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If you’re one who’s prone to nightmares, night terrors, or occasional insomnia, Manual’s Drowned in Light may be your perfect remedy. Aside from a couple ambient albums and a rarities collection, this is the first record in five years from Denmark’s young Jonas Munk, a.k.a. Manual, and it delivers all the warm synth richness and shoegaze guitar washes that we’ve come to crave since the 2002 release Ascend. Not quite ambient and not quite electronic, the aural landscape of Drowned in Light is just as the title suggests — a seamless, shimmery ride through soaring melodies and lush, ethereal arrangements that evokes artists like Air, Brian Eno, or Durutti Column, if they spent a lot more time staring at the ocean. It’s tough to single out any one track in this collection of connected ideas, but the journey starts with the momentary anthem “Warm Circuits,” an intro that feels like a deep breath before plunging into the complex, gorgeous groove of “Afterimaging,” arguably the best track of the bunch, if you had to pick just one. Rather than switching gears from song to song, the stylistic transitions happen within the songs themselves, as in the Spanish-touched “Biarritz” and the gentle beats of the album closer “Issa.” Themes rise, fall, and reoccur with luminous grace throughout Drowned in Light, paving the way for countless nights of sweet, sweet dreams.

Source: LimeWire Music Blog