Best of 2020
Bass clarinet maestro Ben Bertrand and Stroom make perfect bedfellows. Stroom's perhaps best known for digging up hidden artefacts/dreamworld dispatches from Europe's recent past, but in Bertrand they've found a contemporary who seems to be channeling those same impulses right now. Manes betters Bertrands 2018 debut, pushing deeper into the liminal spaces that connect the outer/fourth world excursions of Roberto Musci, Gigi Masin, Hassell's Vernal Equinox et al. Hazy & hypnotic instrumentals that are also actually very beautiful and enveloping. It's the deep timbre of the clarinet which adds a mahogany-rich quality that's hard to otherwise replicate. It's possessed of that distinctly European smokiness that also defined recent shop favourites Karl Lindh and Ô Paradis. The mid-record one-two of Incantation 3 -- Delayed Monologue is particularly immersive, the kind of none-more-black coffee and opiate pairing that shifts the listener into gently psychedelic reveries. Top business.
