Audiopile Review: Seven years have passed since Djrum shook the electronic underground with On Portrait With Firewood, an album so deftly constructed, intricate and referential that it made its eventual IDM tag fall short as a descriptor. Djrum signalled his anticipated return with last year’s Meaning Edge EP, a razor-sharp honing of his skills that rivalled even Aphex Twin’s lobe-twisting onslaught of recent years. And it also came alongside his absolute mind melter remix of Objekt’s classic hit of wiggy electro, “Ganzfeld”, running its memorable bass line through an impressive rollercoaster of free-spirited electronic subgenre overload. While it seemed we were in for another toppling bout of rhythmic intensity, Under Tangled Silence skirts these expectations for the most part. His well discussed classical background, usually led by his ruminating piano miniatures, has been a consistent presence on his albums. But this time around it takes a big leap to the front, his trademark keys elevated throughout while also bringing in harp, percussion, mbira, and cello. Working as a continuous piece, Djrum cycles through his expertly programmed rush of snares, twitching percussion and wobbling bass, intertwining his head rush pointillism with cascading harp, waterfall piano runs and swoops of cello, counterbalancing the knottiness with an airy reprieve. Hands down his best outing thus far, and one of the absolute highlights of the year, regardless of genre. Very necessary.

***

“We go through life. We shed our skins. We become ourselves.”

This line from Patti Smith was going round and round Felix Manuel’s head as he gradually constructed Under Tangled Silence, his first album in six years and a record of a literal creative rebirth. Felix originally began it in earnest in 2020 Covid lockdown, but a catastrophic hard-drive meltdown destroyed almost all his work and sent him close to psychic collapse himself. However, ultimately this pushed him to rebuild from scratch and in so doing to confront and reassess every part of his musical and psychological processes.

The result is utterly extraordinary. Felix was a child prodigy as an instrumentalist and his advanced musicality has always been prominent in his music, but here he has put himself front and centre as pianist, harpist and more. And this sense of exposure as a performer interweaves with an unflinching emotional openness too. Where sometimes electronic production as advanced as this can use intellect and techniques as shields from soul-baring, this is the sound of someone who can boldly say “I feel things, I cry all the time, and I’m not afraid to say it or show it in the music.”

But this doesn’t mean there’s a move away from the soundsystems and dancefloors where Felix made his name as a uniquely innovative vinyl DJ. Even just in the opening track “A Tune for Us”, minimalist piano ripples and jazz drumming flow into the breaks of vintage jungle – and as the structure of the LP unfolds, a deep ambient meditation like “Hold” can sit very naturally in between the futurist dancehall of “L’Ancienne” and the high-definition acid house mind movie of “Galaxy in Silence”. In fact, as with the hands-on musicianship, that gutsy big-speaker electronic impact is delivered with more certainty, more expertise, more personal flourishes than ever. And all of those elements are more integrated than ever too: the sound of a total musical personality emerging afresh is truly something to behold. An already remarkable talent has been refreshed, reborn and is making the music of his life.