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Reviews

M-Opus — At the Mercy of Manannán
(Bandcamp Rude Chord Recordings rcr004, 2023, CD / LP / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2024-10-29

At the Mercy of Manannán Cover art

The Irish band M-Opus is a highly conceptual undertaking. Leader Jonathan Casey imagined a progressive rock band of the 70s, with a history and a discography spanning a number of years, and the real-world M-Opus brings that fictional music to life. I first encountered them with Triptych (2015) which represented the 1975 release, and in 2020 there was Origins, which is placed in 1978. Now we move back in time to 1972, when the fictional M-Opus released At the Mercy of Manannán, and Casey’s M-Opus has done an amazing job of capturing the feel of that seminal year in rock. We are invited to think of this as a contemporary of Close to the Edge, Foxtrot, Trilogy, Thick as a Brick, and Per un Amico, and other relevant references are King Crimson’s Lizard (1971) and Fruup’s Future Legends (1973). Manannán does not suffer in these comparisons — it is an outstanding album for any year, and it certainly has an aura of ‘72 about it. The recording is crystal clear, but doesn’t have a modern digital feel, and the instruments used are all appropriate for the time period. The keyboards include Hammond organ, acoustic piano, electric piano, Mellotron, and occasional bits of something like a Minimoog; there are acoustic and electric guitars, but no obvious digital effects or metal-inflected tones, just the kinds of things Steve Howe and Steve Hackett were doing at the time; the bass often has a Rickenbacker tone; and there’s not a hint of compression on the drums. The album is great from start to finish, but some standout tracks are “Riverflow,” with some outstanding organ work, the instrumental “Whirlpool,” which flat-out kicks butt, and “Na Bru​í​daí,” with its Irish lyrics. So get ready for a warp into a very enjoyable temporal anomaly courtesy of M-Opus. I can’t wait to see where they take us next. Were there pre-prog psychedelic recordings from the late 60s? Whatever it is, I’m confident it will be good.

Filed under: New releases, 2023 releases

Related artist(s): M-Opus

More info
http://m-opus.bandcamp.com/album/at-the-mercy-of-manann-n

 

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