When his band Japan split up, Sylvian took off on an odyssey through the remarkable worlds of collaborators such as Robert Fripp of King Crimson, Holger Czukay of Can, film score greats Ryuichi Sakamoto and Mark Isham, in addition to — would you guess — Erik Honoré and Jan Bang.

 

The Tangent

Erik Honoré was first credited on a David Sylvian album in 2002. In 2005 the two Kristiansandians started the Punkt Festival in their home town. The festival instantly became a powerhouse of technological music and ambient jazz, pop, rock and electronic genres. In 2011, David Sylvian was the Punkt Festival artist in residence.

 

All these pieces of history seem present in Dark Star Safari. Its launch happens to follow the re-issue of all three This Mortal Coil albums and David Sylvian’s solo albums of the 1980’s, and most recently, the one-off Japan reunion project Rain Tree Crow.

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 This is the Review: 

Inspiration has a tendency to take off in one of two opposite directions: Either as imitating, or as a toolbox. Dark Star Safari carries two toolboxes. One is a catalyst, a new collaborator from what seems to have become a new focal point for Norwegian art pop: Berlin, Germany.

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Samuel Rohrer is neither Norwegian nor ‘ein Berliner’. He is from Switzerland, but lives in Berlin, where he has a studio and his own label, Arjunamusic. It seems as though Rohrer is the one pulling Dark Star Safari the strongest towards David Sylvians’s early solo works, the albums Gone To Earth and Secrets Of The Beehive.

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The Swiss on drums and electronics is not imitating. He has a distinct grip on the beauty of this kind of soundscaping. It is also apparent that Samuel Rohrer is inspired by these Norwegian artists, and thus the whole set of ideas that makes up the little world of the Punkt Festival.

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The Poetry

The second toolbox is Erik Honoré’s lyrics, which more often than lyrics are poetry. Thoughts in close-ups, postcards of conceptions, voiced by Jan Bang. He is most known as a virtuoso on the “instrument” live sampling. His voice is as distinctive as that of David Sylvian’s, so of course he reminds of him, which in itself is an achievement.

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Dark Star Safari holds no room for a star vocalist. The vocals are instruments to the lyrics and the poetry, but the electric sound sculptor Jan Bang has a solid grip on the framework within the art-form. By the help of timbres from instruments and production, the vocalist Bang occasionally finds room to explore the edges of the quartet’s collective inspiration.

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The Progressive

The same can be said about Eivind Aarset’s guitars — and electronics. For 30 years, he has been the most sought-after session guitarist in Norwegian pop music and a pioneer in the “new Nordic” jazz and electronic improvisation music. Aarset has also become quite a guitar hero within European progressive rock.

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The guitarist of Dark Star Safari is the Eivind Aarset we know from his solo albums on labels Jazzland and ECM. His guitar sounds are at the core of what we call “ambient”, and more electronic than guitar. This guitarist has become a master of the unexpected, and Dark Star Safari easily places Eivind Aarset at level with Robert Fripp and Bill Frisell.

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The Ambient

Ambient is a genre prefix that has always followed the arts of Jan Bang and Erik Honoré. They master a rare trade, generating indisputable artistic beauty through manipulation and distortion of equipment that are stone cold in form and utter synthetic in substance.

 

With the help of Eivind Aarset and Samuel Rohrer, the two Kristiansandians embrace four decades of ambient new age pop rock and propel it into a fifth decade without overstretching.

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This is the core of Jan Bang and Erik Honoré’s mission, the identity of the Punkt Festival, and a wonderful extension of inspiration from David Sylvian.