Died In The Wool - thoughts on new album

[shoop]

It'd be nice if the thing turned up...reading your comments is making me jealous.

I always order from Samadhi as I assume it will benefit David the most but this is getting silly - pre-ordered on announcement and still not here in the UK. Yet they have managed to supply shops and amazon etc. Ridiculous.

Anyone else still waiting?

Yes. Expected it by last Friday, still gritting my teeth.

[Burnsjed]

Still getting to grips with this, and like some others, while enjoying the orchestration, not sure if I am sold on it over the original, which allows DS's vocals to breathe more.
It has led me to playing the original more though, which I guess is a good thing in itself, especially as I didn't initially bond with this as much as Blemished.
The string intro to Small Metal Goods did remind me to the intro to Bjork's Bachelorette, which now has me listening to Homogenic, which hadn't seen the light of day for a while!
I am enjoying the new offerings on show though, and as always, look forward to what direction DS takes in the future.

[silentwings]

Whilst I'm still awaiting the arrival of the actual CD, I have downloaded the tracks from i-tunes and I must say that there is so much material here to explore that it's a quite wonderful experience. The vocal melodies from Manafon are now familiar, so they provide a frame to those tracks, and the new songs have some great textures and vocal features. It will take more listens before commenting more, but I'm enjoying the contributions of Fujikura, Bang and Honore, and David seems to be in a rich vein of colloboration here, imho.

[qdes]

Still waiting for my copy. Unbelievable.

[inkinthewell]

Still waiting for my copy. Unbelievable.

Better start believing, qdes. Deliveries from Samadhi always take a very, very, veeeeeeeeeeeery long time.
P.S. I'm still waiting too.

[inkinthewell]

They are twins!!!
Just got it, in less than 30 days since it was shipped. Miraculous!!!
I'll have to wait till tomorrow to listen to it, but hooray anyway.

[dconnery1966]

Well guys mine arrived this morning, first thought's liking the new tracks on it, brilliant stuff
as for the mixed stuff or should i say variations liking them a lot, i like the title track Died in the wool,
Small metal Gods i seem to like this version more than the original dont know why though, would i be right in saying
that a certain slant of light is about a minute and a half longer than the original?,anyway Snow white on appalachia
liking this too with guitar or guitars in the background,it was unusual to hear emily dickinson without the saxaphone
on the second half of this, and a lot shorter than the original emmm, this was my favourite track on the original, a bit dissappointed about this suppose cant have everything oh well, how much difference between Anomaly at taw head and Anamoly taw head ( a haunting) i take it a haunting a lot shorter maybe? Manafon to me is a lot more intense than the
original but i like this version as well, the last Days of December, well what can i say
all the best Dougie

[Blemished]

My copy finally made it too...crazy

Have to say that my initial reaction to the main CD is one of mild disappointment.

I don't think the bulk of the Fujikura re-workings work at all - with the exception of the very beautiful The Greatest Living Englishman - they sound almost off-key to me, and certainly don't fit very well with the vocal. I love Manafon and its sound-world and find this makes me want to go running back to the originals. I think the Bang & Honore variations (Emily D & Manafon) are a little nearer the mark, but still not really an improvement.

So far I only really like the Anomaly at Taw Head tracks, I Should Not Dare, The Last Days of December and The Greatest Living Englishman. A Certain Slant of Light should be the best one on there, but I think they've ruined it. The acoustic original is so much more powerful.

[baht habit]

how much difference between Anomaly at taw head and Anamoly taw head ( a haunting) i take it a haunting a lot shorter maybe?

Dougie, give the tracks a closer listen and you'll be able to detect numerous differences between the two. Sylvian constructed "Anomaly At Taw Head" by using leftover fragments from the three recording sessions for Manafon:
The oscillating sounds are produced by table top guitarist Keith Rowe, and were taken from the earliest improvisations in Vienna. The electronic feedback and glitches were provided by Toshimaru Nakamura and Sachiko Matsubara during the Japan sessions. From the session at the London studio are cut and spliced parts by Evan Parker on sax and Marcio Mattos on cello during the introduction, while fragments by pianist John Tilbury are interspersed after the verses have concluded. Sylvian overdubbed his delicate acoustic guitar parts, interacting closely with the contributions from this trio.
Dai Fujikura wrote an arrangement for the string quartet, forming a somewhat harsh musical bed of sharply piercing drones.
After the introduction, Sylvian sings two verses:

not such a brutal man, but we couldn't save him from himself
gunslinger, rifle sights to the eye

cold blooded, only a mother could love him
time to concede defeat, make for the other side

I've quite fond of the interplay which follows between the sax, cello, acoustic guitar and piano.....

Fujikura created the alternate version 'A Haunting' and basically omits the majority of the musical elements heard on the original, save for contributions by Evan Parker and portions of the arrangement he wrote for strings. Only the first verse appears on this track, and then what follows is an intriguing dialogue between Parker's sax and the lovely tones of a bass flute performed by Claire Chase. Eventually, the harsh musical bed consisting of strings deliberately blossoms into a soothing cushion as the focus on the flute is heightened until the conclusion of the piece is reached.

