Simonp wrote:My deluxe edition finally arrived yesterday. It's extremely beautiful and I'm very pleased with it. I watched Amplified Gesture late last night and while it was informative I would like to have seen more than just the musicians talking about their work. I would like to have seen live performances from each of the musicians to learn a bit more about their work. I'd also like to know what the piece of music is that is playing during the menu sequence.
Anyone else had a chance to watch it yet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsMQ2JExxYEThis is from the menu on the Amplified Gesture DVD and is what I had wanted to discuss with you when you finally received your copy Simon.
From the very first listen, I assumed that the music was leftover from the Manafon sessions. It sounds like two different musical ideas spliced into one excerpt. At one point, while Tilbury is being interviewed, you can hear a solo piano clip of the second part of the excerpt. It caught my ears right away and really is quite engaging. And I can't help but hope that this material is released in some form in the future. The first part of the excerpt sounds like an outtake from the London sessions.
So I recently corresponded with Chris Dahlen (press release writer for Manafon) in an attempt to get some inquiries flowing out there. Here is some of our exchange:
Baht:
In the biography you contributed to the Manafon website, you include that Sylvian recently worked with Eddie Prévost, John Butcher and Dai Fujikura on the music for an installation title When We Return You Won’t Recognise Us. Do you have any knowledge if that music will be issued on SamadhiSound at some point in the future?
Also, when positioned on the menu screen of the Amplified Gesture DVD, music plays which isn’t recognizeable from Manafon – though the sound of the instruments are easily recognizeable…it seems as though the music was created from the London Session lineup which included Tilbury, cellist Marcio Mattos, and the signal processing of Joel Ryan – yet possibly embellished by a violinist {I’m assuming this is Philipp Wachsman, who didn’t happen to make the final cut on Manafon} rather than Evan Parker on saxophone. Anyway, from this I am logically concluding that there exists material from these sessions which was not contained on Manafon. Do you think that these excess sessions will ever be released?
Dahlen:
I’ll check with Samadhi if they have plans to release music from the installation. I know David and the team have some interesting releases lined up – I hope to hear them soon – but I don’t know about that one yet.
And yeah, I was really curious about where the track from the Amplified Gesture menu came from too! That’s definitely Tilbury, and the other names you mentioned make sense. I’ll look into it. There are a number of extra sessions, and they include players who aren’t even on the final album (such as Noel Akchote). I haven’t heard of any plans to release it. After Blemish, David released Derek Bailey’s original tracks for the album as the To Play album. But I have no idea if he has any plans like that for the instrumental Manafon sessions.