David Sylvian & Holger Czukay [1988] Plight and Premonition

Plight & Premonition is the first of two collaborations between David Sylvian and Holger Czukay, Flux and Mutability being their second. It was released in March 1988. The music is ambient, makes use of 'found sounds'. It consists of two instrumental tracks, both of which are over 15 minutes long.

The Japanese edition's booklet features an interesting long note by Sylvian himself about the project:

The basis for the pieces "Plight" and "Premonition" came out of a live recording session which took place in February 1986 at Can Studio, Koln, Germany. Both pieces were improvised by Holger, Karl Lippegaus (a D.J. and journalist living in Koln) and myself, over a period of two nights. We created a sound evironment to work to by setting up guitar loops, tape loops, and drones, made up from, among other things, pre-recorded radio signals. We then improvised at random with wathever came to hand.
Some months later, Holger took to dubbing and editing "Plight". The end result, because of the radical cuts made, gave the piece an unusual quality. I've described it as a filmic quality. As the reediting remains audible, it can have the effect of producing in the visual imagination of the listener constant shifts in perspective and/or location, wherever they appear. This is, of course, accompanied by shifts in emotional response. The idea of this approach to editing music in a 'visual' sense, as one imagines editing of film, although not far from Holger's own way of working in the past, offers up interesting possibilities when applied to forms of music which are visual in nature.

The second piece was completed in February 1987 by Holger and myself. This piece proved to be the more difficult of the two to complete as it allows little room for dubbing and editing, having already a well defined rhythmand dynamic of it's own. We basically mixed it as it stood, with faults in sound, tuning, etc., remaining. Every attempt to rectify these things seemed to chip away at the internal chemistry of the piece.

Track listing

1."Plight (The Spiralling of Winter Ghosts)" – 18:30
2."Premonition (Giant Empty Iron Vessel)" – 16:21

Personnel

David Sylvian – electric guitar, keyboards, piano, vibraphone, harmonium, record producer
Holger Czukay – organ, piano, shortwave radio, treatments, producer

Additional personnel

Yuka Fujii - design, photography (assisted by Icon, London).
Mekon - artwork
Jaki Liebezeit – infra sound
Karl Lippergaus – radio tuning