[dconnery1966]

Brilliant Baht Habit i have listened to both pieces now a couple of times, you are right the interplay between
sax, cello, acoustic guitar and piano are very nice on the first track, i just wondered how the second verse was taking
out Baht, i find that a strange one i do not know why mind you, yeah second track with evan parker and claire chase
is as you say it Baht is a very intruiging dialogue between the two of them , that comes to a very heightened conclusion
of the piece is reached by the bass flute performed by claire chase,very nice indeed.
Baht what did you think of emily dickinson, i think they really stripped this right down to the bare bones as we say,i was
quite surprised they took the evan parker sax out of this,then the angelic(choir) type hum which happens repeated 3 times on the original,
to me it sounds like a totally different track, i preferred the original myself what do you think baht
all the best Dougie

[baht habit]

Baht what did you think of emily dickinson, i think they really stripped this right down to the bare bones as we say,i was
quite surprised they took the evan parker sax out of this,then the angelic(choir) type hum which happens repeated 3 times on the original,
to me it sounds like a totally different track, i preferred the original myself what do you think baht
all the best Dougie

To be honest Dougie, I realized that I preferred all the originals right from the get go. So I haven't listened all that much to those re-interpretations since my initial listening to DITW, as I chose to import only the new tracks into my computer and create a CD-R --- with Five Lines thrown in to the mix as well.
I should probably give Bang's version of Emily Dickinson another listen yet I can recall that the addition of more piano was something I felt was positive, but that the last section reminded me of something far too similar to the coda to Wave for some reason.
I tend to feel that the work Bang and Honore creates for Sylvian seems a tad regressive, as they are a bit more inspired by particular sounds of Sylvian's past than other recent collaborators.

[inkinthewell]

After listening for the first time to this new work, I am surprised:
David is continuing the Manafon-esque mono-tone (for some the right word is 'monotonous' ) singing, but nonetheless no song here gave me the impression of stillness, it's all 'on the move';
I Should Not Dare and A Certain Slant Of Light are among the most beautiful songs he has written;
the re-interpretations of Manafon are, of course, different from the originals, but, their aim not being destruction, are quite pleasant and interesting (when I heard the snippet of Small Metal Gods I thought it was terrible, but heard in full I've found the new arrangement quite emotional );
the remaining songs, for me, are not boring, and I reckon that further listenings will make me react like Dougie in one of the preceding posts, happy to discover nice new things;
When We Return, as almost all of David's long instrumentals, will need more time before I begin to 'get' it, but my first reaction was a disappointed: "Oh! Finished already?" which isn't a bad start.

Opinions differ, thankfully so, but it amuses me to read that, for missouriman (and others), Dai Fujikura "really understands David", while, on the Wire Review topic, Javier (and others) shares Mark Fisher's point of view and believes "the addition of strings has detracted from the originals" and that they're "not in keeping with the emotional or lyrical content of the Manafon tracks". As there is a rather evident crescendo in the string arrangement on Small Metal Gods, that really makes the growing disillusionment of the lyrics stand out, and, in Snow White In Appalachia, when it says "As soon as the sun rose", the strings sort of explode, giving the idea of a red rising sun blasting its fiery rays over the tops of hills, i believe that whatever is missing for Javier can't be due to Fujikura allegedly not speaking/understanding english.

[silentwings]

I understand Baht's comment 'To be honest, I realized that I preferred all the originals right from the get go. So I haven't listened all that much to those re-interpretations since my initial listening to DITW'. When I first listened to the 'variations' I realised how much the originals had rooted themselves in my mind. At first it was difficult to get to grips with the new context.

However, the more I listen, the more I love them. 'Small Metal Gods' was always a favourite, but I enjoy this version as much as the original - in a new way. Right now I'm also enjoying 'The Greatest Living Englishman', where the new setting brings out new melody and poignance in the vocal, imho.

David's voice is so special against the organic sound of strings.

[missouriman]

I agree totally with silentwings.

I was cooking up lunch with "Died in the wool" playing and "The Greatest Living Englishman" just floored me today. I was forced to take notice of it. The Manafon version was always skipped over. The DITW version sounds so more personal and elicited a profound response from me. My beef burned a little. I consider anything to distract me from my food an annoyance, but this was welcome. I love it when records reveal themselves slowly.

[baht habit]

David is continuing the Manafon-esque mono-tone (for some the right word is 'monotonous' ) singing, but nonetheless no song here gave me the impression of stillness, it's all 'on the move'

I would predict that you are probably detecting any such movement due precisely to the presence of melody in Sylvian's vocals....I can't quite understand why would anyone still be labeling the vocals as monotone at this point ? In music, monotone is the absence of melody due to rigid usage of a single tone. That obviously isn't the case with Sylvian's vocals on Died In The Wool, nor was it the case with his singing on Manafon...actually, there is equal evidence or even more evidence of melody in Sylvian's vocals occurring on these two releases than there were on blemish and his work with Nine Horses - where he often had to limit his range more than usual due to the density of the musical environment that Friedman and Jansen had created for him.
So if he happened to be constantly singing one unvaried pitch on Manafon and Died In The Wool, then the monotone label would be accurate. But surely you are not tone deaf and you can recognize the difference in notes for the melody lines. Not only are there vocal inflections where Sylvian is free to take liberties when the unstructured musical backing is nonrestrictive, we can also detect when notes are higher than the root note and when notes dip lower.
This is not monotone.