''Dead Bees on a Cake'' is the fifth studio album by British singer-songwriter

David Sylvian David Sylvian (born David Alan Batt; 23 February 1958) is an English musician, singer and songwriter who came to prominence in the late 1970s as frontman and principal songwriter of the band Japan (band), Japan. During his time in Japan, Sylvia ...

, released in March 1999 on

Virgin Records Virgin Records is a British record label owned by Universal Music Group. They were originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman (musician), ...

. It was his first solo album in 12 years since '' Secrets of the Beehive.'' The album peaked at no. 31 in the

UK Albums Chart The Official Albums Chart is the United Kingdom's industry-recognised national record chart for album, albums. Entries are ranked by sales and audio streaming. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the O ...

at release and contained his last UK Top 40 single to date in "I Surrender" (no. 40). In 2018, the album was released on double vinyl for the first time for

Record Store Day Record Store Day is a semi-annual event established in 2008 to "celebrate the culture of the independently owned record store". Held on one Saturday (typically the third) every April and every Black Friday in November, the day brings together f ...

. This pressing included four songs originally intended for the album (and previously released as part of ''

Everything and Nothing ''Everything and Nothing'' is a compilation album by David Sylvian. Released in October 2000, the album contains previously released and unreleased, re-recorded, and alternate versions of tracks from Sylvian's twenty years with Virgin Records. ...

''), and a restructured track order.

Background

Sylvian started out working with

Ryuichi Sakamoto was a Music of Japan, Japanese musician, composer, keyboardist, record producer, singer and actor. He pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the Synthesizer, synth-based band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

and they did three weeks work together. Initially Sakamoto was co-producing the project with Sylvian, and after three weeks work they had about three days work down and it was obvious things weren't working as well as they usually were between the two; thus, they decided to retire the project. Some of the recording sessions ended up on the album, including Sakamoto's piano playing along with string and horn arrangements, but Sylvian was dissatisfied with the overall results. They did a few other sessions in New York and Sylvian then set up a second set of sessions in the

Real World Studios Real World Studios is a residential recording studio complex founded by Peter Gabriel and situated in the old Box Mill building in the village of Box, Wiltshire, England, near to the city of Bath. It is closely associated with the Real World R ...

in England with a different group of musicians, but Sylvian was again not pleased with the recording session. Sylvian had never experienced such unrewarding recording sessions and he didn't think the material was that difficult, so it was baffling. Sylvian returned to

Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

where he was then living and just basically started sampling the material that he had and reconstructing the arrangements to try and put together a basis from which to get working on the album. Three months and there was very little to show for it. That was the beginning, until he found himself just taking on roles that he hadn't really initially foreseen himself taking on: being the sole producer, taking care of engineering, becoming the maintenance guy, his own studio, anything that just gets down to the basic work of being creative and recording. He reconstructed the pieces through using various samples from a multitude of performances. The challenge really was to keep the whole thing feeling very organic, like there was a group of people playing together, that sonically it sounded very much a part of a whole, which was quite a challenge actually. Probably a greater challenge than actually putting the arrangements together. Sylvian said about the album 2012:

Track listing

;CD pressing ;2018 vinyl pressing

Personnel

* David Sylvian – vocals, guitars (all tracks except 2, 6, 8), keyboards (exc. 8, 13), bass (5), drum programming (4, 5, 7, 9), samples (1, 3, 10, 14), string arrangements (1, 8) *

–

Fender Rhodes The Rhodes piano (also known as the Fender Rhodes piano) is an electric piano invented by Harold Rhodes, which became popular in the 1970s. Like a conventional piano, the Rhodes generates sound with keys and hammers, but instead of strings, t ...

(1, 6, 11), orchestrations and string arrangements (1, 8), brass arrangements (3), sampled guitar and

bansuri A bansuri is an ancient side-blown bamboo flute originating from the Indian Subcontinent. It is an aerophone produced from bamboo and metal-like material, used in many Indian and Nepali Lok songs. A ''bansuri'' is traditionally made from a ...

(7), insects (10) *

Tommy Barbarella Tommy Barbarella (born Thomas Elm) is an American keyboardist. He was a member of The New Power Generation, Prince (musician), Prince's recording and stage band, from 1991 to 1996. Career Barbarella also played on Miley Cyrus's album ''Breakou ...

– Fender Rhodes (4, 12) *

Marc Ribot Marc Ribot (; born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer. His work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, Rock music, rock, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notab ...

– electric guitar (1, 3, 11), acoustic guitar (5, 10), slide guitar (10) *

Bill Frisell William Richard Frisell (born March 18, 1951) is an American jazz guitarist. He first came to prominence at ECM Records in the 1980s, as both a session player and a leader. He went on to work in a variety of contexts, notably as a participant ...

