011, making it the final release from the revived project.

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MICK KARN — his first solo album was recorded while Japan was breaking up. Karn recorded Titles in July and August 1982, just as Japan's final period was unfolding. Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri both appeared on it, making the album a curious bridge between Japan and Karn's later solo career.

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MICK KARN — Dreams of Reason Produce Monsters deliberately moved away from his bass. Karn wanted to demonstrate that he was a composer rather than simply “the bass player”, so he deliberately used relatively little bass guitar on the album. He later regretted going quite so far in that direction.

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DAVID SYLVIAN — Brilliant Trees changed how he thought about his own voice. He said that before the album he often began with a strong title or musical concept. With Brilliant Trees, he became more comfortable simply sitting at a piano or synthesizer and allowing pieces to emerge without knowing exactly where they were going.

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**JAPAN — “Ghosts” was built around space as much as sound.** David Sylvian said he deliberately reduced melody lines to their essential notes, split them into fragments and gave those fragments different sounds. The idea was to leave as much space in the music as possible. He said “Talking Drum” and “Cantonese Boy” were the first pieces made this way.

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JAPAN — the strange sound at the beginning of “Ghosts” was programmed by Barbieri. Richard Barbieri said the cascading metallic sound was created electronically and triggered using just a single key. His approach was partly about finding ways to create complex sounds without physically playing very much.

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JAPAN — the voices in “Talking Drum” were basically an accident. David Sylvian fed a cassette of voices into his Prophet synthesizer and set up a gating system. Whenever he played a key, the voices appeared. The results depended partly on chance, producing sounds that couldn't be exactly repeated.

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JAPAN — they used world-music cassettes as part of the electronics. During Tin Drum, Sylvian and Barbieri fed recordings of African chants, traditional Japanese music and classical Chinese music into their synthesizers. The cassettes weren't simply background listening — they became part of the sound-generating process.

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JAPAN — “Talking Drum” helped establish the method for Tin Drum. Sylvian and Steve Jansen experimented with the approach simply to see whether it would work. It worked so well that “Talking Drum” remained one of Sylvian's favourite Japan tracks, and the method became central to the album.

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JAPAN — Sylvian said Tin Drum was largely about arrangement rather than songwriting. Looking back, he said the songs themselves weren't particularly complex; it was the arrangements that transformed them. He described the album's success as being “purely arrangement.”

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JAPAN — the sequencer came first on “Gentlemen Take Polaroids.” Producer John Punter recalled that Richard Barbieri's sequencer was recorded first. The other musicians then played against it, with multiple takes subsequently edited together.

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JAPAN — Rob Dean was barely involved in Gentlemen Take Polaroids. Mick Karn recalled that weeks could pass at the studio without Dean being contacted. When a guitar part was needed, they would discuss calling him — but usually decided against it. He ultimately played on only a handful of tracks.

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JAPAN — “Ghosts” wasn't simply an attempt to sound Japanese. Sylvian said traditional Japanese music influenced him particularly through its use of space. He also cited Stockhausen and other contemporary experimental music as influences on the abstract textures.

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JAPAN — limitations helped shape Tin Drum. During rehearsals, Barbieri and Sylvian sometimes had only one or two keyboards each. Because they couldn't easily record the rehearsals, the arrangements remained unusually sparse rather than becoming overloaded with layers.

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MICK KARN DISCOVERED SCULPTURE BY ACCIDENT

In a July 1982 interview with Fan Library, Mick Karn recalled buying some clay while Japan were touring in Birmingham. He had become fascinated by hands and, after returning home, spent the entire night trying to sculpt one. Unhappy with the result, he squeezed the nearly hardened clay into a small ball and left it overnight. The following morning, he found that the accidental shape looked right to him.

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AN ACCIDENT THAT GAVE HIM CONFIDENCE

Karn said that discovering a shape he liked after crushing the clay gave him the confidence to continue sculpting. He explained that hands fascinated him because of how essential they were to him as a musician. Sculpture became an important creative outlet alongside his work as Japan's distinctive bass player.

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“TALKING DRUM” HELPED POINT THE WAY TO TIN DRUM

David Sylvian later described “Talking Drum” as a turning point in the way he approached arrangements. The track’s interlocking rhythms and layered parts helped him explore a more focused, rhythm-led sound, which became central to Japan’s final studio album, Tin Drum, released in 1981.

