David Sylvian – Blemish

The only daughter has digital skips, two different vocals at the same time

Repress up now at sound of vinyl!
https://thesoundofvinyl.com/*/*/Blemish-Vinyl-Reissue/7I0X0000000
get this quick

I grew up listening to Japan and David Sylvian, and they were my gateway to pretty much everything I've liked since. I'd kind of lost track of Sylvian until Blemish came out, finding much of his mid-period stuff a bit too overworked and stilted. Coming across this was a revelation - as though we'd both been on similar journeys through weirdness and ended up back at, well, 'Ghosts'.

It's not an easy listen, but it works like most things of this sort don't. If you listen hard, the songs are there, they're just offered up as bare skeletal structures that are set off in a desolate space. Somehow - bleak and desperately sad though it is - a song like 'The Only Daughter' is as vivid and immediate as the best pop.

I think it's his finest work, and by a considerable distance, but it's not for everyone.

Oh man, in a long time no record stood so still in my mind like this one did and still does. It's just a mesmerizing experience and more you actually listen to it, the more you aprreciate it. The same can be said about the next album - Manafon. I think Blemish and Manafon are the best works I've got to listen to by Mister David Sylvian.

Those albums are just ART without pointing out why it's art - spontaneously captured moment of pure art.

Great experience for listeners who look for something deeper in music than just a catchy tune or two.

This was the first David Sylvian I ever heard, and I noticed it merely because of Fennesz' presence. He has a peculiar voice, deeper and heavier than I usually hear in music such as this, but it goes well with the painterly and sparse music - improv guitar and electronics (or post-processing) - and there isn't much structure to speak of. It's almost a spoken-word album with some background noises, but miles apart from Air's "Baricco" or Hakim Bey's album on Axiom. Fans of Tujiko Noriko or Lithops might take note here.

It wound up being my favorite album of the year, and definitely one of my top 10 of all time. As unusual as the description above might be, I liked it from the first noteword, Fennesz or no.

I am not sure I like everything in this album, but there is undoubtedly some excellent David Sylvian here.

'Blemish' is an incredible ambient experience, the careful listener will recognize some Brian Eno influence here, and some Robert Fripp influence on 'The Only Daughter', which definitely is my favourite track on this album, for it sounds just like a 'Secrets from the Beehive' song.

On my list of reproaches, I'd say the album as a whole is rather monotonous at times. Some ambient effects on tracks 1, 3, 4, 6 resemble each other very much, for the best though !

Just like 'Upon this Earth' on 'Gone to Earth', I understand 'Fore in the Forest' as a brilliant closing track for the album (although it is apparently not the last track on the vinyl edition). Some may also notice the beginning of this track resembles very much the beginning of 'Hotel Manin' by Nobukazu Takemura (on his 'Finale' album).

Not the best Sylvian release, 'Beehive' and 'Earth' stay unequalled masterpieces from first to last track; but still a container for great, powerful ambient tracks in the Sylvian style.