Sometimes it pays to abandon a prominent band and strike out on your own – even if the payment isn’t exactly financial. Ask, for instance, Muddy Manninen, who left WISHBONE ASH a little less than ten years ago to deliver a couple of solo albums, his latest being "River Flows" from 2020, and get involved in a couple of projects, including BLACK PEARL and VOODOO RAMBLE. The guitarist has also been performing with sax player Patsy Gamble, and it’s really surprising that their rapport didn’t take the two to the studio earlier – yet finally the friends went there and emerged with ten pieces.
Sequenced to form a melodic flow, these numbers – recorded as a duo – gel into an instrumental platter titled “Precious Life” and made available on Bandcamp – sadly, only digitally. Deeply spiritual, it’s a thing of pure, undiluted, vibrant beauty, with blues kept to a minimum.
MUDDY MANNINEN –
Precious Life
“The project started a few years ago when Patsy got herself a beat box – don’t ask the name of it, but it had different kind of drum loops and keys pads in it. So we started experimenting!” says Muddy. “Always keen to explore new ways to make music, our little ideas and jams started to become songs. The world nowadays seems to focus quite a bit on the negative, so we thought we’d do the opposite and concentrate and remind ourselves, and hopefully people listening to the album, that life is a beautiful thing. It’s been very inspiring to work on, because we were able to do exactly what we wanted, mixing different styles.”
1. The Dawn
2. Alone In The City
3. Rat Race
4. Serenity
5. Ageless
6. No Man’s Land
7. The Long Goodbye
8. So Little Time
9. Precious Life
10. The Prayer
