Under Tangled Silence

Album review

Felix Manuel packed a whole lot of aural information into 32 vacuum-sealed minutes on 2024's excellent Meaning's Edge EP, which proceeded from frenetic drill 'n' bass explosions like a lost Luke Vibert release under his Plug guise, or something Rephlex would've churned out in the late '90s. That is if they had a flautist in house. Wasting no time, the EP played like a supercut that started in the middle—all nervous energy with musicality breathlessly keeping up. In nearly double that timespan, Manuel's second full-length, Under Tangled Silence, also reaches that frenetic pulse, but it gets going from the beginning.

Manuel isolates his composer and soloist sides to showcase them individually—on piano, harp and most impressively, mbira, the African thumb piano—just as often as his pot of beats boils over. Only the cello on three tracks is outsourced. The effect is like if you melted the neoclassical cuts on Aphex Twin's sprawling Drukqs into the alternating hyperactive rhythm tracks, or maybe if Jlin's loftier material proceeded from a different palette, the implied infinities of rave rather than footwork's mysterious pulse jerking you back and forth.

The path from the all-ivories opener "A Tune for Us" to 11 piledriving minutes of climactic "Sycamore" is a long journey, so strap in for a lot of cross-fading between the two along the way. (Your pacemaker should be geared up for "Three Foxes Chasing Each Other.") Loveliest in show is the thumping centerpiece "Galaxy in Silence," which balances a lot of plates on two hands and one nose—no surprise for a DJ who's been known to juggle three turntables at live sets. The cello provides fanfare for familiar acid synths to burble up beneath encouraging claps and the elements build up and break down like the entire album in miniature, while the waves of circular piano prove as relentless as any of Djrum's blurred-bpm tricks. © Daniel Aaron/Qobuz