While vacationing in Greece, American tourist Beckett (John David Washington) becomes the target of a manhunt after a devastating accident.
I can't see the same principle at work with Japan.“End” from Beckett (Music from the Netflix Film) Maybe some of it works better than others, maybe it doesn't. I see what I have done since Japan as a body of work built upon the same basic foundation, I can see the motivating principle behind it. 'It was quite nice because it somehow satisfied the expectation of the audience that I should play something from my song- book. 'It was the first time I've touched it since 1983,' he said. He felt moved to play an acoustic version of 'Ghosts', Japan's biggest hit. 'It was all over after 45 minutes one night.'Īnother evening Sylvian found himself confronted with his past. 'It can lead to a very brief performance,' Sylvian said. On the few dates they undertook in Japan and Italy recently, they had no idea when they walked out into the lights what might happen, even what time they would finish their night's labour. The pair's concerts are, like Sylvian's work in the studio, largely improvised. Fripp has encouraged Sylvian to return to the stage, a place he admits he does not find comfortable ('I don't like being the centre of attention'). Sylvian first thought of collaborating in 1986, but, characteristically, it took him a while to manage it. Several of the tracks are electronic in the mode of Japan, but others are as surprisingly uncluttered as Sylvian's physical appearance these days: acoustic, melodic, as if the new romantic had transmogrified into an old folkie. Sylvian plays guitar and keyboards, Fripp much the same. His latest work is The First Day, an album with Robert Fripp, once of King Crimson. Until a piece starts to reflect that same kind of imagery, I know it's not complete.' When I start a piece of work it tends to be drawn from some kind of visual landscape.
I try to leave things as open as possible before going into the studio, which becomes expensive, but that for me is the enjoyment of the recording process. 'I like to explore a lot of textural, arrangement aspects in the studio. In 10 years he has managed a couple of solo albums, some collaborations with the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and a brief reformation of Japan (whom he renamed Rain Tree Crow, anxious not to look back into an unhappy past). His artistic output, too, is decidedly unfrenetic. His music is equally contemplative, melodic, slow: the sort of thing unlikely to fill a dance floor even at an office party of Transcendental Meditation experts. In conversation he does not move much, sitting calm and still, his words measured, considered. Indeed, compared to the nervous, distant figure he cut with Japan, these days Sylvian appears decidedly laid- back. But I like to think I'm more relaxed about it than that.' What I am describing here sounds like a control freak. I need to know everything about anything which has my name on it: a press release, advertisement, anything. Thus the music became kind of caricatured. The music became a way of fighting back against the pressures brought to bear on me. 'And I realised I wasn't in control of anything during Japan. So you can take it that it wasn't the latest Japanese computer arcade games that attracted him. And that an artist must be more and more receptive, and allow images to pass through him.' 'Are you taking something on board, or are you revealing something that's already there? I learnt that art has to connect us with part of ourselves that is suppressed in the more survivalist aspects of life. 'It's very difficult to single out precisely what influence the Orient has had on me,' he said. He had been 'desperate' to escape Beckenham, had done so with Japan, and now needed a further escape hatch. I was floundering under the weight of things, I abused people that I cared for. 'It was a very traumatic period in my life, which lasted four or five years: spiritual and mental crisis. After that period, I re-evaluated everything my life, my values,' he said, as if auditioning for an episode of thirtysomething. 'During the lifetime of Japan I became very neurotic, very paranoid. In fact, for some time after the fall of Japan, he did not turn out like David Sylvian either. Thus Sylvian did not turn out like Simon Le Bon.