As previously mentioned, I'd quite liked Japan and was taken by Sylvian's collaboration with Ryuchi Sakamoto on Forbidden Colours. I picked this up on cassette in Woolworth's sale, a couple of years after release and it absolutely blew me away.
I replaced it on CD about ten years later, and was delighted to find Forbidden Colours as a CD extra. It's an album I've gone back to regularly since, and never stopped enjoying.
Opening with the brief, but lovely September (the sadness for me invoking the start of a new school year), the album really gets going with the gorgeous The Boy With The Gun. Maria is gentle, minimal and lovely, then Orpheus, one of Sylvian's finest songs ever (despite including the 'most pretentious silent break in a song ever' - almost 20 seconds including a very quiet fade). The sparse mood continues with The Devil's Own, Sakamoto's bleak piano accompaniment and woodwind arrangement really creating an atmosphere.
The second half opens with the Spanish guitar intro to the dark tale of domestic violence When The Poets Dreamed Of Angels. before Mother and Child, a gentle song infused with free-jazz piano from Sakamoto, and the tortured Let The Happiness In, with its beautiful trumpet motif, taking the song from the depths to a conclusion of optimism. The original album ended with the understated Waterfront, a fine song, but an album this good deserves a fitting conclusion, and the addition of the glorious Forbidden Colours (a 1983 single from the soundtrack to Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence) does it justice, Sylvian's lyrics and voice enhancing, not overpowering Sakamoto's theme.
It's a fantastic album - Sylvian at his peak as a songwriter working with Sakamoto, a genius of arrangement to get the very finest out of these songs.
5* - I've loved this album for 30 years, and this listen has only made me love it more.
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