Steel Cathedrals

While veteran avant-rocker David Sylvian is more widely known for his surprisingly accessible leftfield rock songs, a largely unexplored aspect of his artistry is his worth as a proponent of ambient, improvisatory compositions. This sensibility is brilliantly manifested in the pair of collaborations with Kraut-rock stalwart Holger Czukay, 1988's "Plight and Premonition" and 1989's "Flux and Mutability". However, it is with 1984's carefully constructed sound montage "Steel Cathedrals" that Sylvian first established himself as an adventurous purveyor of what is known as Fourth World Music, boldly mixing found sounds, ad-hoc samples, synth programs and organic instrumentation. Check out the two distinct sections of "Steel Cathedrals", both set to an artistic collage of eerie, surreal, industrial-informed imagery.