Myles Manley single ‘Relax; enjoy your night upon the town’ due 17 February 2017
Single release: ‘Relax; enjoy your night upon the town’ by Myles Manley
Release date: 17 February 2017
Label: Little L Records
More info: Artist website
'Relax; Enjoy your night upon the town!' with this utterance Myles Manley is being at once both sincere and fatalistic. "I always knew I was the best!" says the dashing and supercilious young artist with a smile, "but at certain points I realise that that might not really be the case. It is always the case though."
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."
'Relax; enjoy your night upon the town' is set for release on February 17th via Dublin's Little L Records, available on 7" and all major digital platforms.
Press reaction to date
- "The Irish singer/songwriter pulls his own "Praise You"-style dance moves across a city, his jerky movements embodying the anxiety of his folk-pop single" – The Fader