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A DIFFERENT WAY OF BUILDING A SONG

In a 1986 interview with Electronics & Music Maker, Sylvian discussed the development of Japan’s later music and the importance of arranging parts so that they worked together as a whole. “Talking Drum” is a useful example of the band moving away from conventional song structures towards a more rhythmic, carefully constructed approach.

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“Weathered Wall” is one of the strangest pieces on David Sylvian’s Brilliant Trees. Sylvian wrote it with trumpet pioneer Jon Hassell, while Steve Jansen, Richard Barbieri, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Holger Czukay all contributed. Czukay even added Dictaphone sounds. It’s less a conventional song than a meeting of six very different musical worlds.

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David Sylvian later said “Weathered Wall” was his first attempt to use drums to anchor a composition. He wanted to prevent the music simply drifting past the listener. That emphatic bass drum and snare were deliberate: Sylvian didn't want the atmosphere to become too comfortable.

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The title “Weathered Wall” hides a reference. The lyrics mention “the wailing wall”, and Sylvian later confirmed that the song alludes to Jerusalem’s Western Wall. So the title isn't simply describing an old wall — it's pointing towards one of the world's most significant.

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There’s a fascinating Japan connection inside “Weathered Wall”: three quarters of Japan’s final line-up play on it — Sylvian, Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri — alongside Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jon Hassell and Holger Czukay. A track recorded after Japan had ended, but with much of its musical DNA still present.

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David Sylvian’s “Red Guitar” hides a little library inside its lyrics. “The devil in the flesh” points to Raymond Radiguet’s Le Diable au Corps, “the iron in my soul” to Jean-Paul Sartre’s Iron in the Soul, and “the difficulty of being” to Jean Cocteau’s La Difficulté d’être. Three books, woven into one song.

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The video for David Sylvian’s “Red Guitar” was inspired by a 1938 surrealist photograph of actress Flora Robson by Angus McBean who is the special guest in the promo video.

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David Sylvian’s “The Ink in the Well” is almost a literary treasure hunt. He name-checks Picasso — “a genius for living” — while the lyrics also draw on Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre. Sylvian later explained that the song was inspired by Picasso’s Guernica, but not literally based on the painting: it was the feeling he got from it that mattered.

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“Backwaters” was one of the pieces David Sylvian added after returning from the original Brilliant Trees sessions in Berlin. He came home with an incomplete album, then wrote “Backwaters”, “The Ink in the Well” and “Nostalgia” to complete it. A record born partly in Berlin, but finished by looking elsewhere.

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“Backwaters” is one of the few tracks on the b side of Brilliant Trees without a famous guest musician sharing the writing credit. Unlike “Weathered Wall” and “Brilliant Trees”, which were co-written with Jon Hassell, “Backwaters” is entirely Sylvian's composition. Yet it sits among some of the album's most international sounds.

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David Sylvian described the early Brilliant Trees sessions as a new way of working for him. At just 25, he found himself directing musicians who were often older and far more established. “Backwaters” was one of the pieces he wrote afterwards, helping turn an incomplete Berlin project into his first solo album.

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There is a revealing line at the centre of “Backwaters”: Sylvian sings of hiding in backwaters, running “this way and that” and trying to please. It fits the album's wider sense of self-examination. In a 1984 interview, Sylvian said he had previously found it difficult to write directly about himself. Brilliant Trees changed that.

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The cover of David Sylvian’s Gone to Earth began with a 17th-century diagram by English philosopher and mystic Robert Fludd. Sylvian showed it to artist Russell Mills and asked him to develop the artwork from it. Mills then researched Fludd, Galileo and early alchemical philosophers before painting the cover — after first listening to the album itself.

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David Sylvian’s “Taking the Veil” single has a curious literary double life. The title came from Max Ernst’s surrealist book A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil. But the cover is Peter Blake’s 1970 illustration from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, showing Alice being swept along by the Red Queen. Two very different artists — one single.

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David Sylvian’s Weatherbox wasn’t simply a box containing four albums. Russell Mills designed the whole object as a work of art, with each of the five CDs given its own visual identity. The discs were associated with different elements: Tree, Stone, Earth, Water and Light.

