"Plight & Premonition, Flux & Mutability", both titles are predicated on instability. Meanings are equally mutable, perhaps the beginning of a spiritual journey, a climate of uncertainty, the experience of improvisation, a door opening (that may quickly close again). That first nocturnal session in the Can studio began unconsciously, or at least without initial awareness that music was being made, Sylvian enjoying the opportunity to play a pump organ, then growing aware of a slippage in the room as Czukay played orchestral samples through the fold back system: “I fell into a trance.” Ethereal sounds looped through the space. He moved to the piano, searching for something concrete. After ten or fifteen minutes he found it, only to hear Czukay tell him to move on: “He’d only wanted the process, the uncertainty, the ambiguity of the searching out of ideas.” The night wore on; as soon as fixity or some compositional motif crept in, so the machines would be taken out of record, as if establishing an equilibrium between the transience of making and the indelibility of recording. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Two superbly esoteric electronic recordings from the very late eighties get their first ever vinyl reissue thanks to those fine folks at Gronland. The work of musical auteurs David Sylvian and Holger Czukay, these four pieces offer a purity of sound, progressive approach to audio and immersive arrangement. Far out!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Plight (The Spiralling Of Winter Ghosts)
B1. Premonition (Giant Empty Iron Vessel)
C1. Flux (A Big, Bright, Colourful World)
D1. Mutability (A New Beginning Is In The Offing)