DEAD BEES ON A CAKE

"Dead Bees On A Cake" 8th full-length studio album by UK experimental pop/rock artist David Sylvian. The album was released through Virgin Records in March 1999. "Dead Bees On A Cake" is the first "real" solo album since the excellent "Secrets of The Beehive (1987)". The three intermediate albums were two collabarative efforts with Holger Czukay (Can) and one with Robert Fripp ( King Crimson). It´s been six years since the release of "The First Day (with Robert Fripp) (1993)" and maybe as a consequence of the long time between releases "Dead Bees On A Cake" is a pretty long album featuring an almost 70 minute long playing time. David Sylvian obviously had a lot he wanted to say after such a long break.

The music is in usual David Sylvian style, which means mostly laid-back semi-jazzy experimental pop/rock with his emotional and distinct vocal as the focus in the music. It´s actually really nice to hear that he has brought back some intimacy to his performance. An intimacy that wasn´t present on "The First Day (with Robert Fripp)". His vocal performance on "Dead Bees On A Cake" is flawless IMO. The instrumentation unfortunately isn´t. Sometimes the instrumentation is a bit too nice and polished. I would really wish that there was a bit more bite in some of the songs. An example of a song which has great instrumentation and doesn´t lack bite is "Pollen Path". A great song that one. An example of the opposite is the almost embarrasing eastern influenced instrumentation in "Krishna Blue". Not nice. Just not nice. It sounds so superficial and forced that I cringe with embarrasment. So the album has both really great features and unfortunately some not so great ones too. 70 minutes is a bit too long for an album like this which also drags my rating down a bit. While there are some experimental sections most songs are vers/chorus structured pop/rock songs which isn´t a problem when the delivery is like is was on "Secrets of The Beehive" but the music on "Dead Bees On A Cake" doesn´t reach the heights of that splendid album.

The production while very professional is a bit too polished.

I realize that my review of "Dead Bees On A Cake" comes off a bit negative but most of the album is actually very good and a 3 star (60%) rating is deserved. I just feel there are too many negative things regarding the album to warrant a higher rating.