Russell Mills created Within Without specifically for the insert poster in David Sylvian’s Weatherbox set.

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Weatherbox won Russell Mills a Diamond record-cover award at the 1989 Diamond Awards Festival in Antwerp.

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In 1990, David Sylvian sent Scott Walker a song called “Ride”, thinking it would suit Walker’s voice. Walker liked it and asked to meet. What began as the possibility of recording one song quickly expanded into a discussion about making an entire album together. It never happened — but Sylvian later said he was happy if his involvement helped Walker return to recording.

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David Sylvian had actually played Scott Walker on Japanese radio years before they met. In 1984, while appearing on Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Sound Street, Sylvian chose “Track Seven” from Walker’s Climate of Hunter. He had previously disliked Walker’s voice, but that album completely changed his mind.

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There is a remarkable connection between David Sylvian and Scott Walker: both began with considerable mainstream success, then deliberately moved towards increasingly unconventional music. Sylvian himself recognised the parallel, and in 2009 was described in MOJO as “the latter-day Scott Walker”.

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Sylvian later said that he and Scott Walker shared an unusual attitude towards finished music: once a work was completed, neither had much desire to return to it. Sylvian said that, in this respect, he had “more in common with Scott than maybe apparent”.

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**RICHARD BARBIERI — his first synthesizer made no sound.** He bought a Roland System-700 at 17½, took it home and discovered that it produced nothing. He had to teach himself how the whole machine worked just to make a sound. He later said that was an excellent education in synthesis.

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RICHARD BARBIERI — his first Japan setup included a Wurlitzer and Space Echo. Before Japan became heavily associated with synthesizers, Barbieri's setup included a Wurlitzer electric piano fed through a Roland Space Echo. He used the combination to create atmospheric sounds on the band's early records.

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RICHARD BARBIERI — he could make a System-700 sound like a trumpet. Barbieri said that after years of using the Roland System-700 he became so familiar with it that he could program a gong or chime and, within about 40 seconds, alter it into something resembling a trumpet or brass instrument.

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JAPAN — Barbieri initially had no synthesizer at all. When the band formed, Barbieri had only a few piano lessons behind him. Their manager eventually hired a Minimoog for rehearsals and demos, giving him his first opportunity to discover what synthesizers could do.

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MICK KARN — Jaco Pastorius wasn't an influence on him. Karn said he deliberately avoided listening to Jaco until his record label effectively forced him to in 1995. He found it frustrating that virtually every fretless bassist was automatically compared with Pastorius.

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MICK KARN — he didn't practise in the conventional sense. Karn said he didn't practise unless he needed to remember how he'd played something before a tour. He also said he couldn't read music or play simple scales, despite developing one of the most recognisable bass styles of the post-punk era.

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MICK KARN — he thought of the bass almost like a singer. Karn said he approached bass in much the same way a vocalist approaches a lead vocal. He was particularly interested in the instrument's ability to produce sounds that could be felt physically through its low frequencies.

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JAPAN — Quiet Life was the first album where Barbieri could really layer sounds. He recalled that the first two albums were made under severe time pressure, sometimes with only six hours in the studio for all the overdubs. Quiet Life was the first time they had enough studio time to build layers properly.

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JAPAN — the sequencers became a kind of second drummer. By Quiet Life, Barbieri was using a Roland System-700 with an Oberheim sequencer. He said the sequences effectively became a click track around which Steve Jansen developed his unusually precise drum patterns.

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JAPAN — the strange sound at the start of “Ghosts” was never quite reproducible. Barbieri said he could never recreate one of the moving sounds he programmed for the track. Even when he wrote down the settings, it wouldn't come back exactly the same way.

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JAPAN — the “R2-D2” sound in “Ghosts” was actually Sylvian. Richard Barbieri identified the bizarre electronic sound in the middle of the song as David Sylvian playing the Prophet. Sylvian had become a surprisingly accomplished synthesizer programmer himself by the Tin Drum sessions.

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JAPAN — Steve Jansen wasn't just playing drums on Tin Drum. Barbieri said he programmed percussion sounds on the synthesizers, but because Jansen's timing was so good, it made more sense for Jansen to play those sounds manually while Barbieri adjusted them during the performance.

