Customer Reviews

Secrets of the Beehive

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3 star:		(2)
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Every once in a while, an artist will produce something that is larger than themselves, better than anything he has done or will ever do. That is Secrets of the Beehive. I have a CD collection that goes well past the 700 mark, including everything Sylvian has done, and this one stands alone. I bought this record Halloween of 1987 and I have returned to it faithfully every year since then. It still sounds as fresh and perfect as the day I bought it. It's the quintissential melancholic soundtrack for Fall and Winter; an intensely private and moving record. Songs like Let the Happiness In, Orpheus, and (on the Japanesse re-release) Promise-The Cult of Euridyce, are as beutiful as music can get. The lyrics are both deeply intelligent and heartbreaking, "a grudge held from his childhood days/as if life had loved him less." And did I mention his voice? Sylvian is a crooner; he hasn't a fantastic range. But how he sings, his confiding, rich tenor, and how he turns a phrase, no one, NO ONE CAN TOUCH, Not Sting, Peter Gabriel, or any other of his contemporaries! The influences of Beehive are clear: Nick Drake, Scott Walker, even Samuel Barber. But Beehive is an acheivement that surpasses it's predecessors. It is an album for all time, a masterpiece.

As a longtime King Crimson fan, having seen that he had collaborated with KC's heart and soul, Robert Fripp, always maintained his name in the front of my mind. But my first real exposure to Sylvian's work was when I accidentally ran into the song "The Devil's Own" from this album. I was instantly blown away. The tune had a melody that was like floating in the air, with an ethereal quality that made it hard to describe or replicate, yet intoxicatingly beautiful. Now, my music collection is closer to complete (or at least so it feels), since I got my copy of this album by the former frontman from the band Japan.

Produced and engineered by longtime collaborator Steve Nye (Frank Zappa, Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry and Clannad, among many others) and with a continued extensive participation by Ryuichi Sakamoto, the album walks a thin line dividing Peter Hamill, Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and the soft side of Fripp: it hardly gets any better than this. Not only are the lyrics great, the music is hauntingly beautiful, and Sylvian gets to display his full range of instrument playing abilities, jumping from the keys to the strings between songs, besides singing in a way that makes you realize that the Duncan Sheik's of the world are just a copycat of this brilliant singer/songwriter. Considered by most as Sylvian's best album hands down, and having been transported by every tune on it, I can do nothing less of highly recommending it!

David Sylvian is an artist who actually deserves the title artist. The album "Secrets Of The Beehive" showcases the massive depth of Sylvian's talent for all to listen in amazement. His songs are worlds unto themselves, full of imagery and gorgeous textures that weave effortlessly together, one awe-inspiring image after another. Sylvian's music is as dense and atmospheric as a rain-forest overlooking the ocean. His lyrics take root in your soul and only fully reveal their many meanings with repeated listening. He is a poet's poet, a musician's musician. Find a quiet afternoon, put on Secrets Of The Beehive and as evening turns to night, your mind will have been cleansed, and maybe you will even know yourself a little better.

This may be my favorite record ever. I have listened to this album at least four times a week since it was released 12 years ago, and it has lost none of its appeal through repetition. An exquisite, almost unendurable sense of loss, isolation, and nostalgia pervades every song on this record. The shortness of the songs saves them from becoming self-indulgent and enables Sylvian to sustain a truly remarkable mood throughout. I listen to this record each September 1st to mark the end of summer. Despite the wintry quality of the songs, I have found this record to be most evocative when listened to in the late summer. The heat and haze of early September, the exhausted trees eager to shed their burden of leaves for another year, the delicate quality of daylight in a sun-dappled forest, the gentle sorrow that pervades the land at the end of the growing season: all of these moods and sensations are evoked by this extraordinarily powerful album. This type of music is not to everyone's taste, but I guarantee that this record possesses a dark beauty which will comfort you in those bleak hours of the early morning.

I come back to this album every few months, as I have for ten years now, and every time, I fall in love with it again. I consider myself a serious music collector (about 600 CDs), and appreciating music as a dedicated entertainment (vice background) has always been my #1 hobby. So when I say this is in my top 5 of all albums, that really means something.

