Manafonistas

Michael: The last song of the album, „To Us All“, is so dark when you hear the lyrics: it could be written by a soul mate of Samuel Beckett, there are lines like „From the blood that we just we couldn’t spill / From the ones that we just couldn’t kill / We spin a world in a dizzying fall / To see the things that will happen to us all.“ But the sounds and the melody have an incredibly warm, embracing quality. it sounds like a lullaby for the end of the world, or, to our endlessly numbered days.

Brian: That was actually a much longer song earlier, there were four other verses, and I took them all out. Just left that bit. And the four other verses for me painted the picture too fully. They filled in all the details, and it wasn’t so good then. So I emptied it and was just left with what had actually been the climax. So the song had built up to those two verses that exist. As a sort of climax, but then I thought: get rid of the build-up, just have the climax! I’ve never really done a song in quite that form except it’s slightly like a song of my very first album, called „On Some Faraway Beach“, where there’s a long lead-up, and there are three short verses that sort of just sit there like a little island in the song.

Stars and cars and radio waves. If you listen to these 55 minutes of music, you might get lost in your dreams near the end. Janek Schaefer wouldn’t mind, he is quite a nocturnal person and has just released his calmest record yet. But at first, Meredith Monk’s vivid dance will stop you in the tracks: the track that starts this „blue hour“ is like a shot of coffee at 4 o’clock in the morning. Then (oooh!) this „country death record“ (or how you might call it) by the Canadian drifters and troubadours of Timber Timbre: a time travel to the „Gothic South“ – traces of black-and-white spy movies, Roy Orbison in the Grand Canyon – David Lynch loves this band (and apart from being trapped in promoting TM  – see the documentary ‚David Wants to Fly‘, and you know! – he has a good taste for the cinematic qualities of music.) The ghost stories continue with sound-artist BJ Nilsen and his fantastic sound-trip through London: everyday life turns into dream fragments. To stroll properly, one should have no particular plans. After a short, merciless noise, Tara Jane O’Neil comes along: her journey through foggy hinterlands in the middle of nowhere (made in America) is another dark affair of distant lights. At the end, everything comes to rest  at the outer limits of nighttime London, with cars and stars and radio waves. (me)

1)  Meredith Monk: Folkdance, aus: PIANO SONGS, Cd 03, 4’00“ 2) Timber Timbre: Curtains!?, aus: HOT DREAMS, Cd 03, 3’43“ 3) BJ Nilsen: Londinum, aus: EYE OF THE MICROPHONE, CD 01, 10’44“ 4) Tara Jane O’Neil: Elemental Finding / All Now Vibe / The Signal, Wind, aus: WHERE SHINE NEW LIGHTS, Cd 07, 08, 09, 3’53”, 2’07”, 2’20” 5) Janek Schaefer: Radio 101 FM / Radio 102 FM / Radio 103 FM / Radio 104 FM, aus: LAY-BY LULLABY, Cd 01, 02, 03, 04, 5’25”, 3’47”, 5’26“, 6’59“