Dead Bees on a Cake


Dead Bees on a Cake is the fifth studio album by British singer-songwriter David Sylvian, released in March 1999 on Virgin Records. It was his first solo album in 12 years since Secrets of the Beehive. The album peaked at no. 31 in the UK Albums Chart at release and contained his last UK Top 40 single to date in "I Surrender".
In 2018, the album was released on double vinyl for the first time for Record Store Day. This pressing included four songs originally intended for the album, and a restructured track order.

Background

Sylvian started out working with Ryuichi Sakamoto in New York and they did three weeks work together. Initially Sakamoto was co-producing the project with Sylvian, and after three weeks work they had about three days work down and it was obvious things weren't working as well as they usually were between the two; thus, they decided to retire the project. Some of the recording sessions ended up on the album, including Sakamoto's piano playing along with string and horn arrangements, but Sylvian was dissatisfied with the overall results.
They did a few other sessions in New York and Sylvian then set up a second set of sessions in the Real World Studios in England with a different group of musicians, but Sylvian was again not pleased with the recording session. Sylvian had never experienced such unrewarding recording sessions and he didn't think the material was that difficult, so it was baffling.
Sylvian returned to Minneapolis where he was then living and just basically started sampling the material that he had and reconstructing the arrangements to try and put together a basis from which to get working on the album. Three months and there was very little to show for it. That was the beginning, until he found himself just taking on roles that he hadn't really initially foreseen himself taking on: being the sole producer, taking care of engineering, becoming the maintenance guy, his own studio, anything that just gets down to the basic work of being creative and recording. He reconstructed the pieces through using various samples from a multitude of performances. The challenge really was to keep the whole thing feeling very organic, like there was a group of people playing together, that sonically it sounded very much a part of a whole, which was quite a challenge actually. Probably a greater challenge than actually putting the arrangements together.
Sylvian said about the album 2012:

Track listing

;CD pressing
;'''2018 vinyl pressing'''

Personnel

Production

Art work