Dead Bees on a Cake

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Customer reviews

review by: jonathan date: 2009-06-26 rating:
Brilliant Encore !
The dead bees on a cake album is easily another 5 stars no song is weak and each is excellent another must buy for all music lovers. br / br /Midnight sun is a blues master piece but for me Thalhiem is sublime with superb trumpet each time I listen to this track love it more and more very dreamy.Other great songs are cafe Europa , wanderlust , Darkest Dreaming. br / br /Buy it !

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review by: date: 2009-06-05 rating:
beautiful work ,sylvian at his best.
No fancy words do this album justice,a work of pure genius from sylvian, who at his best is untouchable. A must for sylvian fans

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review by: Nick Erlastyk date: 2007-09-05 rating:
A must have CD.
Beg it, borrow it or buy it. A brilliant collection of songs that should be a part of anyones CD collection.

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review by: date: 2007-03-28 rating:
icing with sweet sour cherries
I'd not heard any of his output since Beehive, and my first impressions are'oh my this is interesting varietal output from Sylvian'..exquisitely produced. After several listens I have started to really notice the delineations between the different tracks and unusually want to review it almost track by track instead of as an overall themed album. br / br /From the seminal intro track of 'I Surrender' with its languid jazz soulful background with intro so smooth u want Luther Vandross to pop up somewhere... to the odd little 'Dobro' actually feel sorry for him when he says 'it rained on my house all summer long') a great expression of despair.. this is talented stuff. 'Midnight Sun' is worthy of Robert Johnson, this is the track made me smile and say ' he's done it again' I'd never thought of Sylvian as a blues singer before but his voice is great here and the metallic clanking, mechanical rythmic backing is worthy of any 'railroad track/ chain gang' blues...you can imagine the hot air, the baked earth.. such an interesting mix I was straight back to New Orleans on this one ! br / br /'Thalhiem' is less striking for his talent, a bit slow rock ballad, backgroundish, didn't do much for me but that's only cos some other tracks are such 'things that make u go...' br / br /'Godman' has simple repeatable/memorable hook lines and is beaty, with japan-esque tones and drums and an amusing 'pink panther' type vibes interlude right out of lounge.. also contains the title phrase..it seems short even at 4mins. br / br /Like other reviewers I do feel this is a 'pic n mix' at times with so many styles and approaches and it's got a lot of mellowed out electric tones with heavy echo and reverb giving some tracks a dream-like quality but thats often common to this artist. However some tracks dont 'engage' and really 'grab you' the way his material often does across an entire CD usually, like 'alphabet angel' for example. br / br /Krishna Blue has lovely tablas and eastern drone/organ sounds..quite a chilled track here...which I like a lot for its atmosphere more than its lyrical creativity. I don't sense the strength of Sylvian's poetic soul as strongly in this track as many others, also the vocals are less strong in the mix than on other songs.It swirls a bit more towards the end into a droning indian type beat like many other CDs I like with this style on. br / br /'The Shining of Things' is slow, string-led and languid, poignant and dreamy. 'Cafe Europe' similarly laid back, electric reverby tones, and again unusually it's a 'name hook line song' like Krishna Blue with a repetitive title phrase, almost like he's making more typical 'album songs' without the depth of feeling that comes from his more personal compositions. br / br /Someone else reviewing mentioned 'contentment' and this album seems indeed less angst and pain derived than many of his more melancholic endeavours from the past. Easy listening it's not. but veers close to chill at times rather than 'disturb' as some of his songs do on other CDs. It's not Donald Fagen but it's also not the shadowy ninja soul of his former outpourings.. br / br /Pollen Path abruptly pulls us back into Japan-land dark and groaning industrial clash sounds and stretched/stressed mechanicals..a Harkonnen track conjuring up another of his distorted world sounds..with what sounds like banjo crossed with koto at times..nice stuff br / br /we jump onward into fully instrumental Indian/Japan futuristic with 'All my Mother's Names' again dark threatening background sounds and film soundtrack ambience that would grace the Blade Runner subways...laced with a tabla beat...you don't want this on your I-Pod walking home alone on a dark night.. it escalates into a jazz fusion style cacophony with almost Hendrix like moments for a few seconds then bleeps and radio frequencies back into tabla supported electronica... online game worlds would love this one. 'Praise' is unusual also with female eastern plaintive vocals in almost poetic chant mode, and no sign of Sylvian's voice' very indian eastern, almost whatyou would expect on Nitin Sawhney. br / br /The dreamy synth mood continues to the final short track with the ethereal 'Darkest Dreaming' almost a 'send you off to sleep' lullaby track at times...sweet.. br / br /Overall it's incredibly polished, relaxing and interesting and well rounded with fine listenable songs and a smooth jazz base at times producing a most professional mix. I like eclectic mish-mashes myself so I can only say I rate it highly overall but it's a different impact CD to previous offerings with much less acoustic and more dreamy synthy 'happy' chill electric content. Would appeal well to people who have never heard him before. Re-invention and variety are great things in an artist - I like the eastern (non japanese) influences showing in this work, I dare say he's still got a lot of surprises left in him yet !


