David Sylvian's "Manafon" (2009/2022)

I recently wrote about David Sylvian’s Blemish, and his 2009 Manafon album has been recently reissued on vinyl. As far as I know, this is the last vocal release by Sylvian, and it’s a unique work due to the musicians he worked with on Manafon. Musicians such as Keith Rowe, and John Tillbury, are both associated with the British avant-garde AMM and The Scratch Orchestra. Evan Parker is a legendary improvising saxophone player, and from Japan, we have the experimental players Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, and Tetsuzi Akiyama. But even with that, Sylvian's voice anchors the work as his own. But this is the first time, at least on record, has made music with those who are, by no means, mainstream musicians. And the turntable noise on the recording, I’m sure, made some listeners take back their album, thinking it was a defect. Alias, it is not, but part of the fabric of this excellent album.

The music is all composed by the musicians on the record, and I’m presuming that it’s all improvised, except Sylvian’s vocals and his writing of the lyrics. Some of the songs are chamber-like with some strings, but it is very much rooted in the contemporary classical music of composers such as John Cage, Stockhausen, Christian Wolff, and Ilhan Mimaroglu. It is also the mirror image of Blemish, but besides Derek Bailey, that album is very much a secluded and closed-off world, primarily due to Sylvian making all the music on the record. Here he continues the adventure but with other like-minded artists. It’s a beautiful collaboration.