Izdavač: Ostalo
Žanr: Elektronska muzika, Ostalo, Svetska i Kantri muzika
Poreklo: Strani izvođač

Original, made in UK & US

6 panel digipak

Cd 3- ima povrsinskih linijica koje ne uticu na reprodukciju zvuka, radi besprekorno

Studio album by David Sylvian
Released May 2003
Recorded February–March 2003
Studio Samadhi Sound Studio, New Hampshire
Genre
Ambientexperimentalelectronicavant-garde
Length 43:41
Label Samadhisound
Producer David Sylvian
David Sylvian chronology
Camphor
(2002) Blemish
(2003) The Good Son vs. The Only Daughter (The Blemish Remixes)
(2005)

Blemish is the sixth studio album by British singer-songwriter David Sylvian, released in May 2003 on Sylvian`s Samadhisound label.

Following Sylvian`s acquittal from Virgin Records, he built a home studio, Samadhi Sound Studio, and recorded Blemish in early 2003. The album was inspired by, and documents, the disintegration of Sylvian`s relationship with his wife, Ingrid Chavez, marking a turning point in Sylvian`s lyrics as they became more personal and open and less oblique. Wanting to find a new musical vocabulary for himself, he recorded the album in a relatively quick, six-week duration, improvising the eight songs on the album as he went. It features guest appearances from free improvisation guitarist Derek Bailey, and electronic musician Fennesz.

The album is experimental in its use of electronics and sound and marks a stark departure in Sylvian`s musical career, moving in an ambient direction and featuring fewer occurrences of melody. Sylvian felt the album functioned as cartharsis, and that recording the album helped him work through difficult emotions. Blemish was originally released via the internet only, but when the album caught the attention of distributors, Sylvian set up Samadhi Sound records who released the album commercially in mid-2003. Despite alienating several fans, Blemish was a critical success, with praise given to its dark, personal tone. Sylvian toured in promotion of the album in autumn 2003, while a remix album entitled The Good Son vs. The Only Daughter, containing remixes of each of the songs from Blemish remixed by international producers, was released in February 2005.

Background and inspiration
Blemish follows David Sylvian`s protracted legal wranglings with Virgin Records, which ended when Sylvian was released from his contract.[1] During his later days on the label, Sylvian was seen as `a historical oddity` on their roster as opposed to `a sound business investment,` seeing as he had a developed cult following but had very limited commercial success.[2] Although the musician was compiling compilation albums of his work for Virgin, he found it a creatively stifling process, but despite wishing to `start over again` had no support from the label.[3] He felt the industry would not be supportive of the work he wanted to create, and upon leaving Virgin, become more self-sufficient, building a home studio in his New Hampshire home, Samadhi Sound Studio, over the course of a year.[3] Blemish, recorded without a contract, became the first of several ongoing projects from Sylvian after leaving the label.[1]

Blemish documents the disintegration of Sylvian`s relationship with his wife, American singer Ingrid Chavez.[4] Sylvian used Blemish to channel his emotions `as a kind of creative catharsis,` in the words of Flux magazine, using his unhappiness to `delve deeper into some of the darker corners of his consciousness. Once you are down, you may as well keep drilling and see how far you can go and use the experience to exorcise some hidden demons.`[5] Sylvian said that he had a `sense of trauma` that needed addressing and `wanted out,` adding: `I used the emotions to punch further into the darker recesses of my own mind, to see how far I could go, to see what I would find there and if and how I could give it voice.`[5] Sylvian explained to how the album worked as a style of therapy:

`I didn’t know how to handle the emotional side of things. Once I got into the studio and closed the studio door, I felt a certain sense of safety, of liberty, to deal with the emotions, emotions that were primarily negative and all to do with my relationship with my wife. I wanted to delve far deeper into them than I would in daily life. How far can you go with that sort of feeling and where does it lead you? At the same time, I’m delving into something that one should be wary of delving into, because you don’t know how readily you will be able to re-surface from it at the end of the day. There was a sort of trepidation involved.`[3]

`It was very cathartic. It`s an odd one to talk about, because obviously I was going through a break up of a marriage and that was very painful, but as I got into the studio and shut the door I would allow myself into the darkest recesses of my heart and my mind to uncover what was there. And I would feel that to be quite dangerous in life – it`s not something I would encourage – but in the creative process it seems incredibly liberating to be able to access these more negative darker emotions and acknowledge them. So I worked on the album daily for I think it was six weeks, and each day I was more or less writing a track, and I`d flesh it out over time, and at the end of each day I`d listen back to what I`d done and feel elated by what I heard, which was an odd way to relate to the content of the material because of its nature in essence. But I felt like, Gosh, this doesn`t sound like anything I`ve ever done before, or anything I`d heard before, so it felt very exciting.

So once I`d left that wonderful cocoon in which one could explore these emotions, I entered back into the real world of those emotions, and it was still an extremely difficult time, but as I think it was Robert Lowell said, ugly emotions produce beautiful poetry sometimes, and that`s definitely true of Blemish.`[6]

Track listing
All tracks are written by David Sylvian, except as noted

No. Title Writer(s) Length
1. `Blemish` 13:42
2. `The Good Son` Derek Bailey, Sylvian 5:25
3. `The Only Daughter` 5:28
4. `The Heart Knows Better` 7:51
5. `She Is Not` Derek Bailey, Sylvian 0:45
6. `Late Night Shopping` 2:54
7. `How Little We Need to Be Happy` Derek Bailey, Sylvian 3:22
8. `A Fire in the Forest` Sylvian, Christian Fennesz 4:14
Total length: 43:41

Personnel
David Sylvian – vocals, producer, engineer, mixing
Derek Bailey – guitar
Christian Fennesz – arranger, electronics
Toby Hrycek-Robinson – engineer
Yuka Fujii – art direction, design
Atsushi Fukui – artwork, cover art