Myles Manley returns with a video for his new 7″ single Relax; enjoy your night upon the town
You can preorder the Relax; enjoy your night upon the town 7″ now ahead of its limited release on February 17th via Little L Records. It will be available digitally too, naturally, but wouldn’t you prefer the luxury of a velour sleeve?
Myles Manley makes idiosyncratic folk music on guitar with rhythms and colours snatched from various places, most recently Eric B and Rakim, Micachu and The Shapes, Moondog, The Clash’s Sandinista, Jinx Lennon, Frankie Cosmos, etc. “I started listening to a lot of early hiphop for some reason and what I loved about it was the clunkiness of the sounds, and the excitement you can hear at a whole new world of opportunities. I bought an MPC and started making idiot beats late at night that I’d write songs to. I’ve always had an ear for weird rhythms and I was able to make stuff that you’d never come up with rehearsing in a room with a drummer.”
A batch of songs written in this way was then taken to human drummers Solamh Kelly and Oisin Trench and recorded by longtime collaborator Chris Barry, who added his own guitar parts, yielding the single you have in your very ears. “It is amazing to play with such musicians because they take a framework and make it come alive, add their voice to it. It starts to express a time and a place. And it starts to express my unbelievable talent.”
Hurrying through Broadstone, Dublin for another midnight session of bopping and guitar strumming at the Mr. Barry’s studio Ail Fionn, the aloof, succulent Manley has this to whistle: “these are troubling times for a reluctant narcissist. You always thought you could saunter through life, gently seeking attention, a joker in the pack, avoiding beatings, harming no-one beyond mild nuisance making. There’re times you wonder, are you lord of the dance or lord of the bluebottles?”
Myles Manley was born in northern England and lived in a few places there until his family moved to Sligo, Ireland, where he became the village indie boy. “I’m in love with songs. What I am seeking in my music is naivety and deliciousness; what I find is also an escape from anxiety. And if you want to really hear it, imagine early days, running round a dead, shithole town at 4am in August, with a person you haven’t kissed, want to kiss and will never kiss. No power. Night night.”
https://mylesmanley.bandcamp.com
