David Sylvian, probably best known as the founder of the art rock group, Japan, and for his work with Robert Fripp as well as with various practitioners of ambient music (Harold Budd, Roger Eno, etc.) has, for quite a while now, also been involved in projects with leading lights of the improvisational avant-garde. Arguably beginning with the 2003 release, Blemish with Derek Bailey and continuing with Manafon, a 2009 release that included a host of musicians such as Keith Rowe, Toshimaru Nakamura, Evan Parker and many more. In recent years, his collaborations have seemed to be with gentler folk like Christian Fennesz. This is also the case with the recording at hand where he joins with pianist/composer Melaine Dalibert, whose has, over the past several years, released five or six albums on the elsewhere label which feature soft, rippling sounds which brush against the ambient field but often have subtler undercurrents.

vermilion hours consists of two pieces written by Dalibert, each about 20 minutes long (there are also two short extracts from those pieces). Sylvain doesn't sing, instead contributing work on "electronics", some of which has a very organ-y aspect. the thing that strikes one immediately about the first track, "Musique pour le lever du jour" is that it strongly recall's Eno's 'Music for Airports'. Dalibert's piece doesn't involve the structural shifting of Eno's but the general sonority and feel is quite similar. Single, reverberant piano notes from mid-register relaxedly amble along, quite lush and embracing, embedded in strands of wispy electronics and an organ-like bed. It's steady-state in a sense, that any minute two segment resembles any other, so less an amble than, perhaps, a circular walk around a garden. Very enjoyable. 'Arabesque' treads a similar path, though the melodic line has a more complex tonality, a bit darker and more anxious, the notes spaced a little farther apart. It's a nice, if subtle, contrast to the first piece.

The recording sits firmly in that early Eno-esque, ambient framework. If listeners are happy in that milieu, they'll find much to enjoy here.