David Sylvian

Featuring: Holger Czukay, Jon Hassell, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Mark Isham

condition (record/cover): NM / VG+

With original innersleeve.

Released June 1984 on Virgin (V 2290), Brilliant Trees is David Sylvian's first solo album after the dissolution of Japan in late 1982, and a strong solo-debut of the 1980s. Sylvian, who had been writing increasingly art-music-oriented material toward the end of Japan's career (Tin Drum in particular), here pushed completely free of the band's residual new-wave context and produced something that has more in common with the ECM catalog and Jon Hassell's "Fourth World" recordings than with anything on the pop charts.

The personnel is extraordinary. Holger Czukay of Can plays IBM dictaphone and treatments. Jon Hassell plays his processed trumpet across multiple tracks (the Possible Musics aesthetic carried directly forward). Ryuichi Sakamoto plays piano and synthesisers. Kenny Wheeler plays flugelhorn on the title track. Mark Isham plays trumpet. Steve Jansen (Sylvian's brother and former Japan bandmate) plays drums. The album is structured as a kind of slow, layered chamber-pop: "Pulling Punches", "The Ink In The Well", "Nostalgia", "Red Guitar", "Weathered Wall" and the long six-minute title piece, each one a quietly orchestrated meditation on memory, distance and the difficulty of starting over.

The original vintage Virgin UK pressing on V 2290, gatefold sleeve with the close-up portrait of Sylvian on the cover. Brilliant Trees opened a consistently rewarding solo catalog and remains an early reference point for the post-Japan Sylvian project.