review by: date: 2004-03-06 rating:
Beautifully eclectic, though infuriatingly inconsistent...
As others have mentioned previously, Dead Bees on a Cake was Sylvian’s long-awaited follow up to the near masterpiece Secrets of the Bee Hive, as well as a spiritual and sensual ode to his wife and muse Ingrid Chavez... It is the combination of these disparate factors that accounts for the wavering, dreamlike quality that the songs possess, with Sylvian never sticking to one style... always moving, experimenting and re-examining the music that came before. It can be inconsistent listen to an infuriating degree; though songs like I Surrender, Midnight Sun and Café Europa more than justify the price of admission.pThings kick of in a grand fashion with the nine and a half-minute epic I Surrender, in which Sylvain paints a portrait of inner-city life and love with the sounds of metropolitan jazz. The result is pitched somewhere between early Miles Davis, Tom Waits and even shades of Chris Rea, though with the trademark Sylvian touch of impassive, moody vocals and swirling, nocturnal lyrics elevating it beyond the realms of the MOR top-forty. Dobro #1 and Midnight Sun are both densely atmospheric Americana retreads, with Sylvian not sounding too far from M. Ward on his End of Amnesia LP, as he spins his lyrics over a strangely timeless bed of instrumentation, which could have easily been recorded one-hundred years ago...pOther standout tracks include the mournful Shining of Things, which looks back to the melancholic string arrangements found on Beehive, and the jazz-tinged travelogue (and aforementioned) Café Europa, in which Sylvian’s lyrics are like Dylan’s on Blonde on Blonde; mixing epic narrative rumination with surreal bursts of profound poetry. Pollen Path is a loud and freewheeling blast of post-punk noise, which does seem like something of an anachronism when placed between the more reflective, horn-lead numbers... whilst Wanderlust is one of the greatest examples of dreamy guitar pop to never bother the UK top ten.pThe two final tracks bring the album to a close wonderfully, with the spiritual Islamic (don’t quote me on that) prayer Praise seeing Sylvian team with vocalist Shree Maa to create a beautiful and haunting song which prefigures the untitled tracks on Sigur Ros’s bracket’s album (in terms of divine, heavenly nonsense that is). Meanwhile, final track Darkest Dreaming is a classic Sylvian nighttime exploration of poetry and ambience that is not too far removed from something like Brilliant Trees or Nostalgia. Dead Bees on a Cake is a good album, filled with wonderful moments that are too often is hampered by a few inconsistent duds that brings down the final rating from a five to a four.pIt is hardly surprising to find some off numbers in a record of this size and scope, with Sylvian creating an epic to no doubt make up for lost time... At this length, Sylvian could of easily shaved off four or five tracks and created a nine-piece masterpiece which created a mood that was un-broken by bouts of wildly self-indulgent experimentation. That said, most CD players do come with a skip button, and the tracks name checked previously are classics, in their own right... and at this current price too!! Why not give it a go.

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