Gone to Earth is the second studio album by British singer-songwriter David Sylvian, released on 1 September 1986 on Virgin Records. A double album, Gone to Earth is the follow-up to his debut record, Brilliant Trees, and peaked at No. 24 in the UK Albums Chart. History The album is a two-record set featuring one record of experimental rock songs with vocals and one consisting entirely of ambient instrumental tracks. Guest artists include Robert Fripp (who co-wrote three songs) and Bill Nelson (who co-wrote one). The album was recorded through 1985 and mid-1986 at Jam Studios in North London, Eel Pie Studios and at The Manor Studios in Oxfordshire, England, with producer Steve Nye. Sylvian said in 1987: "I'd have liked to have recorded it all at Shipton Manor but we ran out of studio time. The rest of the album was done in Townhouse Studios, London. I find that most of the work that was completed in London was substandard compared to the work that was completed in Oxfordshire." Initially, Sylvian started on a variety of different musical projects that didn't have a specific direction. He composed the film soundtrack Steel Cathedrals and the work Words with the Shaman, and worked on the songs "Wave", "Before The Bullfight" and "Laughter And Forgetting", that added up to a body of work that he felt was an incoherent collection of material. He persuaded Virgin Records to release Words with the Shaman as a 12" EP, and Steel Cathedrals was put aside for a video release only. Sylvian then concentrated on the songs he was working on with the intention to develop them and flesh it out to a full album. At the time he was also writing short instrumental pieces and wanted to pursue them as well. Sylvian's record company were not particularly interested in his instrumental compositions, and funded the recording only of the songs on Disc 1 of the set, with Sylvian funding and recording the instrumentals on Disc 2 in his own time. Sylvian, as on his earlier solo albums, continued to reference artists, writers and thinkers who were influencing him, though here he utilised the technique of using, within certain songs, snippets of the voices of particular figures. These include J.G. Bennett, Robert Graves and Joseph Beuys. The song "Laughter and Forgetting" was partly inspired by Milan Kundera's novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, though only