Manafonistas

Let’s end the day with a bang! The second album from Brian Eno and Karl Hyde will be out on June 27th. And I’m quite sure I’ve listened to the growing of one or two of the tracks during the legendary „concert for one“ :)! The big question is: will I get an advance copy for my next „Klanghorizonte“ show at the Deutschlandfunk on June 21st, starting one hour after midnight and running for three hours in a row …!?  And, yes, the title of the album is  „High Life“. 

„When Someday World was finished I felt like we were still on a roll and I wasn’t ready to stop working and get into ‚promotional mode‘ for that record,“ Brian Eno explains. „So I suggested we immediately start on another album, a different one, where we extended some of the ideas we’d started, and attempted some of the ideas we hadn’t.“

„I wanted to work with a stripped down set of equipment,“ Karl Hyde says of the record. „For this album I was very keen for Brian to live process my guitar playing so that we would be effecting one another’s performance, bouncing off each other, inspiring new combinations of polyrhythms.“

Excerpts from an email Brian sent me on May 1st:

Our new record is almost finished…we’re in the last two days. It’s been a great experience and I can’t wait to see what people think of this music.

Thank you SO MUCH for the YMG’s. I don’t know how I didn’t know about them before now. Problem with being a working musician is that you don’t get much chance to listen to music! if you’re an artist or a writer you can have the radio on all the time…which is why artists and writers know more about music than anybody else.

YMG is the abbreviation of  „Young Marble Giants“ , an ascetic masterpiece (imo) Brian had totally missed when it had been released at the beginning of the 80’s (at that time he was  living in New York, the Talking Heads, David Byrne, Jon Hassell, and some Future Ambient classics (On Land, Apollo) were part of that life that also lead to early video experiments, first encounters with Daniel Lanois (will Warp / All Saints reissue Roger Eno’s Voices and Michael Brook’s buried treasure Hybrid?) Productions  also included the New York No-Wave-scene and  zither maestro Laraaji. The forthcoming album High Life with some Steve Reich and Fela Kuti-connections seems to revitalize some of the wild vibes of that era, too. (m.e.)

„Since the beginning of the ’90s I have ‚collected‘ most of my words whilst mapping journeys through inner cityscapes. These places contain rhythms I love, sounds, smells, architecture, light & in particular – overheard conversations, all these things contribute to the words I find, collect & and am inspired to write. I continually return to cities because of their dynamic rhythms & the ease with which I can slip un-noticed through the streets with my notebook and pen. People talk loud in cities, their words freefall through the air, I catch & sing them – their rhythms & syncopation’s are more interesting than the poetry I used to write in the 80’s & by singing ‚conversational English‘

I am taken to different places than my old school traditional writing used to lead me. Having written most of my work for music, books & the daily text I write on underworldlive.com (every day since 1999) I was looking for a new territory to wander in & the edges of cities have for many years been a fascination to me. They are places filled with outsider art, idiosyncratic architecture & outsider cultures who wish neither to live in the city nor in the fields, here there are tribes which choose to live on the rim of the city – permanently just outside the castle walls.

They are a neglected, forgotten tribe & the landscape the inhabit is considered ‚run down‘ – these are sometimes overlooked places which for me are filled with positivity and a dynamism unlike the inner cities. They are places where new rhythms are to be found, so I focused my wanderings in these areas on the Eastern Edge of London where it’s not so easy to go unnoticed if you carry a notebook and pen and where you are likely to be approached by people asking what you’re doing – unlike cities you quickly engage in conversation with other people, like improvising with other musicians in the studio.“

Alles ist eitel. Dieser alte, in seiner Verallgemeinerung natürlich blödsinnige Spruch, kann leicht abgewandelt werden. Oft ist zuviel Eitelkeit im Spiel. Der Spruch ist dann nicht mehr so althergebracht, aber zutreffender. Eitelkeit entfaltet sich auch in den herrlichsten Naturräumen, der Blick für die Schönheit einer Landschaft behindert nicht das Pinseln des eigenen Bauchnabels. Gut zu sehen, in einer feinen Doku von Will Huygen, die vom grössten Radrennen Afrikas in Burkina Faso erzählt. Ein buntes Völkchen kommt da zusammen – Freaks, Altstars, Enthusiasten, Lokalhelden. Lauter Originale, die alle eine Besessenheit für ihren Sport antreibt. Europa trifft Afrika, auch das ist hier spannend erzählt, in unaufdringlichen Bildern. Alte Vorstellungen von Ehre und Fairness treffen auf Kleinkrämerei und Missgunst. Es gibt viel zu sehen in diesem Film, der nicht nur für den Radfahrmatador der Manafonistas, Joey, interessant sein dürfte.

 
Tour du Faso (Offizieller Trailer)