Manchester Collective - NEON (2023) [Official Digital Download 24/48]

NEON, the third studio album by Manchester Collective, contains a paradox at its heart. The album is unambiguously about the night, about dark city streets, evoking glass, concrete and slow, incessant rain. However, it is also by some margin our brightest, breeziest and most optimistic record. Here, the seductive nocturnal rhythms of Hannah Peel and Steve Reich sit alongside music of a different sort – unsettling, introspective works by Lyra Pramuk and Julius Eastman.

Electronic sounds and field recordings run through the record. In the titular ‘Neon’, Peel uses samples from Shinjuku Station in Tokyo to evoke teeming musical scenes full of life. Her joyful music reflects Steve Reich’s Double Sextet, which sees the Collective performing against recordings of themselves. Producer Lyra Pramuk’s composing debut, ‘Quanta’, opens with the sound of a huge grandfather clock that waxes and wanes throughout the piece. ‘Joy Boy’ by Julius Eastman is similarly obsessed with time, instructing the performers to “create ticker tape music”.

Manchester Collective:
Rakhi Singh, music director, violin
Alex Jakemanm, flute
Oliver Pashley, clarinet
Hannah Roberts, cello
Beibei Wang, vibraphone
Katherine Tinker, piano

Tracklist:
01. Peel: Neon: 1. Shinjuku
02. Peel: Neon: 2. Born of Breath
03. Peel: Neon: 3. Vanishing
04. Pramuk: Quanta
05. Eastman: Joy Boy
06. Reich: Double Sextet: 1. Fast
07. Reich: Double Sextet: 2. Slow
08. Reich: Double Sextet: 3. Fast


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