Review Summary: Gone to Earth is an ethereal work of art, impressively sounding both ambitious and organic while traversing a wide spectrum of musical styles.
David Sylvian’s
Gone to Earth feels cinematic and emotionally resonant, being a wondrous record of engrossing musical experiments. Exploring genres like electronic, jazz, ambient, and art rock, Sylvian aimed for a fully realized double album, comprised of four movements. The first seven pieces are various exercises in ambitious art rock, while the rest is made up of ambient experiments. David Sylvian’s versatile, warm singing voice blending with his atmospheric keyboard tones is a constant throughout
Gone to Earth. He croons of love lost, time passing, of other worlds and the mysteries of ours, and what makes each of us human. He is the roots and branches of this album, particularly shining on album epic “Wave;” Sylvian holds together bass tones and a cloaking ambience while flugelhorn, guitars, and tribal drumming swirl together into an epic musical journey. If Sylvian is the roots and branches of
Gone to Earth, then the colorful leaves are an impressive roster of multi-instrumentalists and musical innovators. Seasoned bass player Ian (now Jennifer) Maidman and drummer Steve Jansen provide a bouncy, grooving rhythm in mystical album opener “Taking The Veil.” Robert Fripp’s spider-web lead guitar work soon appears, bringing the song’s elements together. Fripp’s magical contributions carry into the entire album, and co-wrote three of these pieces, like the title track, “Camp Fire: Coyote Country," and “Upon this Earth.” He is not the only guitarist featured here however, with underground art rock musician Bill Nelson also co-writing a few tracks and letting loose some of the most soulful guitar playing of his career, especially on “Before the Bullfight.” Despite the large cast of collaborators and musical diversity,
Gone to Earth feels singular in its vision, and deeply personal. The hazy, beautiful keyboard and guitar centric ambient pieces such as “Camp Fire: Coyote Country” and “Silver Moon Over Sleeping Steeples” on the record’s second half are heavenly and engrossing. The ambient side of
Gone to Earth reveals Sylvian’s understanding of using repetition and lush, experimental textures to fully envelop the listener. Wisely reveling in simplicity, the various layers and artistic contributions makes for a well-rounded, emotionally resonant experience. Listening to
Gone to Earth is like experiencing a waking dream: discovering wondrous truths and being transported to secret places you never knew existed.
