Originally posted by Ivan Basso:
yer wee radge … I'm having visions of you as a Midlothian Demis Roussos with your kaftan on ! I’m actually a ‘Weegie’ by birth.
That Mr Roussos and I would make for (sadly hilarious) polar opposites if placed side by side, and now I’m trying to get
“Forever And Ever” out of my head, but I’d happily take his island in the sun anytime.
Well, after a couple of very close play’s of Manafon it is probably still a bit premature for me to comment, except to say that taking some of the tracks out of the context of the album is much more rewarding.
Snow White In Appalachia, and
Emily Dickinson are presently the songs that completely reach me, and happily (!) evoking a sense of mystery in the engagement between the music and the singing. But for me so far, listening to the whole of the album and its less potent moments just feels, well, ‘dull’
Okay, bit cheap to leave a one-word comment like that I know, makes me seem like I haven’t ‘got where the albums coming from’, so please, all Manafon fanatics, no rocks at my head, it can hurt! and I should leave posting anymore about the album for the proper Manafon thread.
I also had yet another first time play through of an album new to me, and I’m finding it completely addictive and I really want to big this one up here -
Jacaszek:
Treny.
Came on a disc of loads of great stuff given to me earlier this year by a work colleague, and I just completely ignored listening to it, but looking for a post-Manafon refuge I chanced to start playing it, its since rapidly become one of those albums I now feel the need to own in its own sleeve.
Classical and electronica, with faint touches of trip-hop, glitch, and fleeting sounds of harp and piano, the perfect soundtrack for a haunted ballroom, sunken vessel, or a Jean Cocteau film. Its very beautiful and mesmerizing, and just, well, ‘supernatural’,
now if only David Sylvian had been singing along on an album like this…