#649: The First Record I Listen To In 2026 Is a New Old Record and Out of Alphabetical Order

I didn’t listen to a single
record on the first two days
of 2026, but in the car yesterday,
driving across town to have
breakfast with a dear friend,
I listened to a downloaded
album of Nine Horses,
a studio project put together
by two brothers with
different surnames, David
Sylvian and Steve Jansen,
who, more than forty years ago,
were the singer and the drummer
for an English band called
Japan. Later, yesterday
afternoon, my neighborhood
record store sent word
that an album I had ordered,
Brilliant Trees by David Sylvian,
had arrived. Synchronicity
on the second day of 2026.
Today, the 3rd day of the new year,
I put the record on and write
this poem-like-thing. I will wait until
I reach the J’s in the alphabet
to say much about Japan,
except that they were maybe
the singular biggest thing
in my teenage world in 1981,
and I write about this record
now, the first solo album by Sylvian
post-Japan, because I just acquired
it, and because I may never reach
the letter S, or at least, it might
be a year or better, and I can’t
wait that long. 1984. On this brilliant
debut, David Sylvian jettisons
most every single 80’s production
trapping that plagued Japan:
no drum machines, minimal
synthesizers, little that
blatantly encourages dancing,
only one song really that feels
remotely like it could be a “hit.”
It is experimental, jazzy, perhaps
the first album I ever bought
that flirts with ambience as one
of its central features. It’s a
meditative record, although,
there are moments, the opening
track, “Pulling Punches,” that
groove like nobody’s business.
It is an 80’s album that stands
for me entirely outside of the 80’s,
that sounds every bit as
interesting and relevant today
as it it did then. It’s an album
I’ve purchased three times–
once, in 1984, the CD at some
point in the 90’s, and the record
again, a 2003 remaster and a
2025 reissue, yesterday.
I could not resist the remaster,
the colored vinyl,
the expanded cover art and
design, more photos of David
as a young man, who was, at
the time, I don’t mind saying so,
one of the most beautiful
men I had ever seen.
His voice, a baritone croon
with a pretty solid range and
a vibrato that is never grating,
has always been a kind of
touchstone for me, a voice,
like Bowie’s, that just rings
in the memory banks like
a treasured painting might,
a signature voice that is
immediately recognizable.
That combination of voice
and word, for me, is the
secret sauce behind my love
for this guy. Maybe my first
rock star poet, his lyrics never
failed to intrigue me, inspire
me, even if I was befuddled,
I was and still am drawn into
his world and into my own reveries.
A rock and roll philosopher,
David Sylvian was perhaps
a catalyst for my own budding
creative sense of self, even a
secular spiritual sense of self,
a catalyst
that has continued to inspire
four plus decades after my
very first encounter with his art.

---

Notes on the vinyl edition: Brilliant Trees, Virgin Records, 2025, original recording 1983-84, 2003 remaster, black vinyl with green marble effect.

I have been attempting to listen to every record in my collection from A to Z by artist and to write a poem-like-thing in response to every artist represented. It’s not the only listening I’m doing, obviously, as a music appreciation nut, but I am resisting writing about new acquisitions until their time in the sequence comes up. Today, however, I broke with that protocol. Breaking with protocol might become a theme for the new year. Look out. (: