Manafonistas

Me? I didn’t initially like Paul Buchanan’s Mid Air. Being a Blue Nile fan I’d pre-ordered the deluxe CD edition, then when it finally got released in late spring/early summer 2012 I was like „yeah, it’s alright“. Fast forward to about two months ago and the record started making perfect sense. What seemed like Blue Nile -isms were in fact painstakingly crafted crytpic crossword clues. And like with all the best cryptic crosswords, the answers ain’t accessible immediately.

You might know „Public Face, Private Face“ by Quiet City. I didn’t when it was released sometime in 2002. It was only through a (now long gone) link to Quiet City’s (presumably also now long-gone) website on Wikipedia’s Blue Nile entry that led me to the record, about six years after its release. Even then, it took a bit of tracking down. It finally arrived through the letterbox, ages later. Mint condition CD but with a jewel case that had seen a fair bit of life. It had a Tower Records (Dublin) price ticket on it (an ‚on sale‘ one, no less, with the previous prices on stickers underneath, like a dendrochronology of ever-thinning market prices had been in action. But this album won in the end. It surfaces on Amazon Marketplace now and then for £100 a pop, and has a median sale price on Discogs of £59).

Paul Buchanan is obviously the draw here, the reason people will part with so much money for the record. And yes, PB’s contributions are worth the price of admission alone. „Due North“ is a killer track, and I’ve only just checked its running time which is almost nine minutes. That’s a lot of minutes for a pop song, and every second is gloriously accounted for: from the electrolyte atmosphere, maritime town railway station vibe opening and lyrics:
 

Is the seabird scared in the cold stone air
The flags, the light, beat out a fanfare
And the engines start to pound
Beneath our tired feet
Then we slowly inch away
And my heart begins to beat

 
… to its closing moments of elongated vocal whoops, sweeping ocean strings and seagull noises.

The rest of the record, it has to be said, is very unlike this. A lot of it sounds on the face of it like accessible jazz-influenced easy listening Radio 2 gear. Which I guess it kind of could be, except that it takes phenomenal skill – not populist intention – to construct stuff with this depth and sense of space and dimension. Not just the composition either – the arrangements, playing and production make you feel like you’re in a brand new car. Take the intro to track nine, „Goodnight, My Baby“. It’s all there. This record is a classic. And few come more lost than this one.
 
 
 

 
 
 

I listened to it two times in a row on headphones in total darkness, and tough the two voices are powerful tools, never losing their spark, it was the raw guitar work that pulled the trigger. Eerie sounds, drum machines, hymnic, anti-hymnic, Minnesota slow motion chamber harshness. Great stuff. Low: Ones And Sixes.

MHQ: What is the essence of this site?
 

ME: Everybody might have a different answer: I would say, friendship. Friendship in physical and non-physical ways. The exchange of thoughts that are related to matters of the heart: music, everyday life, real and purely imagined journeys, deep thoughts and higher nonsense, love and disaster, the joy and misery of our existence. Empathy at last.

ME: Yes, and, on certain days, I was in the middle of it, no doubt. Lately I was „attacked“ in a comment as being „grössenwahnsinnig“. I’m quite sure that dude was wrong. At least I asked Caesar afterwards, and he told me I shouldn’t care about douchebags.

ME: Sometimes it’s good to part company. In partner therapy, years ago, when I was working with couples in the red zone-area, I realized one thing: many people forget that divorce can be a relief. So they simply had to learn to say good bye. And that’s not so simple. For the Manafonistas, it’s a permanent exercise. Letting go. Some seem invisible most of the time, some leave the scene, some meet and have a good time. I love being surprised by signs of life, And the more heart or wit there is, in the postings or pictures, the deeper I feel for them.

ME: It’s all, in the best sense, about the thrill of being alive, still discovering beauty, and trying to cope with the darkness all around us, in any private or public dimension. Oh my god, this sounds like a credo. Douchebag might come out of his corner. Small things, my friend, small lights.

ME: Not in a religious sense. I’m a pagean. But, well, I had to cry when I saw that episode of Sons of Anarchy with that song about „The Lost Son“. Silent tears. Goose skin all over my body, three, four minutes long.  What we do here, has never anything to do with entertainment. Or self-appraisal, playing smart Alec. It’s about connection, falling out of patterns, stealing horses, sharing the twilight, drinking coffee, tellling stories, listening to a record in the wee hours. Maybe it all ends with No 100 of „Gregor öffnet seinen Plattenschrank“. Or with an aeroplane crash on the Isle of Barra. I think I need a whisky now.

ME: Yep, I only have crap here. I asked Ian to chose his favourite piece from the new album of this vibraphone player, for my show, never did this before. Now, in this minute he has been writing: „Micha, my choice from Apologues by Masayoshi Fujita is the track Flag. 4 minutes 17 seconds. The strange and perfect minor-key strings on this track are forward moving and insistent – a forward impetus filmic melody. The vibraphonic sound provides rhythm and reflection and contrast – an inner perception in the frame of forward filmic movement. Then the woodwind kicks in and suddenly we’re on a journey up, up into the clear, cool air: higher than rooftops, cities, nations, flags. Free.“ Oh, ho, doesn’t that say it all?

WHICH WAY. The title of one of the songs of Richard Hawley’s new album HOLLOW MEADOWS. A bit more energetic, that track, but even the electric guitars somehow glow in blue velvet. Playing a soft wild card for some seconds. And some more seconds. Hawley looks on the cover like a time traveler from early rock’n’roll-ballad days. Retro is  his second name, but he makes a lot of good choices here: a vibe of Fairport Convention here, some Renaissance memories triggered, too. Renaissance, the band, my friend, not the era. There’s a lot of variety in his zigzagging along long gone decades. I learned the word zigzagging (is it zig-zagging or zigzaging? It’s certainly not zigzaging) from a Robert Wyatt-song on DONDESTAN. Was it DONDESTAN, was it SIGHT OF THE WIND? Yesterday’s newspaper was zigzagging, zig-zaging (no!), zigzagging  through the air, like a game of the wind. A word that creates a kind of vertigo. The outskirts of time, a recurring theme in Hawley’s HOLLOW MEADOWS. He sits in a corner of the cafe, in an old Sheffield district, worn-out, kind of rotten. Of course, there’s a ballroom around the corner. I’m there, too. I’m living in these songs tonight. Do you remember the magic of meeting a strange woman under circling lights, neon with a nostalgic touch, and not asking for a coffee, or a minute, but just for a good fuck? You say it with all your heart, so there’s nothing wrong with that. One of the things I’ve never been afraid to ask (well, after I turned 28). Some say no, some say yes, some say 100 dollars. So I slept with about 175 women. With a lot of Brian Eno in the background. Music for sexual healing. Music for indoor sports. Music for aspetic toilet rooms at airports. Music for films. And, yes, I varied the question. I said coffee, or mocca, or Americano, I said green tea, I said Sex on the Beach, I said Caipirinho. And I said: girl, I prefer to be fucked east of soft core, take me hard. And I said ice cream, and I said whisky bar.

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Daniel Lanois – Interview