Hey
Very excited Hawk yesterday as finally saved up to buy Manafon (yes I have waited THIS LONG)!! Listened to its entirety when got home from work.
Wow it was definitely worth the wait. I don’t know if I can rate it though…I don’t know if I can even comment on it yet as I’m left feeling much like I have just stepped out of a heavy fog. It feels like I have been walking a path through glimpses of a world similar to this one but painted differently… It was mostly an urban landscape, contrary to my expectations from the cover art, which was interesting. The first track – Small Metal Gods – although I had heard it before sounded so fresh. It is probably my favourite track, alongside Greatest Living Englishman and Emily Dickinson. I can’t help feeling it didn’t really need ‘tracks,’ however, that it could have stood on its own as one long composition – a bit like a film. These are only my first impressions though…I will go through next time, knowing the path a bit, with a torch and a camera…I expect my opinion to change!
Usually the response I get from a musical album is either visual, sensual, emotional or thought-provoking…. I really don’t know what Manafon created…. It wasn’t all of them, but it wasn’t none of them either. I think I feel curious, breathless, static, clouded, amazed, enchanted… I feel even though I have ‘heard’ it once all the way through, I won’t have really ‘listened’ to it or absorbed it until I hear it another few times at least – like I said, it was foggy. But what I found enshrouded in the fog I think was magnificent. I think I could really really grow to love it. It feels like such a world to explore.
All the sounds the background artists create trigger so many combinations…schemas…shapes and textures that will, with work and in time, form some fascinating pictures. And then Sylvian’s voice directs it all – takes you through the path and tells stories of the people who live(d) there. All the places I saw were completely vacant, but not without signs of human life – things like steam, dust, dull electric lights, ceiling fans, indoor plants, hanging baskets, coffee cups… It reminded me of Sylvian’s photographs actually. As though the people who had been there had just evaporated – or, in some cases, become invisible and still working the appliances. Have you seen the film Amelie where she guides the blind man through the market place? It feels a bit like that. So I think the vocals and the session work fit very well together, as well as remaining separate enough to assume different roles within the composition. The way Sylvian used the tone fluctuations, the jumps, the punctuations – or the way he edited it – is very interesting. I have never really thought about how an album is made before, but Manafon seems to bring the creative process in to the mix as well as the finished piece. Once I am less precious about it, I think its something I could listen to in a variety of moods.
The main emotion I felt throughout Manafon was fear…? Not from Sylvian – in fact he sounded almost settled, comforting at times… No, more like…. More like I was seeing a world where everyone feared one another and humans had almost ceased to exist through their lack of interaction or understanding of one another… but they were still there… and could still be touched – could still be harmed… It felt like hunt-or-be-hunted – always stay alert… Interesting…I guess… a bit like animals in the forest…
Have you ever seen the TV series ‘Dark Angel’ or the film ‘Salmonberries?’ I saw worlds like that a lot in Manafon…
‘Hauntingly beautiful’ is a good way to describe it… or maybe ‘detached’ – alone, but not shut away, not secluded – in fact, possibly more free in its solitude? The voice was in this world, seeing this world, every scratch and angle of it, embracing it almost… surrounded by human life and walking through it… but at the same time completely alone and separate.
The line “He said to conquer the world is not to leave a trace, remove even the shadow of the memory of your face” stood out to me. It was the only line I had to play back twice as thoughts came rushing to me all of a sudden. I think Johan, the main antagonist in the anime series ‘Monster’, said a similar thing. He said he didn’t really exist….and something about becoming completely nameless and anonymous in order to become the last man standing…….or the Greatest Living …man by default??? Or am I thinking about this too much? I am still trying to figure out that anime… I also heard the line as a riddle…and, when trying to figure it out, the answer that came to me was God – God who has no face. I also pondered upon can you only ‘conquer the world’ if you become completely selfless – identityless – bodiless?
I’m sorry… this probably sounds like I have too much time on my hands but these were my immediate first thoughts and impressions of the album. I almost wanted to approach listening to Manafon like David had approached writing the lyrics – go with what you hear first, your instinct, what comes directly to mind… I really wanted to explore the idea of improvisation… otherwise I don’t think I could fully appreciate the project. When I put myself in a certain frame of mind all I hear is a cacophony of scratching and plinky noises and what sounds a bit like someone sneezing with David droning disjointed poetry over the top – and I have to try to avoid that frame – one, as it makes me very cynical and boring, and two, because I’d probably be heading very shortly for some of Baht’s therapy sessions!
Overall I felt it was an album of glimpses and ambitious narratives. I didn’t feel Manafon was a personal recollection, except slightly in Small Metal Gods, but that possibly has a lot to do with the use of first person. I didn’t feel the need to link any of the images I saw to Sylvian himself, only through him – as though his voice acted as a guide or a telescope. I think everyone sees the world differently – this world, not our own worlds. So it’s interesting to see familiar images and situations through a different lens… It felt almost like an out of body experience.
I’d love to draw or paint some of the images I saw but they were so very specific – almost too detailed for the mind to completely piece together. I saw car headlights and the edge of buildings, houses, cars and the rush of ash and leaves… I saw a game of pool being played in a wooden lodge in the middle of the snow but there were no players – sometimes I saw the end of a sleeve but no hand – everything was mostly zoomed in and so fleeting I could be in another house in a second, and then back to the pool game again. Sometimes it felt like following the ghosts home – past the streetlights, past the parked cars – and then look in the other direction and I am in their bed or looking at some keys on the sideboard or staring out of the frosted glass to see an overgrown garden and childrens toys…a fence that needs repairing… Yet it was even more complex than that… all the images were fragmented… so although I knew it was keys, there was one section missing, or as though the photograph had been cut and stuck back together again – the lighting was different on each jagged edge… or sometimes like bits were drawn in chalk. Again, very like David’s polaroid collages… It almost feels like he has used photography in the past to view the outside world, and used his music to express his inside world… but this time it’s the other way around. It spoke to me of the future. I don’t know why. It just felt very…like a world that has yet to be… post-apocalyptic in a sense…
Sorry this review is a little bit belated!! No doubt I will listen to the album again and have completely different opinions. I am really looking forward to what direction David moves in next as it feels to me like he has reached a height in this particular style.
On a different topic, my sister sent me a crazed text message the other day saying they were playing ‘Every Colour You Are’ in Wilkinsons! Slightly bemusing…and somewhat akin to my dizzy feeling when they played Nick Drake on an advert for cough syrup…
but um I guess it’s pretty cool on one level as some of the music played in shops is dire.
That’s it from me…
…for now…
- which is the only reason I may be disappointed, but having said that I do not exclusively enjoy challenging work – I even enjoy a bit of Coldplay sometimes 
– so I’m sure I will find lots to enjoy in his more commercial work...I love his voice in all I have heard so far, and find his skill in writing highly creative, melodic pieces really satisfying. I even find Manafon to be a highly melodic work, with sections sticking in my head and going round-and-round...
