About

This line from Patti Smith was going round and round Felix Manuel’s head as he gradually constructed Under Tangled Silence, his first album in six years and a record of a literal creative rebirth. Felix originally began it in earnest in 2020 Covid lockdown, but a catastrophic hard-drive meltdown destroyed almost all his work and sent him close to psychic collapse himself. However, ultimately this pushed him to rebuild from scratch and in so doing to confront and reassess every part of his musical and psychological processes.
 
The result is utterly extraordinary. Felix was a child prodigy as an instrumentalist and his advanced musicality has always been prominent in his music, but here he has put himself front and centre as pianist, harpist and more. And this sense of exposure as a performer interweaves with an unflinching emotional openness too. Where sometimes electronic production as advanced as this can use intellect and techniques as shields from soul-baring, this is the sound of someone who can boldly say “I feel things, I cry all the time, and I'm not afraid to say it or show it in the music.”
 
But this doesn’t mean there’s a move away from the soundsystems and dancefloors where Felix made his name as a uniquely innovative vinyl DJ. Even just in the opening track “A Tune for Us”, minimalist piano ripples and jazz drumming flow into the breaks of vintage jungle – and as the structure of the LP unfolds, a deep ambient meditation like “Hold” can sit very naturally in between the futurist dancehall of “L’Ancienne” and the high-definition acid house mind movie of “Galaxy in Silence”. In fact, as with the hands-on musicianship, that gutsy big-speaker electronic impact is delivered with more certainty, more expertise, more personal flourishes than ever. And all of those elements are more integrated than ever too: the sound of a total musical personality emerging afresh is truly something to behold. An already remarkable talent has been refreshed, reborn and is making the music of his life. — (via Label)

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As an artist, Djrum is extremely difficult to define. The press notes pin him as a “child prodigy.” His style refuses definition. He is fundamentally a very talented musician, one who has absorbed electronic music in all its forms. The central form that percussion takes across the eleven offerings is that of broken beats. Crunched cymbals and shattered snares are tossed over the compositions, rhythms giving texture rather than being points of pivot. Instead, it is Manuel’s instrumentation and choice of tool that is at the album’s core.

Under Tangled Silence is a lost album that has been found, a reconstructed work made whole from fragments. Born in pain, the collection is a triumph of Djrum’s musicality and his tireless effort to revive and reimagine what was gone. An immensely absorbing and original work, an accomplishment of desire and dexterity. — (via Igloo)

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Under Tangled Silence, Manuel’s third album, pulls off a similar feat, but to subtler, more poetic effect. Like his DJ sets, it draws from all corners of his musical universe, channeling his classical piano training as much as his life-changing moments at London squat raves. But unlike the rowdy melee of his DJing, Under Tangled Silence distills these sounds into something fluid, seamless, and technically virtuosic. His rhythmic finesse drives most of the album, but this isn’t exactly a dance record; it’s a mercurial survey of what sound like Manuel’s deepest emotions, delivered with a level of nuance that’s rare in club music.

At the heart of the album is a deft synthesis of wholly different musical traditions. Manuel has played piano since the age of seven, but only gradually wove the instrument into his records. In 2016, he told an interviewer that the piano parts on his Forgetting EP had been “very much composed rather than improvised,” adding that improvisation had “yet to filter its way into my production properly.” Here, piano is the album’s lead instrument, much of it seemingly off the cuff. (Manuel says that “Waxcap,” the album’s second track, began as a jazzy improv he later developed further.) — (via Pitchfork)

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Label: Houndstooth
Format: 2 x Vinyl, 12", 33 ⅓ RPM, Album
Released: 2025
Genre: Electronic
Style: Techno, Broken Beat, Drum n Bass, IDM, Ambient

File under: Ambient / Experimental / IDM
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