David Sylvian's first record since “Manafon” is a single 46-minute instrumental piece, out 26 February

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The cover of David Sylvian's “The Distance Between The Killer And The Killing”, an illustrated vinyl disc with the name broken across three lines

David Sylvian releases “The Distance Between The Killer And The Killing” on 26 February 2027, with the date and the label reported by The Quietus. It’s his first record since “Manafon”, which came out in September 2009, and the first release on NANOQ, a label founded for the occasion.

The album is instrumental throughout and runs to forty-six minutes in a single piece. None of it comes from studio sessions booked for the job: Sylvian has recomposed improvised material taped between 2012 and 2025 with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Otomo Yoshihide, the instrumentalists Bilianna Voutchkova and Miako Klein, and Jamie Drouin and Lance Austin Olson. Sakamoto, who had worked with Sylvian since “Bamboo Houses” in 1982, died in March 2023.

Sylvian has been narrowing his way of working ever since he left Japan. On “Blemish” and “Manafon” the song was already down to the voice and whatever was left around it. Here the voice has gone too.

Text by Marçal Bonastre