An apt companion to Phil Manzanera’s recent and quite remarkable memoir (his father was quite possibly a Cold War spy), 50 Years Of Music is a demonstration of Manzanera’s unending quest to make music ‘Sin Fronteras’, as he puts it, working with collaborators who have included Dave Mattacks, Robert Wyatt and Charles Hayward among others.
This collegiate spirit is particularly evident on his debut Diamond Head (1975), which has a similar drive to Brian Eno’s Here Come The Warm Jets and features Eno himself on vocals. It’s as if this group of artists were searching for a mode of post-prog music in advance of punk. 1977’s Listen Now (801), featuring 10cc’s Kevin Godley was more suave, white funk, 1978’s K-Scope Steely Dan-ish.
1990’s Southern Cross is a little bland, sucked into the oppressively ubiquitous production tropes of the era, falling well short of the edge, saxes oozing like brie, but on his sporadic releases since then, Manzanera picked up the slack, with 2005’s 50 Minutes Later a return to the experimental spirit of his solo debut, and the plangent guitar stylings of The Sound Of Blue (2015), on which he settled into a furrow of impressionistic sonic watercolouring.
Extras include a buzzing techno reworking of 1982’s Impossible Guitar by Theo Parrish, live versions of material recorded in the appropriate plushness of Ronnie Scott’s and a real treasure, a previously unreleased demo of Pink Floyd’s version of One Slip (above), co-written with David Gilmour.
