Concealed Under A Strange Tongue suggests an elegant, diversified, and pleasant listening experience where meandering emotional chords meet spacious ambient electronica, processed field recordings, occasional sampled voice elements with a near new-age tone, and a neo-psychedelic/cosmic Americana feeling (for the sunlit psych-country-esque guitar sequences), along with near Steve Tibbetts-influenced mystic grooves.
We can see the molecules too
Mana ERG is the main creative project of multi-faceted sound artist and post-rock guitarist Bruno de Angelis. His side project titled LHAM (in collaboration with Giuseppe Verticchio from Nimh) has recently caught our attention for its evocativeness, vitality, and complex orchestration, merging captivating melodious art-pop moments, easy listening with electronic synthesized patterns, and diverse arrangements. Reviews of the two albums are available from Igloo.
Bruno de Angelis has forged a convincing musical career throughout the years, jumping with ease from one subgenre to another, but always keeping in mind a crossover between electro-pop music and singular indie rock moves. His first albums were published back in the early ’90s as rare limited editions. I’m particularly intrigued by his minimal lo-fi tape Net’s Vis, with its near In the Nursery vibe (from their neo-classical era), while also prefiguring what dungeon synth would become years later. Bruno de Angelis can be considered a pioneering creative artist, and it is great to see that his compositional ideas have come back to the fore, taking a new musical direction more in keeping with modern-day indietronica, shoegaze, and instrumental post-rock.
This new album suggests an elegant, diversified, and pleasant listening experience where meandering emotional chords meet spacious ambient electronica, processed field recordings, occasional sampled voice elements with a near new-age tone, and a neo-psychedelic/cosmic Americana feeling (for the sunlit psych-country-esque guitar sequences), along with near Steve Tibbetts-influenced mystic grooves. It is difficult to mention names for comparison, but for this hybrid of styles, surfing on meditative soundscapes with post-rock and neo-psych influences, I would say that the Dick Slessig combo and Mogwai come to mind. The retro-ish space ambient passages are somewhere between Markus Reuter, Erik Wøllo, and, more generally, releases from Projekt.
I particularly like the work on textures, distortion, and micro-events in tracks such as “Graves of the Fireflies,” or in the droning, fuzzed-out “I Can See Molecules.” If you are into lush ambient textures, cinematic melodicism, and neo-progressive music, this album is definitely for you and comes highly recommended.
Concealed Under A Strange Tongue is available on XBDA. [Bandcamp]