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DAVID SYLVIAN — Japan nearly split before Quiet Life. Sylvian said that after the first two albums they intended to split up. The band then stopped working for roughly six months to a year before he began writing again, eventually leading them towards the radically different Quiet Life.

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RICHARD BARBIERI — he joined Japan with very little conventional musical training. Barbieri had taken only a few piano lessons, yet became responsible for much of the band's increasingly sophisticated electronic sound. His role evolved from keyboard player into something closer to a sound designer.

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JAPAN — their first gig was at Mick Karn's brother's wedding. The future band had been playing together informally, but their first public performance was at a family wedding reception in 1974. At that point they still hadn't settled on a permanent identity.

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JAPAN — they were sent on tour with Blue Öyster Cult before they had really found themselves. Their record company put the inexperienced young band on the bill as support. Sylvian later recalled being pelted with coins and cans and being largely ignored by the audience.

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JAPAN — their record company initially signed them partly because of their appearance. Sylvian later said the label and management were heavily interested in the band's image and tried to dictate their direction. He regarded the first two albums as caricatures of what Japan would become.

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JAPAN — the turning point happened in an apartment. After returning from Japan in 1979, Sylvian and Richard Barbieri spent time experimenting with electronics and programming synthesizers. Sylvian said they realised they needed to change direction if the band was going to survive.

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JAPAN — Sylvian preferred the Prophet-5 partly because of its imperfections. He later said he still liked the analogue Prophet-5 because of its character, finding newer digital instruments such as the Kurzweil and Fairlight comparatively less organic.

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JAPAN — there was an unwritten rule against solo projects. Sylvian said the members had agreed that nobody would work on solo material while Japan existed. The idea was to keep their creative energy within the band. Mick Karn eventually began work on his solo album during the Tin Drum period.

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JAPAN — Tin Drum was being made as the band was falling apart. By the time the album appeared, Sylvian said the decision to stop had effectively already been made. Yet they were simultaneously entering their most successful period commercially.

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RAIN TREE CROW — they deliberately didn't rehearse. When Sylvian, Karn, Jansen and Barbieri reunited in the studio in 1989, they simply started playing. They left the tapes running for hours and followed whatever developed rather than arriving with finished songs.

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RAIN TREE CROW — Sylvian refused to call it Japan. He said Japan represented a particular period of their lives, whereas Rain Tree Crow came from four people who had changed considerably. The project was also based on improvisation — something he felt Japan had never really done.

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RAIN TREE CROW — the first day produced usable music. Sylvian recalled that they expected the improvisational approach might take time to work, but things began to gel almost immediately. After playing for a few hours, they realised something was happening.

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Japan (the band)
Japan's very first single, released in March 1978, was a cover of "Don't Rain on My Parade" — originally a Barbra Streisand show tune from Funny Girl. A world away from that debut, a Japanese fan club competition later had entrants write original Japanese lyrics inspired by the album — the winning entries were read aloud by David Sylvian on a limited flexi-disc single, with no music at all, purely spoken word. 🎤📀

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David Sylvian and The Blue Nile seem like obvious musical cousins, but Sylvian wasn’t a fan. Asked in 2005 about the Scottish band, he said he had “never kept up” with their work because he found it “too polished for my taste”. He did, however, single out Mark Hollis’s solo album for praise.

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In 1993, while touring Italy with Robert Fripp, David Sylvian asked his Italian manager for CDs by local musicians. Among them were demos by Andrea Chimenti, who was considering giving up music. Sylvian heard them and called to propose a collaboration. They eventually co-wrote and recorded “Ti Ho Aspettato” for Chimenti’s *L’Albero Pazzo* (1996).

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In 1991, David Sylvian travelled to Paris to record Arthur Rimbaud’s poetry for the centenary of the poet’s death. Sylvian later admitted he was nervous about “singing a poem” he had not studied closely. For Hector Zazou’s Sahara Blue, he went further: he co-wrote the music for “Ophélie”, using Rimbaud’s words.

