Mano Le Tough

Danny Turner found out more

As Mano Le Tough, Irish-born Niall Mannion garnered immediate critical acclaim for his debut album Changing Days (2013) – a melodic, genre-hopping blend of modern disco and atmospheric house. Following his second album, Trails, and almost a decade living in Berlin, the guarded yet increasingly sought-after producer/DJ upped sticks to seek solace in the serene, rolling hills of Meilen near Zurich.

Stuck at home over the past 14 months and looking for creative impetus, Mannion returned to his formative years spent playing in post-punk/indie bands. Picking up his instruments once more, his third Mano Le Tough album, At The Moment, is a melancholy yet cautiously optimistic collection of expressive vocal pop, containing slithers of the dance culture he’d been forced to abandon.

When did you move to Zurich and is that a good base for an electronic musician?

“I moved here around five years ago after living in Berlin for eight years before that, so it was a bit of a change. Obviously Zurich isn’t the electronic music mecca that Berlin is, but that suited me at the time. If you travel a lot there’s few better places to travel from, and up until Covid times I was travelling every weekend.”

It sounds like you took the opportunity to make this album while the pandemic was raging. Has the time spent recording at home been useful from that perspective at least?

“Yes it has been because I’d wanted to make a new album but that process was getting interrupted every year by being on the road too much. This time, although it was extremely difficult for many reasons, being at home gave me the chance to work properly on the record and finish it. I’d been gathering material for quite a while. A couple of tracks survived from those original demos, but most were made starting February and March 2020.”

Would it be fair to say that working from home while raising a young