–

dobro Dobro () is an American brand of resonator guitars owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar. The Dobro was originally a gui ...

(2, 7), acoustic guitar (7) *

Kenny Wheeler Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler, Order of Canada, OC (14 January 1930 – 18 September 2014) was a Canadian composer and trumpet and flugelhorn player, based in the U.K. from the 1950s onwards. Most of his performances were rooted in jazz, but he w ...

–

flugelhorn The flugelhorn (), also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn, or flügelhorn, is a brass instrument that resembles the trumpet and cornet, but has a wider, more conical bore. Like trumpets and cornets, most flugelhorns are pitched in B♭, though ...

(1, 4) * Lawrence Feldman –

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

(1) *

Deepak Ram Deepak Ram (born 11 May 1960) is a South African-born flautist, composer, keyboard player and producer of Indian origin. Deepak is considered a master of bansuri, an Indian flute of ancient origin made from bamboo. He is a senior disciple of wor ...

– bansuri (7) *

John Giblin John Giblin (26 February 1952 – 14 May 2023) was a Scottish musician who worked as an acoustic and electric bass player spanning jazz, classical, rock, folk, and avant-garde music. He was a member of Simple Minds from 1985 to 1988, and w ...

– bass (4, 12) *

Chris Minh Doky Chris Minh Doky (born 7 February 1969) is a Vietnamese- Danish jazz bassist. He is the younger brother of jazz pianist Niels Lan Doky. He released his first album, ''Appreciation'', in 1989 four years after picking up the instrument. As a side ...

– double bass (11) *

Steve Jansen Steve Jansen (born Stephen Ian Batt, born 1 December 1959) is an English musician, composer and record producer. Biography Jansen was a founding member of the band Japan (band), Japan, along with his brother David Sylvian (vocals, guitars and ...

– percussion (1, 7, 9), loops (4, 5), cymbals (4) *

Ged Lynch Ged Lynch (born 19 July 1968, Blackburn, England) is an English percussionist and composer. Lynch had early commercial success drumming with the Ruthless Rap Assassins. In 1989 he joined The Icicle Works. He joined Shaun Ryder and Bez in Bl ...

– original drum track (4), drums (10, 12) * Skoota Warner – original drum track (5), drums (11) *

Talvin Singh Talvin Singh OBE (born 1970) is a British musician, producer, and composer. A tabla player, he is known for creating an innovative fusion of Indian classical music with drum and bass. Singh is generally considered involved with an electronica ...

–

tabla A ''tabla'' is a pair of hand drums from the Indian subcontinent. Since the 18th century, it has been the principal percussion instrument in Hindustani classical music, where it may be played solo, as an accompaniment with other instruments a ...

and percussion (7, 11) *

Steve Tibbetts Steve Tibbetts (born 1954) is an American guitarist and composer. He views the recording studio as a tool for creating sounds. Most of his albums include percussionist Marc Anderson. Style Tibbetts plays acoustic and electric guitar and exot ...

– gong (7) *

Ingrid Chavez Ingrid Julia Chavez (born January 21, 1965) is an American singer-songwriter, poet, and visual artist. Early life Chavez was born on January 21, 1965, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and raised in Marietta, Georgia. She is of Mexican-American desce ...

– vocals (7, 9) * Shree Maa – vocals (13)

Production

* David Sylvian – producer, additional

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

, sound mixing * Dave Kent – sound engineer and mixing, studio maintenance * Jacquie Turner – assistant engineer * Matt Curry – assistant engineer * Scott Crane – assistant engineer *

Bob Ludwig Robert Carl Ludwig (born December 11, 1944), is a retired American mastering engineer. He mastered recordings on all the major recording formats for all the major record labels, and on projects by more than 1,300 artists, including Led Zeppeli ...

–

audio mastering Mastering is a form of audio post production which is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device called a master recording, the source from which all copies will ...

Art work

* David Sylvian – art director * Yuka Fujii – art director, artwork co-ordinator * Shinya Fujiwara – drawings *

Anton Corbijn Anton Johannes Gerrit Corbijn van Willenswaard (; born 20 May 1955) is a Dutch photographer, film director, and music video director. He is the creative director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode and U2,Pitman, Joanna"The silent partner" ...

– photography *

– inlay portrait * Russell Mills – design (shed) * Michael Webster – design assistance (storm)

References

{{Authority control David Sylvian albums 1999 albums Virgin Records albums Albums with cover art by Russell Mills (artist)