Similar to what others have written here, I would buy this album for nothing but "Forbidden Colours" and consider it one of my favorite albums. Add to that "When the Poets Dreamed of Angels", "The Devil's Own", "The Boy with the Gun", and "September", in that order, and it's near perfect.

I have bought two other albums by him, hoping to have one track be remotely like one of these, and never found it (anyone point me to the next closest thing in Sylvian albums?) His voice is just so soothing, and the lyrics so compelling. I will always owe a big one to my brother for choosing this as a gift for me way back when.

I first heard David Sylvian on a cold rainy day in D.C. I was in my favorite used bookstore when the owner put this album on. I stayed through the whole thing just to hear it. That rich, velvety voice warmed my bones and I'd never heard lyrics like that before. I can't remember what happened, but for some reason, I couldn't ask the guy at the counter what I had been listening to. I asked everyone I knew who it could have been. I have a wide range of music knowledge and was at a total loss. And then one day, months later, I was in a friend's car, another cold rainy day, and he said, "Ah, the perfect thing. You'll love this." And it was the album! Everytime I hear it, it brings back that comfy shelter of the bookstore. Sylvian's voice is has a depth that is amazing and the sparse nature of the accompanying music can be chilling or assuring. I've recommended this album to everyone I know.

I love amazon.com reviews because you get to realise that other folks appreciate pure uncommercial gems. This album is definately a secret to be shared. If anyone is considering buying some really atmospheric music with great lyrics and a "feel" which is difficult to categorise (great cos I'm always putting stuff in boxes) then this will give you a lot of listening pleasure. Orpheus is worth the entrance fee alone-I swear the music and lyrics will paint a vivid picture in your mind. Great art for audiophiles everywhere.

This is the Sylvian album to own, no question about it. Secrets of the Beehive sounded, at the time of its release, like Sylvian had broken the chains of his influences (Northern European art-rock, to put it very crudely) and had discovered something deeply resonant. And as such discoveries often reveal, at the core is a simplicity: clean musical lines, uncluttered arrangements, words that are both easy to recall and hard to figure out. Secrets is a beautifully realized autumnal collection of songs that achieve a kind of collective greatness. There are a few albums of its peer: Mary Margaret O'Hara "Miss America," Joni Mitchell's "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" (to which Secrets owes a small debt), Rufus Wainwright's debut, spring to mind in nor particular order, except that they carry the same sense of internal discovery. Discovery one: Sylvian's voice, all Gitanes rasp and conspiratorial purr. Discovery two: the arrangement of the songs, in sharp contrast to almost all his previous work, is hauntingly organic and languidly earthy: piano, trumpet, double bass, percussion, acoustic guitars, woodwinds and strings, coloured by David Torn's swooning treated guitar and the occasional synthesizer. (Ryuichi Sakamoto's finest album??) Discovery three: the songs, often in the third-person, and read like elliptical short stories, all of them concise yet alluring. Discovery four: unforgettable melodies. Orpheus, Boy with the Gun, Waterfront, even the tiny September...beautiful, sometimes aching, sometimes devislish, sometimes elegiac but, truly, every one of them heavenly.

Learning to cope with feelings aroused in me
My hands in the soil, buried inside myself
My love wears forbidden colours
My life believes in you once again
~Forbidden Colours

David Sylvian's voice has the ability to lull you into a state of tranquility. Like waves on a shore of sound, he pulls you into a crystalline world of perfectly placed notes and contemplations. Each song is perfection in itself and yet the mood melts the songs together to form a unified frame of mind to give you a relaxing buzz that often turns haunting and delicate in intimacy.

When Poets Dreamed of Angels keeps with the flow of the mood, but has a more powerful emotive quality. The rhythmic qualities of this one song alone is worth the price of the album. Mother and Child also contains moments of spectacular beauty.

Sunlight falls, my wings open wide
There's a beauty here I cannot deny
And bottles that tumble and crash on the stairs
Are just so many people I knew never cared
Down below on the wreck on the ship
Are a stronghold of pleasures I couldn't regret
But the baggage is swallowed up by the tide
~Orpheus

The lyrics on this album show a depth beyond casual contemplations about life and love. They merge with myth and mystery and are rich in metaphors and magic.

~The Rebecca Review

If my record collection ever goes on fire, I'm reaching in to pull this one out.