David Sylvian -

Date: 1987
Release: VIRGIN 90677-2
Cover Art: view / download
Buy the Album

In modern recorded music there has always been a section of sheer pop marketed to the masses. Every year we are shown beautiful faces that are soon lost in next years’ tide of the new. While some of the music might be catchy, it’s sadly just a part of a wider culture based on surface sheen. Only a handful of individuals born of this world have been able to break away and redefine themselves as true artists, listening only to their muse instead of the bottom line or the fashion of the times.

In 1982, British tabloids ran headlines featuring David Sylvian as “the most beautiful man in all of Britain.” A scant 5 years later, he would alienate the fans he had gained as the lead singer of the glam/early electronic band Japan. He was to do so by creating a work that was only about music, only about lyrics with such depth, complexity, and texture, that it remains a complete ‘must hear.’

Secrets of the Beehive is an album unlike any before or since. The album features string arrangements and piano by Ryuichi Sakamoto, guitar work by David Torn, and flugelhorn and trumpet played by Mark Isham. Sylvian assembled his band in the same tradition of Miles Davis, allowing his collaborators to color and shape his work without allowing his own voice to be overwhelmed.

The lyrics are nothing less than breathtaking—a combination of dark, brooding, and redemptive, all sung in a whisper, deep and resonant in a quality unlike anything in Western music. The stand out single from the album, Orpheus, may be the most powerful thing to come from the British Isles since Nick Drake’s Northern Sky. With packaging by 4AD hallmark Vaughn Oliver and photography by Nigel Grierson, the whole thing is quite an object d’art as well. It’s the perfect album for an overcast day inside.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.