Sunday, October 13, 2013

Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Angel Station, 1979

Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Angel Station album cover, 1979
01 - Don't Kill It Carol
02 - You Angel You
03 - Hollywood Town
04 - Belle" of the Earth
05 - Platform End
06 - Angels at My Gate
07 - You Are - I Am
08 - Waiting for the Rain
09 - Resurrection
I am only the working man (as my other blog suggests) and yes - fitting sixty-something hours into a five-days working week under a decent flu does slow me down with posts a bit. Nevertheless, here goes (just as was promised the last time) something more classical.

I guess the people are right and it is Nightingales and Bombers which should be considered Manfred Mann’s shiniest record. But may be because Spirits In The Night is actually a cover and was known too well to me before getting to hear the album, or may be because Angel Station just sounds more unusual, I am choosing it to represent Manfred Mann and his Earth Band in my List of Recommended Rock Albums.

This LP is a surreal and gentle riddle. A puzzle set in Maurits Escher’s space, just like the brilliant artwork suggests (not that easy to find the proper credits, but I would guess it should be shared between Martin Poole and John Shaw).

Don’t Kill It Carol - the opening track - is the essence of strange beauty. Fastest piece of the album, very poetic in the text and arranged with that synthesized sound of 1970’s, which would totally lose its appeal in the following 1980’s. This mixture produces a cognitive dissonance of a sort - a feeling that carries throughout the tracklist. As if a noir film director would have shot a love story set in the rich cumulus cloudscape. And then the whole thing sounds surprisingly pop.

Well, this is Manfred Mann - The Great Experimentator with a track record in pop, rock, electronic and jazz fusion. One person understanding and feeling the Music and the Universe through it. In case you’re not familiar with, tonight’s Wikipedia references at the post’s end are particularly worthy. I find the album article especially interesting with the insight into the structural aspects of the Angel Station (which I can at least loosely try to understand thanks to the magic film on how music works).

Was thinking of throwing in more epithets to describe this MMEB’s masterpiece, but though even have found them, I'd rather suggest you just press play and listen to the record. In no rush, lights dimmed and with maximum comfort achievable wherever you are at the moment.

A sort of visual intermission next time.



Manfred_ Mann's_Earth_Band_Angel_Station_lyrics_1979.txt

Wikipedia: Album|Artist 


P.S. Went on listening to Masque after Angel Station while writing this - the Mann is really good.