DAVID SYLVIAN Vinyl & CDs

Review: The man from Japan (the band, not the country) wandered off and started flying solo in 1984, exploring a host of strange and often surreal sounds with partners in tunes ranging from Ryuichi Sakamoto (who actually is from Japan) to Bill Nelson. As the 1990s gave way to the new millennium, his style only became more daring and less predictable, adventures in a kind of minimal free improvisation, it's at this point we find ourselves on Sleepwalkers.

Not an album per se, but a retrospective compilation comprising work from the first decade of this century, perhaps what's so striking is just how much can be done with relatively few elements. Of course, tracks like 'Word Citizen', 'Wonderful World' and 'The Day The Earth Stole Heaven' are, well, not maximalist, but certainly made up of more parts, but the real stand out stuff - 'Thermal''s spoken word ambient, the lo-fi elec-pop of 'Sugarfuel', and 'Transit''s delicately textured oddness - prove less is more.