NEON

★★★★ “Beguiling new music” — Financial Times

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”.

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TRACKLIST

01. Neon 1: Shinjiku (Hannah Peel)
02. Neon 2: Born of Breath (Hannah Peel)
03. Neon 3: Vanishing (Hannah Peel)
04. Quanta (Lyra Pramuk)
05. Joy Boy (Julius Eastman – digital only)
06. Double Sextet: I. Fast (Steve Reich)
07. Double Sextet: II. Slow (Steve Reich)
08. Double Sextet: III. Fast (Steve Reich)

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LIVE DATES

24 June – Manchester – Manchester Classical, Bridgewater Hall
19 August – London – BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall

ALBUM CREDITS

Rakhi Singh Music Director, violin
Alex Jakeman Flute
Oliver Pashley Clarinet
Hannah Roberts Cello
Beibei Wang Vibraphone
Katherine Tinker Piano

Joseph Reiser Producer, recording/mix engineer
Hannah Peel Producer
Adam Szabo Producer
Valgeir Sigurðsson Mastering

Alphabet Studio Album artwork, design
Graham Hector Video footage and imagery