Brilliant Trees

There are a bunch of things that David Sylvian saw before the rock critics did. People like records that sound good—seems obvious, but for capital A Artists, that gets dicey. People also like bass, and in Japan, Sylvian had Mick Karn. Here, on his solo debut from 1984, he has Holder Czukay and Wayne Braithwaite, which would be more than enough for anyone. This album also has Ryuichi Sakmoto and Jon Hassell, who both refine the already bright into clear and the sharp into accurate. Sylvian’s singing has never really had much of a family tree, though there are distant echoes of Scott Walker and Bryan Ferry. He’s on the surprisingly even-tempered end of the melodramatic scale, and might be the secret source of so much Eighties singing, bald in its emotionalism and rich in tactile pleasure. The Sylvian ear is also tuned to the dispersal of elements and, here, there is a sprinkle that should be noted, as atomization runs through his best work. The air in a Sylvian record is seeded with small refractions and hints of other sounds and songs, a wake of evidentiary dust.