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allows for consecutive layers of aural textures to be
introduced easily into the mix. ‘How Little We Need
To Be Happy’ by Tatsuhiko Asano reveals the pop song
well hidden in the caustic original. The remixer hasn’t
needed to rethink the lyrics, but instead has built the
celebratory orchestration around the voice. The result
is a revelation, as if the Blemish version were only a
rough draft waiting for Asano’s input.
Yoshihiro Hanno’s ‘The Good Son’ tops the original
by placing the rank lyricism within a less tense musical
structure, while still leaving much of Bailey’s guitar
work intact. In addition to the intro and outro atmospherics,
Akira Rabelais applies numerous subtle touches on
his rendering of ‘Blemish’. The two variations of ‘The
Only Daughter’, on the other hand, are solid rather than
mesmerizing. In Ryoji Ikeda’s piano-driven piece, the
voice and music seem to flutter at a distance from one
another, whereas the second variant by Jan Bang and
Erik Honoré sets them in the same groove.
The remix of ‘Fire in the Forest’ by Readymade
FC, like Friedman’s ‘Blemish’ and Asano’s ‘How
Little We Need To Be Happy’, brings the lightness
and hopefulness of the song to the foreground. It is
not the case that these qualities are something Sylvian
attempts to deliberately obscure; rather, he reserves
the sudden brightness until the moment its impact
can be greatest. In the image of an immense forest
which suffers the loss of single trees, Sylvian has
hit upon a fittingly spacious metaphor for emotional
unrest:
There’s a fire in the forest
It’s taking down some trees
When things are overwhelming
I let them be
BUY David Sylvian music online from and
A measure of The Only Daughter’s success is that the
album allows the listener to return to the source with
fresh ears. The pulsating electronics and erratic guitar
plucks of Blemish become the crackle and crumple of
burning leaves. In turn, the energetic overabundance of
The Only Daughter sounds like new vegetation pushing
itself overground from the ashen soil. �
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