David Sylvian Announces First New Album in 16 Years

David Sylvian will release The Distance Between the Killer and the Killing on February 27. The album, due on his newly launched label NANOQ, marks the erstwhile Japan singer's first new full-length since 2009's Manafon — a sixteen-year gap between studio albums.

The record distills improvisational sessions recorded between 2012 and 2025 into a single, 46-minute instrumental work. NANOQ bills it as the official follow-up to Manafon, according to the announcement.

Those sessions drew on a roster of collaborators that spans experimental and contemporary music. Otomo Yoshihide, Jamie Drouin, and Biliana Voutchkova took part, alongside the late Ryuichi Sakamoto — one of Sylvian's most consistent creative partners over the decades.

Sylvian has not been absent from release schedules since Manafon, but his output has consisted of archival and compilatory material rather than new albums. In 2010 he gathered his 21st-century non-album collaborations on the compilation Sleepwalkers. Two years later, in 2012, he issued A Victim of Stars: 1982-2012, a retrospective compiling thirty years of material. His most recent move before the new album came in 2019, when he reissued his first four solo albums on vinyl.

The choice of format signals the character of the project. A single 46-minute instrumental built from thirteen years of improvised exchanges positions the album closer to Sylvian's long-form, atmospheric work than to the song-based writing of his earlier career. The Distance Between the Killer and the Killing now stands as the first opportunity to hear where that sustained period of collaboration has led him.