David Sylvian & Holger Czukay – Plight & Premonition Flux & Mutability (CD, LP & Download)

Release date: 22nd June 2018

In the early eighties while working on Sylvian’s debut solo album, ‘Brilliant Trees’, we are happy to announce the release of one of Ambassador’s Hidden Gems. In 1986, David Sylvian – of British Art Pop Band Japan – and Holger Czukay – founding member and bassist in legendary German Cosmic Band Can – were ostensibly reconvening for Sylvian to record a vocal for Czukay’s forthcoming album ‘Rome Remains Rome’. But on arriving at Czukay’s studio – a former cinema in Cologne – Sylvian began playing freeform, improvising on readily available instruments located in the studio itself. No sooner had Sylvian, on any instrument he’d been applying himself, start to structurally define / refine the performance Czukay would stop the recording he’d surreptitiously making. Czukay attempted to capture the process of creation without a musician’s inclination for refinement. This process, drawn out over two nights, gave birth to the duo’s first, full-fledged, collaboration, ‘Plight and Premonition’.

Having been out of print for some time, the parallels between the original release 30 years ago and now are quite strong; At the time of the Cold War was lifting – but still very real – after a bitter winter. The names “Plight & Premonition” and “Flux & Mutability” are just after instability. In Sylvian’s words, the statements seemed to be touched on something: “A form of music has seemed to have been created while we were absent by instruments, to the earth and the woods, sounded by the coarse winter elements.”

The version of ‘Plight and Premonition’ included here is a new mix by Sylvian from 2002. All the recordings have been fully remastered. The packaging has been redesigned by Chris Bigg with Art Direction by Sylvian with new, previously unseen, photographs by Yuka Fujii, an extensive essay by David Toop.