david sylvian - there's a light that enters houses with no other house in sight

After a few months of it sitting on the shelf, I gave the most recent David Sylvian album another try.

Firstly there's that preposterous title 'there's a light that enters houses with no other house in sight' - yup, gotta love it all being in lower case, not remotely pretentious or annoying…

Secondly, it's still too long, and it doesn't really go anywhere - it just sort of happens, for an hour. There are little parts that stand out, little flourishes, keyboard swells, samples of orchestral stuff and the final couple of minutes are genuinely impressive. But it had definitely improved since the first (and only) couple of listens late last year. Which is not something you can say about all of Sylvian's recent works - When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima, I'm looking at you! 

It's basically what he was performing in 2013 with Christian Fennesz and Stephan Mathieu as The Kilowatt Hour, and uses the same recordings of American poet Franz Wright dropped in randomly throughout the hour long piece. 

I have a live recording of a Kilowatt Hour performance but I've only played it once or twice - it was just lots of seemingly random noodling from the trio, electronic buzzes, flickering piano and ambient guitar, plus the spooky recordings of Wright. Atmospheric for a while, but over the course of an hour it became rather dull. 

'there's a light…' is more of the same but after a year of Sylvian tweaking it, I think it's rather better than the live performance. Musically, there are snatches of guitar, gentle piano abstractions, strings (presumably sampled) and other orchestral embellishments. At times it's almost tuneful and in places it reminds me of the marvellous Uncommon Deities though without Sylvian's lugubrious vocals.

It does still noodle rather a lot though, and I reckon that if this had been chopped back to around 20 minutes then that would have been quite sufficient.  At over an hour it does rather overstay it's welcome. To make it rather more palatable and manageable I've actually inserted break points and re-burned it. 

However in the course of comparing the live show and the finished work, and splitting there's a light… into more bearable chunks, I've come to the conclusion that's it's not quite as aimless as I first thought. I rather like Franz Wright's narration and recitations. His poetry / prose is interesting, mainly describing in oblique terms his battle with cancer, so it's not exactly cheery stuff.  His voice is appealingly similar in tone to that of Harold Budd, slow and thoughtful, with a warm, creaky quality about it. 

Basically it's all very atmospheric and mysterious, and it does actually hold my attention whilst I'm listening to it, which is at least something positive. But it doesn't make me think that I'd want to listen to it very often, not for pleasure. And isn't that really the point of music? Yes, I'm all for music that challenges and scares and excites and disturbs, but ultimately I want to gain some sense of pleasure from it. I can't believe that Sylvian himself gains much pleasure from creating such resolutely difficult and gloomy music. I wish he'd do something a little lighter, something with just a small sense of enjoyment about it. Most of his work, for some years now, has sounded as if it's been a real chore for him to produce. I guess he wants to make this sort of music, so he must like it, at some level, but please David, cheer up a bit!