His contract with Virgin coming to an end, the year 2000 saw an attractive and interesting selection of Sylvian’s work pulled together as the ‘Everything and Nothing’ compilation CD. The selections reached back to the 1980 period with Japan through to previously unreleased works that were leftovers from the previous year’s ‘Dead Bees On A Cake’ album, finished off in 2000. The album kicked off with one such leftover, ‘The Scent Of Magnolia’. This featured promo CD contains a unique 3’28” ‘Radio Edit’ of that song.
Tracklisting:
- The Scent Of Magnolia (Radio Edit) 3’28”
- Ghosts (Version 2000) 3’43”
‘The Scent Of Magnolia’ is a wonderful track, it is good that it saw light of day on this compilation and wasn’t left in the vaults. It is arguably the last ‘pop’ song in Sylvian’s work, next stop was the ‘Blemish’ album and subsequent releases, which have ventured far away from the more familiar backbeat rhythm and vaguely oriental synth stylings and atmospherics of this track’s jazzy hues.
The track has subsequently been made available on the 2018 vinyl/download ‘Expanded Edition’ re-issues of ‘Dead Bees On A Cake’, in a revised version of the album running order, slotted in as track two on the vinyl, along with three extra tracks. (It is the full length 5’37” version of the track included.) It was noted at the time of this Edition that it had been ‘expanded into the double album Sylvian had originally intended it to be’ – Sylvian himself is noted with the following comments about it, posted on his Twitter feed, 6th March 2018:
“The vinyl release of ‘dead bees’ on RSD is essentially the double album i’d always intended it to be before the label ran out of patience awaiting its arrival. This edition is adorned with anton corbijn’s photography and entirely redesigned by Chris Bigg. Quite beautiful it is too.”
One for a future VersionCrazy post, perhaps…
‘The Scent Of Magnolia’ is available in quite a number of versions in fact. The ‘Everything And Nothing’ album itself includes the full length 5’37” version of the track. Initial copies of the ‘Everything And Nothing’ album (Virgin CDVDX2897) came with an extra bonus disc that contained four further tracks, two of which were further versions of ‘The Scent Of Magnolia’;
Bonus Disc Tracklist:
- The Scent Of Magnolia (Edit) (5’04”)
- The Blinding Light Of Heaven (4’42”) [Robert Fripp & David Sylvian]
- The Scent Of Magnolia (Portobello Mix) (5’42”)
- Brilliant Trees (Version 2000) (8’32”)
The Edit version gets rid of the opening instrumental portion, pretty much getting to the vocal from the off, but is otherwise similar to the full length mix, complete with the ending preserved. The Portobello Mix has a very different rhythmic feel, much less emphasis on the backbeat, some subtle additional sequencer patterns running in the background too and has a subtler end. I think the Portobello Mix is actually my favourite version, a pity it is not more widely available. The Radio Edit as you might imagine gets to the vocal straight away and fades out much earlier, so the end tracks natural end is not preserved.
A second promo-only CD single was also issued (Virgin CDVDJ2897) and replaced the ‘Radio Edit’ of ‘The Scent Of Magnolia’ with the full-length 5’37” version and also added two more tracks – ‘Heartbeat (Tainai Kaiki II)’ (5’16”) and ‘Orpheus’ (4’49”).
Its worth noting also that the version of ‘Ghosts’ is the re-recorded/remixed ‘Version 2000’ included on the ‘Everything And Nothing’ album, even though there is no note of this on the packaging. Not merely a remix, it had a newly recorded vocal take too. I am referring to it as ‘Version 2000’ only because that is how the new version of ‘Brilliant Trees’ is listed on the bonus disc of ‘Everything And Nothing’, also having been given an update for the compilation.