Small Metal Gods

David Sylvian is a man apart. In a thirty-year career that spans the New Romantic movement, ambient works and progressive rock, and mature and esoteric pop, Sylvian has tested popular styles and bent them to his own vision. But the 00s have seen a more extreme side of his work. While 2003s Blemish startled long-time fans with its emotional rigour, Sylvian has taken the next step with MANAFON, a work of nuance and stern musicality, that is also intriguing, suspenseful, and horribly beautiful.

On Manafon, Sylvian pursues a completely modern kind of chamber music. Intimate, dynamic, emotive, democratic, economical. In sessions in London, Vienna, and Tokyo, Sylvian assembled the worlds leading improvisers and innovators, artists who explore free improvisation, space-specific performance, and live electronics. From Evan Parker and Keith Rowe, to Fennesz and members of Polwechsel, to Sachiko M and Otomo Yoshihide, the musicians provide both a backdrop and a counterweight to his own vocal performances which are nakedly the center of each piece.

Sylvian's voice has never been so dominant or so striking, and his resonant tenor and deliberate vibrato captivate the listener from the start of Small Metal Gods -whose video is directed by Hiraki Sawa. Its prominence would come off as egotistical except that each performance is an exercise in self-exposure, and each character study is written in the third-person, to allow the maximum detachment.

It is like a one-man monologue in which every change of light and backdrop is crucial to the carrying of the central performance. It is an ensemble work even though there is a central performance. Though the setlist is all ballads, romanticism is out, and no percussion provides a pulse. All the melody and rhythm rest in the voice. Aside from overdubs of acoustic guitar or John Tilbury's somber, Feldman-esque phrases on piano, Sylvian explores the river between these songs and these musicians, and the surprises they bring, enhancing but not reconfiguring the improvisations, giving himself just the skeletons of songs to guide him.

Manafon it is driven not just by the tension between improvisation and composition, frontman and ensemble, or in Sylvian's words, "intimacy and solitude"; it captures the dilemma of a man who studies himself clincically, but cannot truly understand himself; who is disillusioned, but maybe laughably so. The most common sensation, which hangs in almost every note, is a feeling of suspense. The title-track depicts the British poet R. S. Thomas, and the sole instrumental to which Sylvian also contributes sounds less like a performance, and more like a wellspring of possibilities.

"Maybe I'm attracted to the stories of individuals who search for meaning on their own terms," says Sylvian. "But what I'm fascinated by is the devotion to a creative discipline. The meaning with which the work imbues the life regardless of its reception and, to a certain extent, its importance." Sylvian's search is endless, and maybe quixotic. The fruits of the journey are unknowably rich.

Presented as ever in a beautiful digipak featuring exquisite artwork from Ruud Van Empel and designed by Chris Bigg, the album is also available on a CD+DVD special limited edition containing the new feature length documentary Amplified Gesture, 5.1 surround sound (Dolby & DTS), and PCM stereo versions of Manafon, and two hardback books inserted into a rigid slip case. An accompanying black on white high quality print of a portrait of David Sylvian by Atsushi Fukui, each individually signed by the artist and David Sylvian.

Manafon will be released on September 14th, 2009 and it is yet available for pre-order.

For more informations:

David Sylvian
http://www.davidsylvian.com

Manafon
http://www.manafon.com

Category:

Music

Tags:

• David Sylvian
• Manafon
• Small Metal Gods
• video
• Hiraki Sawa

[danishwolf71]

the master is back ...!