Manafonistas

The whole album, „Bleed It Out“, is about the menchanisms of revenge. Shakespearean stuff, so to speak. The lyrics contain a lot of subtleties, double meanings, challenging verses. The music, according to the main topic, is more hard-rock-edged and straight forward than earlier masterpieces like „Goths“, „Dark I  Here“, or „Sunset Tree“.  John Darnielle had been inspired by action movies, mainly from the 70’s and 80‘s. And, god gracious, I followed his kind advice to dive into the two „Mezrine“ movies by Vincent Cassel. „Heart stoppingly exciting“. It is an old prejudice of „posh academics“ that action movies are  only there to thrill, and have no depth. Listen to this album, and the abyss looks straight into your face! And, aside from that, you‘ll spend some quality time with some shivers running down the spine.

Hi Michael, now I know which project you are talking about, I just didn’t know that it had come out on record yet, but I got the record in the post yesterday, and the poem in question is the third of these four. 

it derives from a big project in Hull, England, where the poem were to have a bigger role, one poem was to have been mounted on Humber Bridge and another one on a big lawn (…) The record is amongst other things based on the four poems (…) 

All the best 

Nils Chr. Moe Repstad 

The Height of the Reeds – excerpts taken from Nils Christian Moe-Repstad’s book: Wunderkammer (bridge)

(1) I could have said that I grow together with an English oak and tried to do the same with the sea, but nature has a slow determination of distance: the peripheral oceans, the peripheral nerves, like reefs and roots

(2) The swans bend their necks backward to see God, they know the magnetism of the blue space, but the prayers say God in Heaven: in the black space only black swans see Him, pulled between stars, asteroids, meteors and satellites.

(3) Search for places you know, because there is nothing beyond, only a bare tree along the road and a face other than your own, but that is how you begin to die how you begin to live, among the dead the tree is a face that blossoms.  (lawn)

(4) You and I are not all that we can be, who shall measure the height of the reeds in the wetlands, during which cycle do they burn, it is time for the insignificant theses: are we irreplaceable or waders.