Manysheva - Alataou (2018) [Hi-Res]

An exotic-sounding name is about to become intimately familiar as the 28-year-old Russian, real name Valentina, releases her first album under the Manysheva guise. The project marks a new beginning for the young woman, who left everything (including her former band Tinavie) behind over three years ago to join her sweetheart in France. Luckily for us, her first love, music, came along with her.

At the tender age of 8, Valentina enrolled in music school and started learning violin. 17 years and a few prestigious institutions later, she graduated with an additional instrument: her voice, with which she expressed her innermost feelings through songs and melodies she’d started writing along the way. Her half-Kazakh, half-Ukrainian background provided plenty of opportunities to be musical: her childhood memories are replete with road trips during which she’d bellow out traditional songs with her sisters and cousins. Family gatherings saw the whole family join in as grandpa kept time by pounding on the dinner table.

Other inspirations grafted themselves to her subconscious with time: first came Russian rock, and then acid jazz and trip hop – lots of trip-hop, like Portishead, Radiohead, Massive Attack, Morcheeba. It was around that time, in 2008, that she met the musicians that would join her in recording three indie-tinged pop-rock albums as Tinavie.

Right after landing in France in 2013, Valentina set out on a new musical path, to accompany this new chapter of her life. Without her Tinavie bandmates around (although she longs for an eventual reunion,) the young backing musician-turned-singer was ready for her new project. With a new identity, Manysheva, and producer, Marc Collin, she got to work writing a great number of songs, which now form her first LP, Alataou. The title is a reference to the Kazakh mountain where she spent a great deal of her childhood.

In a radical departure from the band dynamic, the recording process saw Valentina developing the album’s lyrics and melodies on the piano and violin, while Marc dug around for new electronic sounds and beats. This new osmosis between studio wizardry and songwriting prompted the Renaissance woman to get acquainted with Marc’s machines herself, deepening the creative interplay. Cuts from the album also feature Greek musician Olga Kouklaki lending a hand.

Setting aside her native tongue, as well as her own unique poetic newspeak, which she has been known to employ, much of Alataou is sung in English. She can also look forward to singing in French, another language she has become fluent in.

Regardless of language, a striking feature of her voice is its resemblance to a certain icon, the timeless Kate Bush. It turns out however, that Manysheva professes a greater love for another British act – the darker, more ethereal Cocteau Twins, and lead singer Elizabeth Fraser’s voice. Their influence – as well as yet another great Brit’s – was a major foundation of the melodies on Alataou: “I see myself as a bit of a James Blake in a dress.” Among her other influences, the 20th-century Russian classical music of Prokofiev, Schostakovitch,

Stravinsky and consorts stands out, as well as less obvious but equally consequential ones: the young composer can look to three major phases of her life for inspiration. The first is her daily experience, the second is the feelings and ideas hiding through her inner landscapes, and the third is in the books she reads, like Murakami’s cult novel 1984.

Despite its resolutely electronic shell, Manysheva’s music is inhabited by an acoustic soul that carries her purest and most celestial of voices. Dive in and discover its myriad of secrets.

Tracklist:
01. Manysheva - Faith
02. Manysheva - Still
03. Manysheva - Moonflower
04. Manysheva - Come to Me
05. Manysheva - Mess
06. Manysheva - Cat's Town
07. Manysheva - Not a Friend
08. Manysheva - Nightfall
09. Manysheva - Billowing Clouds
10. Manysheva - Lightning
11. Manysheva - Addiction
12. Manysheva - Rain