Nine Horses: ‘Snow Borne Sorrow’

Samadhi Sound (SS006)
CD review: ****½

As well as being the name of David Sylvian’s new project, ‘Nine Horses’ is a poem and collection by the former US poet laureate Billy Collins. The poem is about a piece of art, Nine Horses (after Muybridge) by John Maggioto; nine tiled views of the same ghostly horse head photographed in a variety of exposures; nine different ways of looking at the same thing. The last few lines of that poem are:

“Let your suffering eyes
and your anonymous deaths
be the bridle that keeps us from straying from each other

be the cinch that fastens us to the belly of each day

as it gallops away, hooves sparking into the night.”

I have no idea whether Sylvian intended to reference Billy Collins, but it works for me. There are, for example, nine songs on ‘Snow Borne Sorrow’, which Sylvian made with his brother, drummer Steve Jansen (also formerly of the band Japan) and electronic composer and remixer Burnt Friedman. No, his mother wasn’t so cruel as to christen her son Burnt; he’s really called Bernd, German for Bernard, Friedmann.

A record’s themes are usually subjective and its lyrics impenetrable, so it’s difficult to be dogmatic about meanings personal to the composer’s own experience. Music is magical for many reasons, not least because of the listener’s capacity to interpret lyrics, themes, atmospheres and emotional depth for themselves. One’s own reflected experiences become gradually more important than the composer’s inspiration.

The following is from an unpublished article submitted to a Canadian music paper in 1999:

At the end of 1991, while working on a track from Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ‘Heartbeat’ album [Sylvian] met vocalist Ingrid Chavez (then one of Prince’s Paisley Park artists). Within three months they were married and Sylvian moved from gloomy London to the open skies of Minneapolis, which became a retreat into nature for the lyricist who often used such metaphors to describe his inner conflicts (his collected works is titled ‘Weatherbox’). Since then two daughters have joined his newly settled lifestyle. When they are older they can share their father’s current happiness when listening to his love songs to their mother, Café Europe and Wanderlust on his new, cryptically-titled album, ‘Dead Bees On A Cake’ (Virgin).

His lifestyle is no longer so settled; Sylvian and Chavez (who took the photograph of him at the top of this review) have since separated. He has said of ‘blemish’, the album that preceded ‘Snow Borne Sorrow’, that it can be viewed as a commentary on the deterioration of a couple’s relationship but also as a comment on the state of the world. ‘Snow Borne Sorrow’, he says, looks at 11 September 2001, racism, as well as more “personal issues”.

Far more important to my own listening experience these days than the themes that inspired the composer is the matter of context: where and when do I imagine myself listening to it? The days when life was a never-ending party without consequence or hangovers are over. Now, I demand of music that it be listenable in a number of contrasting circumstances: it must function equally well to “fuel” my writing, through headphones on my PC, as it does in the background while I’m busy with humdrum things such as cooking. It must stand up to close scrutiny on my iPod in airport departure lounges. Why? Because life is too short and my internal hard drive is as full as my iPod, from which I must delete an album each time a new one comes along that demands my attention. ‘Snow Borne Sorrow’ fulfils all of these requirements.

Those of you familiar with Sylvian from his days as the frontman of Japan, or from his groundbreaking third solo album ‘Secrets of the Beehive’, will find his voice instantly recognisable, but may remember it as being of apparently limited range. However, his vocals have become astonishingly dexterous, and on ‘Snow Borne Sorrow’ sound far less stylised than many ‘new generation’ singers.

Wonderful World starts almost with a jolt, as though the introduction has been edited from a jam session. The song’s lounge feel to a certain extent permeates the album, and is accentuated by the double bass underpinning Sylvian’s vocal; part cabaret, part world-weary oracle, part jaded shaman. You sense every tremor, every sibilant. There’s something of Björk in the tentative musings of Stina Nordenstam on segments of this track, but she doesn’t detract from the positive first impressions.

Darkest Birds surprises with its grungy guitars and staticky ambience. These blips and clicks are taken to another level of atmospheric scratchiness on the title track. Birds perhaps references images from 11 September, but it’s hard to be sure. Although less aggressive, the twanging of an acoustic guitar string against the frets is reminiscent of the effect created on The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey from Joni Mitchell’s 1979 release ‘Mingus’. The uncharacteristic chirpiness of the repeated “Right you are”, and the “King of the castle” harmony vocals are annoyingly catchy. A breathy trumpet solo is proof that Sylvian is never afraid to suddenly change the mood — or to leave a silence, as on ‘Secrets of the Beehive’s Orpheus; in fact, not a silence at all, just a very quiet interlude.

