David Sylvian: The Ink In The Well

Saturday is Lost Classics day, and today’s selection is “The Ink in the Well” by David Sylvian. By the time that New Romantic band Duran Duran were taking over the world of pop music in 1984, the original New Romantic band Japan were about to call it quits. It is a shame that Japan never made it in the US, but the breakup of the band had a silver lining in that it allowed founding member David Sylvian to start his solo career. Sylvian’s career has been a musician’s musician excursion into the world of pop, jazz, avant-garde, minimalism, and ambient music, but his solo material in the ‘80s was foundational in the creation of a new sound called sophisti-pop. His fantastic debut album Brilliant Trees was released in 1984 and is a landmark album of the style, along with releases by Bryan Ferry, Sade, and Prefab Sprout. The fusion of jazz and pop music on Brilliant Trees bridges the gap between the late-period New Romantic recordings of Japan and the post-rock foundations about to be laid down by Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis. This is mature pop music. It is gorgeous, dense, and at times breathtaking. There was zero possibility of this music achieving the success of Sylvian’s pop music contemporaries when released in 1984, but fans of David Bowie, Brian Eno, and other forward-thinking British artists of the time would have found themselves blessed to have discovered this album upon its release.

To learn more about David Sylvian, check out his Wikipedia page.

To listen to all of the songs of the day, check out the Radio Faux Show Song of the Day playlist.

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