MANAFON

An exploration of music in free form, we have the excellent seventh solo studio album by David Sylvian - 2009's 'Manafon'. This is a sonically intense and claustrophobically intimate album that dares to wander across the territories of avant-garde music and presents several pieces that can be described as sonic collages, full of discrete sounds and cryptic playing, all of which happens solemnly in the background, while upfront we have the majestic voice of David Sylvian delivering the lyrical content of an album that dares to be delicately conscious about social issues and rather intelligently mysterious, philosophical, and evocative. 'Manafon' is definitely an experimental project that may often remind you of the music of Andrew Liles and Ryuichi Sakamoto as one may discover an artistically selfish element to the album that renders it both slightly challenging yet indefinitely rewarding and spacious as a continuous listen - one that offers an engulfing ambience intertwined with vivid imagery.

Inspired by the life and poetry of Welsh poet Ronald Stuart Thomas, 'Manafon' is indeed heavily informed by the themes dealt with by the Welshman, with the captivated Sylvian penetrating his art and re-proposing it in improvised musical form. Brief glimpses of acoustic guitar and a piano, a nearly complete absence of percussive instruments and an extensive personnel of collaborators, a carefully curated cast of musicians selected for particular reasons by Sylvian, the entire album might seem a puzzle, but it is actually a very fine work, in which each element plays a vital role. After all, the whole is made up of the sum of its parts and each part represents the sum at the smallest scale - this rule has to be valid for the boundary-breaking 'Manafon', in which improvisation and chamber music creep into the sonic palette. The listener will quite literally experience glitching, slurping, knocking and abrupt sounds that imitate both nature and the realm of ghosts perhaps - an engaging, haunting, intimate listen that should be taken in its entirety. Definitely one of Sylvian's strongest and most daringly bizarre albums.