Last time I heard from Jorge Mantas was with his cdr on Mystery Sea. I had shared a cd with him on Thisco, and I really liked his dark, concise, sometimes lo-fi approach to digital drones. I’ve lost traces of him for a while and now I discover he’s mellowed out: pink layout, Proust quotes everywhere… what the hell… No, really… This is undoubtedly a new course for Mantas, but it’s a great one, and his musical ability has improved dramatically. His drones have turned melodic and moody, and beneath the sugar-coated layout they have maintained an edge that prevents them from becoming dull or nauseous (with the darker “L’amour, c’est l’espace et le temps rendus sensibles au coeur” reminding of his previous production). With its 13 tracks and 65 minutes, it’s a quite lengthy work, and my loveless heart forces me to take a break now and then – but the quality is high throughout. Guests like Jos\u00c3\u00a9 Lu\u00c3\u00ads Merca (Mat\u00c3\u00a9ria Prima, at electric guitar), Tobias Strahl (Dies Natalis, at acoustic guitar) and C\u00c3\u00a9cile Schott (Colleen, reading Proust, obviously), help make some tracks more varied, and Mantas knows how to dose their contribution. @c closes the album with a glitchy, more upbeat remix, which is ok but maybe a bit redundant. I would recommend this disc to anybody into Dead Texan, latest Beequeen or Stephan Mathieu, and melancholic electronica in general – it hardly gets any better than this, me thinks.<\/p>\n
Eugenio Maggi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last time I heard from Jorge Mantas was with his cdr on Mystery Sea. I had shared a cd with him on Thisco, and I really liked his dark, concise, sometimes lo-fi approach to digital drones. I’ve lost traces of him for a while and now I discover he’s mellowed out: pink layout, Proust quotes … <\/p>\n