Michael Manring
Thonk

Is it possible to imagine two musical genres as distinct and antithetical as Heavy Metal and New Age? Is there a known case of a musician, so versatile yet a bit schizophrenic, capable of combining them in a single album? The answer is yes, and the person in question is bassist Michael Manring, in "Thonk", a work from 1994.

Michael Manring was for a long time the official bassist for the Windham Hill label, a label tied to the musical phenomenon that developed and gained maximum resonance (and sales) at the end of the 1980s, known as "New Age Music".

From a New Age album, one predominantly expects acoustic music rich in crystalline, relaxed, evocative sounds, but (with due, proper exceptions) harmless and a bit dull. And indeed, this is the style of Manring's first three solo works for Windham Hill. An association that, while allowing him to achieve a certain fame, also penalized him in terms of image, relegating him to the role of the "Jaco Pastorius of New Age". A reductive definition, given that he (who was indeed a student of Pastorius) is perhaps the greatest innovator and experimenter of the electric bass in the last twenty years: impressive speed (ça va sans dire), tapping techniques, genius use of harmonics, "on-the-fly" tuning changes - sometimes dozens of tuning changes within the same track, so much so that Manring had a bass specially built for this type of complex acrobatics.

At a certain point in his career, demonstrating remarkable versatility, he collaborated with musicians of Heavy Metal extraction, founding the group Attention Deficit, with Alex Skolnick and Tim Alexander, publishing a couple of interesting Alternative Rock works. "It's always music," he would serenely reply to those puzzled by such a "double somersault" of styles.

"Thonk" is an album that summarizes all these tendencies, and one must acknowledge the intelligence and openness of Windham Hill, which does not deny the bassist the opportunity to create a work so distant from his previous productions. The unwary New Age listener might have a nasty surprise inserting the disc into the player and being overwhelmed, from the first notes of the CD, by a tight guitar phrasing that decisively veers towards Hard Rock. Alex Skolnick of Testament and Steve Morse (at the time in Deep Purple) duel with each other in very curated tracks, full of tension but extremely enjoyable even for those—like me—who are not outright fanatics of the genre. Lots of space for the solo bass, combined in all its possible variants by the leader's immense virtuosity, never an end in itself but an expression of a happy musicality. You'll be left speechless: "Monkey Businessman", a true showcase of exquisite bass playing, "My Three Moons", three basses played together with a "circular" technique creating a refined polyphonic weave (for the curious, there's a nice explanatory video on YouTube). And then the group tracks, with the guitars of the aforementioned champions competing for the fastest and most spirited solo. Lots of technique, but also lots of energy, lots of fun, atmospheres that sometimes border on fusion ("On A Day Of Many Angels"), sometimes recall progressive ("Cruel And Unusual", "You Offered Only Parabolas").

An album that all bassists should have, but that can be enjoyed by non-professionals as well, thanks to Manring's great musicality that knows how to make his bass "sing" like few others in the world.