The Banality of Evil is my track of 2005. “The perpetrators are in denial” is weighted with all kinds of possible meaning, but unfortunately, I can’t listen to it without seeing Dubya’s monkey face; however, even that is a torture worth bearing. Banality is so close to audio perfection it virtually makes your ears itch to listen to it; so layered, so intricate, so breathy. Marcina Arnold and Eska G. Mtungwazi’s perfect harmonies help to make this the most satisfying piece of songwriting on the album. But there are more surprises: a funky clavinet sound contrasting with the acoustic guitar; and it’s the marriage of all the instruments in the mix that’s so tantalising.

I have no idea what Atom and Cell is all about — an artist who doesn’t live up to your high expectations of her, perhaps? It’s my least favourite on the album, but consider how many composers you can think of who would reference Boltanski in a song. By the last minute of this track, the splashy claps on the rhythm track have become deliberately distorted and the blipping after “Where are the stars?” is like a radio telescope locator, searching for an atmosphere conducive to life.

A History of Holes is a grower, about... perceptual gaps? Growing up? The compromises life forces you to make? The mantra-like guitar figure and the busy percussion are so hypnotic that, like a distillation of life itself, it may be the briefest eight minutes and two seconds you’ve ever experienced:

“When I was a boy
I saw through their lies
I swore I wouldn’t become
The thing I despised
But events over take you
While you set your sights
On bigger game
On greater heights.”

Snow Borne Sorrow is the most atmospheric song, with its aforementioned scratchy noises and digitised blips, apparently at random, combined to create rhythms. Sylvian’s admiration for Can’s Mad Professor (I use the term affectionately) Holger Czukay, who punctuated their ambient collaborations ‘Plight and Premonition’ and ‘Flux and Mutability’ with snatches of short wave radio, white noise and static, may have inspired Sylvian to himself think of sound as an uninterrupted audio patchwork of background radiation; the noise you can choose either to tune into or to ignore. Using radio/TV noises and other interference as a musical instrument is nothing new. David Byrne and Brian Eno did it in 1981 with ‘My Life In The Bush of Ghosts’. But Snow Borne Sorrow take it to a new level of sophistication with Arve Henriksen’s bluesy trumpet and the overall gloomy mood. It’s loaded with darkness, with its talk of “bands of betrothal coming off” and a line worthy of Larry David, “There’s so much to be ungrateful for”. It’s also the song most clearly about Sylvian’s break-up, although it segues into The Day The Earth Stole Heaven, which must come a close second. It’s so hard to deny the pain felt in some of these lyrics that one wonders whether they might have been cited in proceedings.

Serotonin is the album’s most upbeat track, although it seems to reference Sylvian’s past bouts of depression. As someone who himself struggles with black dog moods of varying intensities, I can say that Let The Happiness In from ‘Secrets of the Beehive’ helped me greatly. It became almost synonymous with my downswings and discovering the strength needed to break back out of them. Happiness tried to put the depressed mind in a wider context by contrasting the inner gaps with some sharp observations of nature, and was a calmer view of being totally immersed in the blues. Whereas Serotonin seems to explore the inner struggle that goes on just at that point when you realise depression is taking over. It more accurately renders that to-and-fro with oneself (“Don’t lose it”) than any other artistic work I know.

The Librarian is a strange one. Its long, reflective instrumental introduction, featuring a Hayden Chisholm clarinet solo, sets the scene for a mood that somehow recalls Japan’s Night Porter. Perhaps chronicling a father’s touching moments alone with a child, it’s also spiritual; offering “escape routes” from “one outrageous lie after another”.

And, as ‘Snow Borne Sorrow’ gallops away, hooves sparking into the night, it leaves you in exactly the thoughtful, downbeat place you need to be; wanting to cue up Wonderful World and start it all over again. If you’re unfamiliar with Sylvian but enjoy Jeff Buckley’s life work, you’ll probably enjoy this record. It’s a more mature expression of life experience than David Gray’s recent ‘Life In Slow Motion’, which itself contains some dark moments, such as Nos Da, Cariad. In fact Gray’s album is the only other I’ve heard this year with anything like this degree of emotional intensity.

As you’d expect from its title, ‘Snow Borne Sorrow’ is poignant, and yet it isn’t depressing. It’s also a captivating and hypnotic record that bears repeated listenings. Once it has its hooks in you I warrant it’ll become part of your consciousness. It’s become unfashionable to talk about ‘production values’ (a good enough reason to mention them here), but ‘Snow Borne Sorrow’ is a beautiful-sounding record. It has a tactile quality, as though each instrument can be individually held onto in three dimensions by the listener. It so resounds with reeds, brass and breathiness that listening to it breathes life into you. And you can’t ask more of a record than that.

Lyrics by David Sylvian published by opium (arts) ltd/freibank