Back in the days, before YouTube and Shazam, you couldn't just track down that specific song that got stuck in your head, let alone that one instrument you hear on that track. In 2003, nineteen-year-old Manu Delago - already a gifted drummer, accordionist and pianist - came across a simple mp3 of an instrument that was still unknown to him, which succeeded in enchanting him completely. After an endless search, it turns out to be a hang, a kind of reversed steel drum. The Austrian teenager asks his father for some financial support and impulsively orders one. It turns out to be a fruitful start to his career as a professional musician. A career in which the Austrian not only constantly reinvents his instrument, but also thinks about the earth and people.
Written by Dave Coenen
Foto’s: Pascal Triponez
September 2007: after years of disciplined practice, Delago places a video of his own composition on YouTube. In that video - with the highest available resolution of 144 pixels - we see the Austrian playing his hang, a little timid but with passion. The instrument makes a soft, almost liquid sound, with a sound palette somewhere between piano, percussion and marimba. Delago proves his musical versatility with the 'metal music' shirt he wears; his inventiveness and eye for detail with the dozens of egg cartons that hang on the wall behind him as homemade insulation material. The early YouTube audience fell head over heels for the game and sound: the video went viral and made it to YouTube's top charts.
The video has a snowball effect. Through a number of group projects and many solo records, Delago ends up in the psytrance world via British producer duo Shpongle, he subsequently plays five world tours and an album full of none other than Björk, he works several times as a band member and songwriter with sitar player Anoushka Shankar - which earns him a Grammy nomination - and he tours with The Cinematic Orchestra, Ólafur Arnalds and a whole host of other greats. During all this, Delago also continues to continuously innovate its own percussion system.
Twelve years after his viral success, Manu Delago looks back on the phone. “I never thought I would be known as a hang player. I am still a drummer by origin. I've been drumming since my second, I sometimes used that hang. But every time I play it, people react very enthusiastically. Somehow its sound has a natural attraction to people. And because of that, I gradually started to dedicate myself to it more.”
“For me, composing for the hang of it is a form of musical pioneering. I taught myself something completely new with it, and there are very few people who use it as the basis for their music. But even though it is such a nice and versatile instrument, the longer you have been reinventing your instrument, the more difficult it becomes. I am now increasingly concerned with the context: how do I apply the penchant between other instruments and other sounds? How do I mix it? Am I distorting the sound? That way, the bond I have with the hang is constantly changing.”
At the time of speaking (in October 2019), Delago has just completed an intense tour sprint, which also includes his first major solo shows in the Netherlands. In the last months of the year, many more shows with other artists follow. But no matter how turbulent his life as a (touring) musician is, Delago also tries to innovate on tour. Not only on stage, but also off it. For example, his extremely busy tour schedule caused him to review his sleeping and rest times. And a record even emerged from this heightened degree of self-care.
“I've taught myself through all the hustle and bustle to get enough sleep and plan my tours well in advance. With enough sleep, you can cope with so much more than a lack of it.” And should that sleep ever again suffer from all the musical bustle, Delago's own ode to the night Circadian (2019) works as an excellent reminder and calmer. The concept album is a musical rendition of the different stages of sleep and nocturnal existence, cleverly using 24-note patterns to reflect the "circadian rhythm," or the human 24-hour rhythm.
Circadian's way of working appears to be completely opposed to Delago's ambition to continuously reinvent the hanging drum. “Because Circadian is about the circadian rhythm, you hear more repetition on this album than on my previous work. As a composer I initially had some problems with that. Before I started this record I saw patterns and repetitive elements in music as lazy and one-sided, an easy extension of your music without having to worry about development and expansion. It sparked a conflict in me, because as a listener I actually quite enjoy rehearsal. Constantly repeating patterns give me a spatial feeling, I get the time to immerse myself in what I hear, to move in it. I can understand the music much better because of that.”
Other musicians also inspired Delago to allow rehearsals and thus come closer to themselves. “Just before I started the album, I toured with Ólafur Arnalds. He uses a lot of repetition in his music. I thought, if it works for him, why not do it? The listener's ear won out over my composer's ear - so I started to integrate repetition in my own music. And I liked it. It makes Circadian the record that, through something that initially seemed boring and safe, taught me to break with my patterns. Both musically and technically.”
Delago did not make Circadian to please himself, nor score with the public. Letting go of preconceived ideas about what music should be turns out to be an essential part of making Circadian. “My previous albums featured vocalists and were a bit more 'radio oriented' in that sense, but I've let go of that concept. During the Circadian recording process, I basically didn't care at all about the length or the format of the album - whether it was instrumental or not, it didn't matter to me. Perhaps that 21-minute track is a statement against the bite-sized playlist consumption of music and the apparent chill factor of my body of work. I only get 0.003 cents per stream via Spotify, whether that track lasts 2 or 21 minutes.”
That 21-minute epic, 'Delta Sleep', was recorded live at 4:30 am. “I really wanted it to have a nighttime, quiet, almost magical atmosphere. It's the track on the album that embodies the deepest stage of sleep.” As a result, the track is actually too quiet to play during live shows. A problem masked by the melodic catchiness of the other tracks and patterns on the album.
On the album's core track, "The Silent Flight of The Owl," Delago captures a dreamlike encounter with an owl. “It must have been about 3:00 AM when I was brushing my teeth and an owl landed in front of the window a few feet from me. It went fast and it was dark. Owls don't normally get that close to a window or a house. I know it happened, but no one believed it, so in that sense it's a dream for many.”
And his dreams, does he keep them for himself? “Ever since I started Circadian, I've been keeping a sleep diary. But in it I only write down the length of my sleep and some calculations. So it's not about the content of my dreams. I did notice that my dreams only got really crazy and confusing when I was touring with many bands at the same time. Last year I crisscrossed the world. That's fun, but very tiring. After a few years of intensive touring you realize that you have to be careful with your energy.”
This made Delago realize that he not only wants to pay more attention to himself, but also to the people and nature around him. “The human element in music is very important to me. I try to interpret my music live in the most natural way possible, as I do now with my nine-piece ensemble. The omission of electronics evokes more positive reactions than ever at our live shows. And that gives me what I'm looking for: an element of human connection in a performance. My goal is to surprise people and do something they haven't heard or seen before. Composing and playing don't make sense to me anymore if I can't do anything new. There is already so much music on the internet, on the radio, on stages. As a session musician I want to play almost everything that is asked of me, but when my name is on the bill, I do my very best to make it innovative and special.”
And that's how Manu Delago expands his connecting, humanitarian mission. “I don't just want to connect through music, but also have the lowest possible negative impact on other people and this planet. I do that by touring as environmentally friendly as possible.” That is why the ReCycling Tour was on the program in May 2020: a musical tour through Austria in which all stages are covered by electric bicycle. Powered entirely by pedal and solar energy, with special trailers for instrumentation, and meals without disposable plastic, made entirely organically by local fans and chefs.
Due to the corona crisis, the ReCycling tour is unfortunately suspended, but Delago does not let his creativity go within the walls of his own house. For example, he records new videos and productions that only consist of sound bits of percussion sounds from his own home. With the tapping of kitchen utensils, slamming doors and the beeping of the washing machine, he gives house beats a whole new meaning.
Editor's note: this article was originally published in Dutch. Some quotes may have been altered in the translation.
