NEW RELEASE - BIRDMASK 'ISOLDE' EP
Tonally, Isolde is a departure from what was on display with Tristan, leaning into more traditional song structures and band focussed genres. The lofi experimentation and mournful atmosphere of the previous EP showed something unanticipated in Manuel’s songwriting, with a selection of largely ambient and electronic tracks steeped in sadness and beauty; one moment soulful and stark, the next frenetic and soaring.
The new EP locks into a cohesion, but once again shrugs off uniformity. It’s exploration of genre lives up to its predecessor, albeit with a track list that lean into a drum-driven and heavier sound, whilst still mustering the same feelings of melancholy and despondency. This time, it is contrasted with an overarching feel of optimism, as if Manuel is telling us that it’s fine to live through the hard times, when the brighter days are around the corner.
The themes are apt reflections of the two EPs namesake - a 12th century chivalric romance adapted by Richard Wagner titled Tristan und Isolde.Tristan, a tragic character whose social standing doesn’t allow him to marry his love is marred with tension and uncertainty, whilst Isolde; the Irish princess betrothed to Tristan’s Uncle, is depicted with optimism and brightness.
Now with the combination of the Tristan EP and the Isolde EP, we’re painted Manuel’s full picture. Listeners are left with without a shadow of a doubt that these tracks are not just what was left on the cutting room floor of the latest Zeal & Ardor session, but that Birdmask has its own defined identity – one in which the lens is focussed inward to scrutinise an emotional state, and be guided through personal journeys.
And there lies the most important distinction between his two projects; Manuel has always felt a slight disconnect with Zeal & Ardor, as it finds him acting as a different person to explore societal topics. Birdmask on the other hand offers a true expression of himself, in what he describes as his “gleeful stupidity and childish exploration.”
It sees Manuel confront more subtle personal themes, and how his ego sits with feelings of imposter syndrome, “I write songs and I don't really know what I'm dealing with and then years later I'm like, Oh, wait, I wrote that because of this and that’”. Recent years, Manuel says, have led to him having to work at “remembering what is me, and what is just the echo of other people’s projections. I have to be alone sometimes just to work out: am I doing this because people expect it of me, or is it something I genuinely feel?”
Birdmask predates Zeal & Ardor, as Gagneux began making music under that name in 2011. He could never quite get it together with his musician friends to put a band together, “so I figured I could just learn producing on my own, and then, as a last resort, I figured I could make music on my own.” For several years he self-released on Bandcamp, labouring away in complete obscurity, releasing scores of singles and two albums, then Zeal and Ardor happened, and over a short period of time, Gagneux suddenly and unexpectedly found himself the toast of the metal world.
All throughout that time however, Manuel craved returning to the music he had been making before – “the yin to Zeal & Ardor’s yang”, as he puts it, and never ceased writing tracks with the sole intention of having them become Birdmask releases. In fact, whilst the duo of EPs were recorded over an 18 month period, the tracks were all written over an estimated 5 year span. And Manuel is at pains to stress this is not a side project; this is its own thing, his original vision. “I think I'd like to try to reach different people. And there's a conscious effort of separating the two, just because it's different music, at least to me. The reason I wanted to distinguish it is because it would be easy to gain an online following of people who just associate me with Zeal & Ardor and by proxy just happened to like this.”