Sticking his hand deeper into the machines all around him, Ty Segall is reaching ever further to the outer limits of inner space orbited throughout Twins and Sleeper. Now, more than ever, the chunks of the world that came before are like asteroids formed in his image, picking up speed.
The multi-coloured manias that make up Manipulator are sour-sweet declarations featuring freaks and creeps alike: The Singer,The Faker, Mister Main, Susie Thumb, the Connection Man and The Crawler, to name but a mutant fistful.
To see these characters, to realize their dreams and visions, Ty kept working, kept writing, laying down more tracks than ever. New musical expressions pop and surprise relentlessly throughout all the knockout tunes of Manipulator with many sounds in the mix but most of all, many guitars! And different kinds of strings - the strangled-neck solo of The Singer, recalling the good old days down by the river with Neil. Numbed-and-unplugged discursions spiralling away from the funk on Mister Main. Three-quarter quartets raising their din in a few key places. Waves of sparkling acoustics with ominous, Lovely undertones and then torrents of filthy git-grunge, exploding into the chorus, washing everything away, fusing the blackness of Sabbath with the grime of The Stooges and the sweet swinging tones of The Stones. Why have one guitar solo when you can have a few in the same space? There‰۪s so little time and a lot to say.
In order to ensure that he got it all out, Ty called a few friends to fill in special parts on certain Manipulator songs. He got great touches from Chris Woodhouse (piano, synth, percussion), Sean Paul Presley (vocals), Brit Lauren Manor (vocals), Steve Nutting (drums), Irene Salzer (violin), Jessica Ivry (cello), Matthias McEntire (viola) and the Ty Segall band (Mikal Cronin, Charles Mootheart, Emily Rose Epstein). Plus, Mikal arranged the strings.åÊ