David Sylvian
Album: A Victim Of Stars
Label: Virgin
Tracks: 31
Website: http://www.davidsylvian.com

It's 30 years since fate (and some inspired marketing) blew Japan's creative high point, Ghosts, into the top five. Ah, those were the days, when the charts could serve up genuine surprises, twists, turns and downright oddities. Wouldn't happen today of course, The Man just couldn't allow it.

No matter, what does he know anyway. This 30-year retrospective of Sylvian's various musings opens with Ghosts and takes that as its commercial high point, with only Forbidden Colour (with Ryuichi Sakamoto) and the landmark Red Guitar running it anywhere near close.

His trick was always to include something the radio would like on albums that grew increasingly distant from the mainstream, thereby attracting new ears to his bold ideas or musical progression. Orpheus suggested a promising consensus, but the laughably tongue in cheek meanderings of Pop Song seem anathema to the chromium commerciality of I Surrender, before he drifted off to explore new moods of expression.

Opting for a chronology over any other programming system means the set closes with a new song, Where's Your Gravity?, a suitably aloof composition that could have come from almost any of the 30 years represented here.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk