posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the album’s press release.

The freshly minted label Nanoq is proud to announce a new album by David Sylvian. Titled The Distance Between the Killer and the Killing, it is the first album Sylvian has released in 15 years.

Comprised of sessions recorded between 2012 and 2025, the album is based on recomposed improvisational sessions with a variety of artists ranging from Otomo Yoshihide, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Bilianna Voutchkova and Miako Klein, to Jamie Drouin, Lance Austin Olson and more. The 46-minute instrumental is unlike anything tackled by Sylvian before and is seen by Sylvian himself as the official follow up to his 2009 album Manafon.

In Pauline Nadrigny’s essay on the album, she describes something of the listening experience.  “…voices surge that belong to no one in particular. One that hoots and hums across a violin, worked until it loses its voice, becomes mere matter among other matter. A voice inside the breath of a clarinet or a recorder. Grunts, gurgles, distant cries, somewhere between man and bird, woman and nuthatch. Fragments of choirs, far off, snatches of a song long since lost. Too far to be recovered.”

The Distance Between the Killer and the Killing will be released on 26 February 2027 and is available to preorder now on a variety of formats and special editions, art directed by Sylvian and designed by Chris Bigg. Alongside the standard vinyl LP and plastic-free gatefold CD, there are two limited editions: a marbled vinyl housed in a mirror-board sleeve; and a deluxe CD in case-bound book packaging.

Published post no.3,033 – Wednesday 30 September 2026