{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Infobox album | name = Islets in Pink Polypropylene | type = Studio album | artist = Anthony Manning | cover = Islets in Pink Polypropylene.jpg | border = yes | alt = | released = {{start date|1994|12|01|df=yes}} | recorded = | studio = | genre = {{flatlist| *Electronic *experimental *IDM }} | length = 37:17 | label = Irdial Discs | producer = Anthony Manning | prev_title = | prev_year = | next_title = Chromium Nebulae | next_year = 1996 }}
'''''Islets in Pink Polypropylene''''' is the debut studio album by English visual artist and experimental composer Anthony Manning, released on 1 December 1994 on Irdial Discs. It is best known for the intense and unorthodox method of music sequencing that resulted in the album's creation, as well as its unique sound achieved by its microtonal tuning system.
==Background and composition== ''Islets in Pink Polypropylene'' was created entirely on a Roland R-8, despite its incapability of being a synthesiser, through an unorthodox and complex process that according to Manning took "many weeks per piece".<ref name="FACT">{{cite web|url=https://factmag.com/2014/01/16/forgotten-classics-anthony-mannings-islets-in-pink-polypropylene/|title=Forgotten Classics: Anthony Manning's Islets in Pink Polypropylene|work=Fact|last=Twells|first=John |date=16 January 2014|accessdate=7 July 2018}}</ref> While in ownership of the drum machine, he took advantage of its pitch-shifting values by mapping them out in multiples of 400, listening to sounds from a PCM sound card that would later become primary instruments in the album's compositions, and consequently developing a microtonal tuning system that gave the album its unique tone.<ref name="FACT" /> He compared this process to stopmotion animation: "your days are filled with painfully tiny incremental changes that seem to be getting nowhere. Then, slowly, a shape, narrative, starts to appear. Then, all of a sudden, somehow, it's done."<ref name="manning">{{Cite web|url=https://germstore.bandcamp.com/album/islets-in-pink-polypropylene|title = Islets in Pink Polypropylene, by Anthony Manning}}</ref>
Manning later began to note the structure of his pieces down on graph paper, drawing each track out using the Y axis for pitch and the X axis for time, and sequencing them with the R-8,<ref name="FACT" /> similar to how one would sequence sounds within a spectrogram. After the record was finished, Manning claims "that [he] finally got a chance to sleep again"; the making of the record resulted in him experiencing severe sleep deprivation.<ref name="FACT" />
===Title origin=== The name of the album is a direct reference to environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude's 1983 artwork ''Surrounded Islands'', which indeed involved islets surrounded in floating sheets of pink polypropylene fabric. Manning "happened to read a magazine article about Christo's "Surrounded Islands" installation [...] There was something about a particular cluster of words within a random sentence that seemed pleasing and somehow appropriate. "Islets in Pink Polypropylene" seemed to make as much sense as anything else."<ref name="manning" />
==Critical reception== {{Album ratings | rev1 = AllMusic | rev1score = {{Rating|2.5|5}}<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.allmusic.com/album/islets-of-pink-polypropylene-mw0000117693|title=Islets of Pink Polypropylene – Anthony Manning|publisher=AllMusic|last=Bush|first=John|accessdate=24 August 2019}}</ref> }} ''Islets in Pink Polypropylene'' received positive reception upon release. ''The Wire'' abstractly praised the album, calling it "a liquidy headbox of aural shapes, whose forms hardly change yet seem to encompass infinite viscosity within them, like rainbow pools of oil on water."<ref name="germstore">{{cite web|url=https://www.germstore.com/islets_in_pink_polypropylene.php|title=anthony manning – islets in pink polypropylene|work=germstore.com|accessdate=7 July 2018}}</ref> Later, upon being reissued on 12 May 2016, it also received more positive reception. Record distributor Boomkat commented that "it ''is'' a friendly, memorably involving listen; you might just have to work around its more autistic elements to find a way in".<ref name="boomkat">{{cite web|url=https://boomkat.com/products/islets-in-pink-polypropylene|title=Anthony Manning – Islets in Pink Polypropylene|work=Boomkat|date=12 May 2016|accessdate=7 July 2018}}</ref> John Twells, writing for ''Fact'', praised the album, stating that "it's refreshing to hear an all-electronic album that sounds so organic yet so totally alien."<ref name="FACT" />
In 2017, ''Islets in Pink Polypropylene'' ranked at number 41 on ''Pitchfork''{{'}}s list of "The 50 Best IDM Albums of All Time".<ref name=pitchfork>{{cite web|url=https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/10011-the-50-best-idm-albums-of-all-time/|title=The 50 Best IDM Albums of All Time|page=1|work=Pitchfork|date=24 January 2017|accessdate=24 August 2019}}</ref> Site critic Andrew Nosnitsky wrote that the album embodied the "find-a-machine-and-freak-it ethos" of 1990s IDM music, concluding that "for Manning, it was as if rhythm and melody had never been distinct elements to begin with, and his fusion of the two set an early precedent for the digital signal processing abuse that would come to define IDM at the turn of the century".<ref name=pitchfork/>
==Track listing== {{tracklist | collapsed = | total_length = 37:17 | title1 = Untitled | length1 = 8:38 | title2 = Untitled | length2 = 9:04 | title3 = Untitled | length3 = 4:40 | title4 = Untitled | length4 = 5:46 | title5 = Untitled | length5 = 9:09 }}
==Personnel== * Anthony Manning – production, arrangements
==References== {{reflist}}
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Category:Experimental music albums by English artists Category:1994 debut albums Category:Ambient albums by English artists