Steel Cathedrals

Steel Cathedrals, a 1985 short film by David Sylvian and Yasayuki Yamaguchi (and the voice of Jean Cocteau).

The scenes were shot over two days in November 1984 wandering around an industrial area of Tokyo. The music was added by Sylvian with the help of other musicians. The lineup:

David Sylvian : keyboards, tapes, digital percussion
Steve Jansen : percussion
Ryuichi Sakamoto : piano, strings
Kenny Wheeler : flugelhorn
Robert Fripp : guitar, frippertronics
Holger Czukay : dictaphone
Masami Tsuchiya : guitar ‘abstruct’

The video was released on VHS in a limited edition of 2000 copies and then reprinted in 1989. The music was also released initially only on cassette in a limited number of copies in 1985, to arrive shortly after on CD, with a few additional tracks.

But, according to Wikipedia, the history of Steel Cathedrals is more complex and is explained as follows:

Sylvian was approached by a TV company in 1984 to make a documentary about himself. "The idea didn’t appeal to me particularly but I was extremely short of money", he said 1984. So he did it, but “stretched the idea” to include sections of music and imagery. It was all made in a rush, but Sylvian liked one part, which became “Steel Cathedrals”: images of industrial buildings around Tokyo, shimmering and heaving with life, accompanied by a Sylvian/Sakamoto improvisation and all done in 48 hours.
[Wikipedia]

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