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David Sylvian recorded with French actress Isabelle Adjani as early as 2010, but their collaboration remained unreleased for years. It finally appeared in 2023 on Adjani’s Bande Originale: “Il manque un mot” (“There’s a Word Missing”). Sylvian provides vocals alongside Adjani. The album had taken around 17 years to reach release.

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Isabelle Adjani’s album *Bande Originale* took 17 years to reach release. Some of the vocals had been recorded years earlier — including David Sylvian’s contribution, dating from around 2010. When the project was revived, some of the original arrangements had aged, so new work was done around the existing vocals. The finished album finally appeared in 2023.

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Fin Costello photographed Japan through to their final tours. His images appeared on albums including Quiet Life & Tin Drum, and he photographed their 1982 Far East tour. Costello’s pictures became such a part of Japan’s visual history that David Sylvian later described his archive as documenting the band “from the very start”.

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Fin Costello photographed the actual Tin Drum cover session — the front-cover shot was taken at his studio on 5 August 1981.

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Japan the Band
Fascinating fact: "The Tenant" closes Obscure Alternatives — Japan's first Satie-inspired piano instrumental, and the track that quietly signalled their entire future direction. Critics say it could have fitted comfortably on the second side of Bowie's Low. The band recorded the whole album in just ten days, right as Sylvian began fighting for real creative control for the first time. 🎹🇯🇵

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The Album That Changed Everything
Quiet Life marked Japan's transformation from glam-influenced also-rans to sophisticated art-pop pioneers. Released in 1979, this album introduced the sleek, minimalist aesthetic that would define the New Romantic movement. Sylvian's vocals matured dramatically, Karn's fretless bass became iconic, and the band discovered their signature sound—elegant, melancholic, and utterly distinctive.

Enhanced digipak CD here (shipped from UK)

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Mark Isham
Fascinating fact: Mark Isham's The Grand Parade, from his 1988 album Castalia, features David Torn on guitar and Mick Karn on bass — the same pairing behind Polytown and Bestial Cluster. David Sylvian loved the track enough to open his own live shows with it, first performed live at Minneapolis's Guthrie Theater in March 1988, later opening his London In Praise of Shamans show at Hammersmith Odeon. 🎺🎹

Castalia vinyl @ ebay.co.uk (direct link)

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#raintreecrow
Does anyone know what Sylvian sings exactly at the end of Big Wheels Hit Shanty Town? I think the 2nd line is 'Birth date of time'.

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David Sylvian
"Upon This Earth," the closing track of David Sylvian's Gone to Earth, features the spoken voice of philosopher J.G. Bennett — reading Robert Graves's poem The Foreboding over Fripp's guitar and Sylvian's piano. It complements Joseph Beuys, whose voice appears on the album's opening instrumental, The Healing Place. Two spoken-word icons, bookending one album. 🎹📖

Gone to Earth vinyl @ ebay.co.uk (direct link)

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Andy Warhol
In 1982, David Sylvian met Andy Warhol in New York — filmed for Warhol's own cable TV show, wandering together through The Factory. The footage was edited but never broadcast, and still sits unrestored in the Warhol Museum's archive today, viewable only in person. Andy Warhol was, in Sylvian's own words, top of his list of people to meet — until he actually met him. 🎨🎹

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David Sylvian
David Sylvian was born David Alan Batt in Beckenham, Kent, in 1958. Before signing to Hansa, he and future bandmates, the bass player and the drummer, changed their surnames to Karn, Jansen and Sylvian — names some assumed were inspired by New York Dolls members Johansen and Sylvain, though the band always denied any direct connection. 🎹

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David Sylvian & Ryuichi Sakamoto
Sylvian and Sakamoto first properly met in 1980 — not through music at all, but by interviewing each other for the Japanese magazine Music Life. That same summer, Japan were recording Gentlemen Take Polaroids at Air Studios, London, while Sakamoto worked on his own solo album, B-2 Unit, just streets away. 🎤🎹

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Japan (the band)
Before Hansa Records ever signed Japan, the label ran a talent contest to find new acts. According to music industry legend, The Cure actually won — but reportedly scared Hansa off after recording their demo track, a song based on Camus' The Stranger. Japan signed instead. 🎸

