Released on:
David Sylvian and Robert Fripp – Darshan
Runtime: 10:13
Tastes vary, but there are always a handful of tracks in a group’s catalogue that are routinely held up as highlights. ‘Darshana’ is one The Future Sound of London’s. A ten minute behemoth, layering Fripp’s guitar into a wall of shimmering sound and chopping it into shards of icy emotion, combined with layers of propulsive acoustic percussion and punchy drum machines, finished off with atmospheric arpeggios. After ten incredible minutes, the piece eventually fades out into the same environment that opens ‘Among Myselves’. Brian and Garry’s original pieces are often surprisingly short – with environments removed, the majority of their album tracks run between three and five minutes – in contrast, their Virgin-era remix work always heads into epic territories, and no more so than ‘Darshana’. Something can be said of the quality of the work, in that it’s one of very few remixes to appear on one of the group’s radio transmissions, being broadcast on the final Kiss Transmission, a week before the single’s release.
Remix albums were fairly commonplace in the ’90s, and while contemporaries like Global Communication and The Orb deservedly released their own collections, a FSOL volume was sadly never forthcoming. A collection of their seven Virgin-era epics, possibly tied together with some new environments, would be an album of similar quality to their studio records. Instead, a masterpiece like ‘Darshana’ is one of their lesser known works, albeit boosted somewhat an appearance on the Virgin compilation A Brief History of Ambient Volume 3: The Music of Changes.
Making the remix, the pair struggled to find the right sounds, as Garry told Radio Active in 1994: “With David Sylvian it was in fact difficult to get anything from him that was useful. We pitched him down, we pieced syllables together and still couldn’t get anything. But Fripp’s guitar work was absolutely amazing and we could layer that.” And it wasn’t just ‘Darshan’ itself that provided source material: “And Robert Fripp, we asked for the whole album of sound, because no one track was good enough in terms of its sound source and we just recollaged all the sounds from the album into a new track.” This goes some way to explaining why it’s called ‘Darshana’, rather than just ‘Darshan (The Road to Graceland) (Future Sound of London Remix)’ or such. It also explains the fact that Brian and Garry received a co-writing credit for the track itself, a generally unusual approach for remixing. In more recent years, Cobain has expressed regret and not being able to include Sylvian’s distinctive vocals in the remix, but general fan opinion of the track is so high that he needn’t worry about it: ‘Darshana’ is undoubtedly an incredible piece of music. Have I mentioned it’s one of my all-time favourite tracks?
Tracklists
CD (SYLCD1 | 7243 8 39380 (25) / SYLCD1 | VJCP-20013)
1. Darshan (The Road To Graceland) (Translucent Remix By The Grid)
2. Darshana (Re-constructed by The Future Sound of London)
3. Darshan (The Road to Graceland)
12″ (SYLLP1 | 7243 8 39380 (18))
A.Darshan (The Road To Graceland) (Translucent Remix By The Grid)
B. Darshana (Re-constructed by The Future Sound of London)
Cassette (SYLMC 1 | 7243 8 39380 (49))
A1. Darshan (The Road To Graceland) (Translucent Remix By The Grid)
A2. Darshana (Re-constructed by The Future Sound of London)
A3. Darshan (The Road to Graceland)
B1. Darshan (The Road To Graceland) (Translucent Remix By The Grid)
B2. Darshana (Re-constructed by The Future Sound of London)
B3. Darshan (The Road to Graceland)
CD (DPRO-14125)
1. Darshan (The Road to Graceland) (Edit)
2. Darshana (Re-constructed by The Future Sound of London)
12″ (SPRO-14125)
A. Darshan (The Road to Graceland) (Long Version)
B1. Darshana (Re-constructed by The Future Sound of London)
B2. Darshan (The Road to Graceland) (Short Version)
Credits
Written by Sylvian, Fripp, Cobain, Dougans.
Produced by Sylvian, Bottril.
Re-constructed by The Future Sound of London at Earthbeat Studios.
Engineered by Yage.
Fractional Difference 