Review: JG Thirlwell: Manorexia Mesopelagic Waters

What does a project sound like recorded with organic instruments, when it has previously only been done in a studio by synthesizers and computers? In the right hands, absolutely breath-taking, and these are definitely those hands. Here we get selections from the first two Manorexia releases redone, reworked and with slight arrangement changes to them.

Like everything JGT does, this does not follow convention. This album falls somewhere between avant-garde, free jazz, and contemporary classical. The opening track of the album The Armadillo Stance is a hauntingly beautiful track, giving the listener a chamber music type feel, but progressively heading with a slow tension building behind it. Moving in the same manor into the next two tracks, Canaries in the Mineshaft and Toxodon Mourning. These first tracks all feel as though they are the soundtrack to a movie, building an image in your mind as to what could possibly be this dramatic and tense. Next you hear The Zithromax Jitters, this has always been one of my favorite Manorexia tracks, so it was a joy to hear it reworked. The frantic strings and piano work with the percussion flawlessly as the song goes through the movements accentuating slightly each instrument as they build a steady pace to the climax of the track, which can be described in one word, amazing. Zithromax is followed by a more melodramatic tune, Chloe Don’t Know I’m Alive. This song shows a much darker and moodier side of the album; as the slow drones take you over the dark ocean floor into an abyss. Fluorescent Radiation is another beautiful track, where the sounds marry each other in a way to create images in your mind to visualize a scene unfolding before your eyes, almost like a dance. Tubercular Bells and Tranque close out the album, they leave you with a sense of drowning and resolve to the deep.

JGT has perfectly titled this release as it feels like a journey through the ocean to the places where the sun no longer touches you, where you are with only dark and the radiant glow of the inhabitants around you. The only complaint I have is it has left me wanting so much more. Not that the album is short, it’s just when something is this good, rarely do you ever get enough the first time through. I know I’m patiently waiting for the third Manorexia installment, as well as any other JGT release to come.

I would like to thank Tzadik Records for partnering with Ectopic Ents, and making it possible to get this album almost anywhere in a physical and digital format.

Score: 5/5