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David Sylvian
Blemish, recorded in just six weeks in 2003, marked a stark turning point for Sylvian — written and improvised as his marriage to Ingrid Chavez was disintegrating. It was his first release after leaving Virgin Records, recorded instead in his own newly built home studio, and featured a rare guest appearance from free-improvisation guitar legend Derek Bailey. 🎹💔

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David Sylvian
Died in the Wool, Sylvian's 2011 reworking of Manafon, includes two tracks that are musical settings of Emily Dickinson poems — I Should Not Dare and A Certain Slant of Light, the latter dedicated to Mick Karn ("for M.K."). The album also features an 18-minute sound installation Sylvian composed for the 2008–09 Canary Islands Biennial, inspired by a genetics research article. 🎹📖

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David Sylvian
Secrets of the Beehive runs unusually short, just 34 and a half minutes, because Sylvian ran out of budget before finishing its intended centrepiece, Ride — which wouldn't surface until the 2000 compilation Everything and Nothing. A re-recorded version of Forbidden Colours was added to the CD release to fill the gap instead. 🎹💰

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Mick Karn
Karn couldn't read music and never learned formal music theory — even faking his way to a place in the London Schools Symphony Orchestra as a teenage bassoonist. After his 1982 solo debut Titles, Pete Townshend declared him "by far the best bassist in the UK" and invited him to join a supergroup celebrating the engagement of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. 🎷👑

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Mick Karn
Born Andonis Michaelides in Nicosia, Cyprus, Karn moved to London aged three. He first played mouth organ at seven and violin at eleven, before switching to bassoon for his school orchestra — years before he ever picked up a bass guitar at all. 🎻🇨🇾

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Richard Barbieri
Mixing his 2026 album Hauntings, Barbieri realised something odd — engineer Steve D'Agostino had, by coincidence, now worked with every single former member of Japan. "I was the last one to complete the set," Barbieri joked. The album's title track "Victorian Wraith" is based on a genuine childhood memory: apparitions he says he used to see in his own bedroom as a boy. 🎹👻

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Japan (the band)
Original guitarist Rob Dean departed Japan in May 1981, as the band's growing focus on synthesisers left his guitar increasingly redundant. He later reflected with striking honesty: "I'd really left before I left... I wasn't that much involved and it was my fault." Dean later became a professional illustrator, and today lives in Costa Rica. 🎸🇨🇷

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Mick Karn
In March 1982, Angie Bowie — David Bowie's former wife, also originally from Cyprus, just like Karn — appeared on The Old Grey Whistle Test reciting her own poetry, with Karn live on bass behind her. Her performance was savaged by the British press; Karn's playing wasn't. The two had actually known each other for years, having first met by chance at a mutual friend's house around 1978. 🎤🎸

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Steve Jansen
Born Stephen Batt, Jansen originally picked up a guitar around age eleven — but being left-handed, he found the instruction books impossible to follow, so he switched to drums instead. That switch shaped an entire band: he co-founded Japan alongside his brother David Sylvian and Mick Karn soon after. 🥁

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Steve Jansen
Rolling Stone praised Jansen for what he chose not to play — calling him "practically vapor" on marimba during Japan's "Ghosts," one of the band's most celebrated tracks. Restraint, not flash, became his defining signature behind the kit. 🎼

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Japan (the band)
Simon Napier-Bell, who also managed Marc Bolan, the Yardbirds, and later Wham!, fed newspapers a completely fabricated story that David Sylvian had been voted "The World's Most Beautiful Man." There was no real contest — it was invented entirely by Napier-Bell and the band's publicist. The stunt worked far better in reputation than in sales. 🎩🎹

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Japan (the band)
Before John Punter came aboard to produce Quiet Life, the band briefly considered a very different track as its title song: "European Son." They dropped it, waited months for Punter to become available rather than settle for someone else, and the abandoned track only surfaced years later on the compilation Assemblage. 🎹⏳

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Japan (the band)
Simon Napier-Bell, who also managed Marc Bolan, the Yardbirds, and later Wham!, fed newspapers a completely fabricated story that David Sylvian had been voted "The World's Most Beautiful Man." There was no real contest — it was invented entirely by Napier-Bell and the band's publicist. The stunt worked far better in reputation than in sales. 🎩🎹

