private cd 
Oliver Mann : sings (AUS,2005)****'
I was contacted by J.Weaver who wanted to recommend me some independent artists from Australia, which he thought deserved international exposure. From his choice Oliver Mann pretty much stood out.
On Oliver Mann’s privately released album from 2005 we can hear a very individual talent, a clearly classically trained operatic (with a baritone core) voice with its own distinctive uniqueness, who seems to have written and performed an album that defies any categorization. He could easily depend for his songs and improvisations entirely on his gifted voice and timbre or way of singing, if he wanted too, and already have all the necessary effect on the listeners. It is a voice that could easily meet bell canto, gospel, opera or cabaret, or any other form, but he doesn’t. He just brings the listener to different areas, in songs mostly, but also in really odd and avant-garde collages of improvisations. One time as a singer-songwriter he sounds like Fred Neil, with a similar effect in his voice : carrying the listener’s attention almost like a meditation. At some other point you might think of Anthony and the Johnsons or Baby Dee’s personal cabarets and emotions, but this has a much more a classically trained vision of singing.
“A book” opens the CD with a more classical inspiration and starting point, with an a capella multiple vocal arrangement, lead by solo voice, -but with an oddly scratching needle on a record in the background-. Except a few warmly sung songs with a warm voice presented like a father telling stories to his children, Oliver’s theatre is in fact much more surreal, and while a core of comfort remains, he brings us to something far more contemporary, a theatre situation with various images, arrangements (guitar, mandolin, clarinet, singing saw, by several guest musicians), and unexpectedly changing timbre and rhythm like turns in a story. It will have the listener’s attention for its 32 minutes, but nobody could say from the start to which areas he had been. Recommended.
