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It was an effervescent night of hi-fidelity virtuosity as David Sylvian and his elegant band played Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall to a near sell-out crowd. Sylvian was promoting 2000’s Everything And Nothing two-CD compilation, an upcoming instrumental compilation called Camphor and a reissue of a Fripp/Sylvian live set called Damage.

This spate of retrospective releases ends his association with Virgin, leaving him a man without a country (and living in the country: very rural New Hampshire!). It’s all new terrain for Sylvian and it leaves the fiercely serious aural explorer… bemused.

"It's completely open. I'm not signed right now and I've been signed my entire adult life and I'm at this point right now where I don't have to go to somebody to ask, ‘Is it OK if I do this?’ And again, that just feels enormously freeing. So I'm enjoying that and I'm not going to pursue signing to another label right now. I'm just going to go into the studio, which I built on my property and just enjoy the process and see what comes out."

With respect to the June 18 release of Camphor (available as one CD or a limited edition two-CD digipak), David had this to say: "It's a compilation so it covers a lot of ground in that sense. I mean, the compilation itself is far more dynamic than I originally intended to be. I thought it would be a more languorous piece, but in the end it didn't work out that way. It's far more dynamic.

"There are a variety of moods. I think even within any one given piece that it's possible to find a balance of different contrasting emotions, like joy and sadness being an obvious example. I think, to complement the full complexity of our selves, we have to be able to find ourselves in the music, no matter what state we find ourselves in when we come to it. If it's an almost purely joyous piece of music, you would almost have to be in that state of mind to really participate in it. So I like there to be that complex emotional make-up, to make the piece of music dense enough to appreciate under a number of different circumstances."

And why this title? "Well, camphor is a substance used in ritual worship. It creates the flame that one then offers to the gods or God. So I like that analogy; the music itself is an offering. And it's also a substance used for medicinal purposes, for healing, so also I like that analogy. It tends to go well with my own philosophy of what I believe the work is about."

So with creative life at a crossroads, it’s back to the shed, as it were. I asked David if the New Hampshire move (two years back) has affected the writing process?

"God, I mean it changes everything in a way because your environment has such influence on you. And I mean, we're pretty much out there. We're out in the sticks on the side of some mountain in the forest. It's out there. I mean, the water comes from springs in the ground. You have to be aware of the whole plumbing system and relate it to that. You've got your gas and your propane… everything is right there on the land. There's a lot of maintenance going on. Not that I have to do it all myself, but it's enough (laughs)."