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Japan (the band)
Before John Punter came aboard to produce Quiet Life, the band briefly considered a very different track as its title song: "European Son." They dropped it, waited months for Punter to become available rather than settle for someone else, and the abandoned track only surfaced years later on the compilation Assemblage. 🎹⏳

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David Sylvian & Ryuichi Sakamoto
Sakamoto later revealed he'd never actually seen Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence before agreeing to score it. He wrote the theme on two levels at once: the film's romance, and his own private relationship with himself. In 1984, Sylvian re-recorded the vocal version entirely for the B-side of "Red Guitar," the lead single from his solo debut Brilliant Trees. 🎹🎬

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David Sylvian & Penguin Cafe Orchestra
The link between Sylvian and the Penguin Cafe Orchestra runs through Steve Nye — a founding PCO member who also co-produced Tin Drum and Sylvian's early solo work.

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Andrea Chimenti is a respected and established figure in Italian alternative/new-wave music, but probaly not a household-name singer in Italy. He first became known as the singer of Moda, an important Italian new-wave band active in the 1980s. Italian music publications describe Chimenti as a leading figure of Italian new wave, and Rolling Stone Italia calls him the “elegant and refined face” of Italian new wave. His solo career has been much more cult/alternative than mainstream. L'Albero Pazzo (1996), particularly because of the David Sylvian collaboration, is regarded as one of his important records; his own website calls it one of his most important albums and describes it as having entered the history of Italian cantautorato.

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Japan (the band)
The cover of Japan's farewell album, Oil on Canvas, features "Head of J.Y.M. II" by British painter Frank Auerbach — a portrait of his real-life longtime model, Julia Yardley Mills. Many fans assumed for years it was actually David Sylvian's own face. Sylvian described a genuine epiphany discovering Auerbach's work at a 1982 New York exhibition: "I had a problem looking at visual art up until I saw that painting." 🎨🎹

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DAVID SYLVIAN & MARCO POLO

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In 1996, David Sylvian appeared on an unusually obscure Italian project called Marco Polo, created by saxophonist Nicola Alesini and electronic musician Pier Luigi Andreoni for the Italian label Materiali Sonori.

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The collaboration began several years earlier, when Alesini met Sylvian at the Time Zones festival in Bari in southern Italy. Alesini asked Sylvian if he might be interested in working together and later sent him some of his music.

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Sylvian recorded his contributions from his home studio, Atma Studios, in Minneapolis. The tracks were exchanged between Italy and America rather than the musicians simply gathering in one studio.

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Sylvian ultimately contributed vocals and writing to three tracks: "Come Morning", "The Golden Way" and "Maya".

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The album was not simply an Alesini and Andreoni record with Sylvian added as a guest. It became an extraordinary international collaboration involving Roger Eno, David Torn, Harold Budd and Arturo Stalteri alongside the two Italian musicians.

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Sylvian later described "The Golden Way" as a beautiful piece and said he would have liked to remix it himself and include it on one of his own albums. That happened on Everything and Nothing.

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Marco Polo appeared in March 1996. For Sylvian, it was another example of the increasingly international and experimental work he was undertaking during the long gap between his own major solo albums.

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Alesini and Andreoni were not Italian pop stars. They belonged to the country's much smaller experimental, electronic and avant-garde scene, making Sylvian's involvement particularly unexpected.

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NICOLA ALESINI

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Nicola Alesini was a saxophonist and composer whose work moved between experimental jazz, electronic music and ambient music.

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Before Marco Polo, Alesini had already worked with German electronic pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Italian multi-instrumentalist Fabio Capanni. Their project was initially credited to Roedelius, Capanni and Alesini before adopting the name Aquarello.

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Alesini's meeting with Sylvian at Time Zones in Bari therefore came from within Italy's experimental music network rather than the mainstream pop industry.

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PIER LUIGI ANDREONI

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Pier Luigi Andreoni came from an even more experimental background. A drummer and keyboard player from Piacenza, he studied electronic composition and became deeply involved with computers, electronic sound and multimedia.

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He had already worked with the avant-garde group Doubling Riders and with Belgian experimental musicians Hybryds before the Marco Polo project.

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Andreoni's background in electronic composition was central to the sound of Marco Polo, which combined programmed electronics with saxophone, keyboards, guitars, piano and vocals.

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