Quite why Japan never connected on a grander scale is hard to defi ne, but it’s unlikely the 21st Century’s dumbed down culture will be any kinder to former drummer Steve Jansen, whose second album retains their elegance and cerebral approach. For starters, Jansen – like his once colleague David Sylvian – is unafraid of atmospheric instrumentals like the aptly titled Diaphanous One, orSimple Day, which is so frail as to be barely extant. He also favours gorgeously intricate, but irrefutably lugubrious tracks like the half-lit Captured, on which Swedish singer Thomas Feiner serenades us, and the prickly, Eno-esque Her Distance, to which Irish singer songwriter Perry Blake contributes vocals and lyrics. The latter also recalls Rain Tree Crow, Jansen’s 1989 collaboration with his Japan band mates, as does Give Yourself A Name, with Sweet Billy Pilgrim’s Tim Elsenburg keening voice and striking lines like “I shiver like an addict/ Filling veins full of static”. Jansen meanwhile offers luxurious sound design, distinguished by his trademark, curiously timbred percussion, and supplies his muted vocals on the slowly swelling Mending A Secret. Jansen’s still living a ‘quiet life’, and it’s as cultivated as one would hope.
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