2009 – Manafon

Emily Dickinson

‘very intimate and revealing’

‘If we’re interested in improvisation, then that suggests that we’re not quite sure what music is. We’ve got some idea but we’d like to find out. So every time we play, “what music is” is open to a certain freedom of discovery, open to question. The possibility of being surprised by oneself or by the situation – that is what we hope for.’ These are the thoughts of Evan Parker, eminent free improvising saxophone player since the 1960s, decades during which he practically reinvented the playing technique of his instrument and in so doing created a new language of sound.

Snow White in Appalachia

Mining for gold

In 2004, David Sylvian entered Christoph Amann’s studios in Vienna for the initial sessions that would surface on Manafon some five years later. In reality, though, this wasn’t the beginning. The concept was to expand the approach of responding to freely improvised music through his own automatic writing, pioneered with such impact on Blemish. This time around the musical improvisations would not be Sylvian’s own, nor the output of a solo performer as was the case with Derek Bailey, but rather the result of the chemistry between small constellations of artists proficient in the field.

Manafon

‘A man out of time’

Manafon. Manafon? What could it mean? Scurrying to a search engine it was soon discovered that David Sylvian’s new album was named after a small rural community located in the hills of Montgomeryshire, the northern part of the Welsh county of Powys. But that just raised more questions! Why?! Continue reading “Manafon”

Small Metal Gods

‘A new frontier’

From the completion of The World is Everything tour in 2007 there was great anticipation of David Sylvian’s next vocal project. Sketchy details surfaced of earlier studio sessions with members of the experimental improvisation group Polwechsel, and a release date in autumn 2008 was mooted – but the year closed without any news.