MANO LE TOUGH

CHANGING DAYS (Permanent Vacation)
16/20

Having impressed over the last few years with a slew of melodic and melancholic house 12”s on labels such as Buzzin’ Fly, Internasjonal and Permanent Vacation, Dublin’s Naill Mannion has presented us this cohesive LP of gorgeously textured and thuddingly sad contemporary house. It’s Mannion’s deft stylistic appropriations which elevate Changing Days above the standard rag-tag bag of singles and aimless filler that make up 90% of dance LPs. The Sea Inside is a queasy nautical sway (yacht- house?) and Please is imbued with vapor-trail deep house pads and plaintive, thick, chewy vocoder lamentations. Nothing Good Gets Away simmers with the kind of abstract-house fizzles that bring the wonderful DJ Koze to mind and Dreaming Youth could quite happily soundtrack a volcano-based level in a videogame with its intoxicatingly woozy arabesque synth melody warping that weaves its way around a hushed minimal pulse. There’s a tenderness and emotional openness at the heart of Changing Days that means as undoubtedly great as tracks like Moments in Truth would sound deployed at the perfect point in a club set, the listener is delighted to share a domestic space with Mannion’s manipulations.

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Words: Josh Baines