Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Achingly beautiful (but with omissions), April 4, 2000
It's so hard for me to write about this album. The songs here are so beautiful, so rapt with emotion in their lyrics and the playing, that describing them adequately with words is a hellish exercise. Sylvian, on "Gone to Earth", seems to reach inside himself to such great depths to draw up the works herein. I have seldom heard such work of such emotional power before or since. And the music itself compliments this, shifting atmospheres seamlessly from jazz to ambient, to avant-garde, to quiet rock, and all around, always perfectly setting and setting off Sylvian's lyrics. The moods evoked here are done to perfection, and the songs here are ones which are true landmarks, one which can and should last the test of time. So why only _four_ stars? Well...I _cannot_ give this edition of this album five. It's not the whole album. There are a number of instrumental, ambient tracks missing here, which were originally present on the vinyl and cassette (and a limited import 2 CD version, I think only released in Japan), and which have been excised here for the sake of fitting 'everything' on CD...which, of course, means that not everything is fitted on the CD. In a work of this scope and breadth, such an omission and compromising of the artist's intent and vision should be considered nigh-criminal! For that reason, I can't and won't give this album its full measure of kudos until this critical flaw is corrected, which one can hope Virgin will someday see fit to do. This deserves to be released en toto!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sylvian's sound coalesces., August 23, 2005
In 1985, David Sylvian entered the studio for what was then his most ambitious project-- a double album, conceived as having one vocal LP and one instrumental LP. A chance, as it were, to continue all of the work he'd done in the past. The resulting album, "Gone to Earth", was a distinct improvement over both his previous instrumental efforts ("Alchemy-- An Index of Possibilites") and vocal efforts ("Brilliant Trees").
Assembling a series of musicians including former Japan drummer Steve Jansen and keyboardist Richard Barbieri, guitarists Robert Fripp and Bill Nelson, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and saxaphonist Mel Collins, sylvian constructed two albums, each of which I'll tackle separately.
One the vocal disc, Sylvian takes the moody sound he worked with on his previous LP and drags it deep into a jazz infused vein-- supported generously by a number of players with a jazz pedigree, he can evoke the mood well. Check the gentle swing of passionate love song "Wave" (with some stunning leads from Robert Fripp), piano ballad "Laughter and Forgetting" (which as a trumpet player I can safely say I'm in awe of Wheeler's solo) or the lurching "River Man". Throughout the disc, Sylvian's voice has developed a depth and range of emotion that allows him to carry pieces like "Before the Bullfight" into a mournful state without ever being pathetic. In the midst of all this, we get at least one stunning Japanesque piece ("Taking the Veil") and one piece composed as a duet between guitarist Robert Fripp's fractured playing and Sylvian's vocal (the title track "Gone to Earth", first forerunner into the direction Sylvian would pursue over a decade later on "Blemish"). In fact, the only weakness for me is "Silver Moon", a somewhat overly bright jazz-pop song that doesn't the record at all.
The instrumental disc is the full realization of where Sylvian had been trying to go with the instrumental compositions he'd been working over the past several years, from the minimalist work on Japan's albums (as early as "The Tenant" on "Obscure Alternatives") to the previous year's "The Stigma of Childhood (Kin)". The best pieces feature a hazy soundscape from Sylvian over which Bill Nelson ("The Healing Place", "Answered Prayers"), "B.J. Cole ("Silver Moon Over Sleeping Steeples") or Robert Fripp ("Camp Fire: Coyote Country", "Upon this Earth") provide a solo, butr as a rule, the material is of stunning beauty, in particular "Camp Fire: Coyote Country", where Fripp plays one of the best solos of his career, bar none.
This reissue is the first time the entire recording has been released on CD, having had several tracks hacked off to squeeze it onto one CD, and features pristine remastered sound that really helps bring out the best of the recording. The material is augmented by three relatively unessential remixes (all things being even, the album tracks stand well enough on their own). All of this is housed in a quite lovely double digipack. All in all, a great package for a great album. Not quite as good as "Secrets of the Beehive", but a great work in it's own right. Highly recommended.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not for everyone..., October 31, 2001
Haunting, romantic, and ultimately self-indulgent, David Sylvian's Gone To Earth is two albums in one. The first is a collection of gossamer adult pop with jazz, world beat, and atonal influences. Sylvian's world-weary voice quavers with emotion, and the tone of the disc's first half suggests Bryan Ferry doing some serious dream-journaling. Standouts are the brief but lulling "Laughter and Forgetting," the ethereal "Before the Bullfight," and "Silver Moon."After that, things get a bit murkier with a set of nondescript instrumentals that seem ill-placed after 25 minutes of Sylvian's urbane vocal mysticism. If you're a fan of Eno's "Music for Airports," this section should appeal to you greatly. Otherwise, it will put you to sleep. If ambience is your thing, however (and, really, why would you be considering buying a David Sylvian CD if it wasn't?), this is a true classic.
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