Mano Le Tough spends a lot of time in the club. In 2014, the Irish-born artist played more than 100 gigs all around the world—landing at number eight on Resident Advisor’s annual DJ Poll in the process—but when the time came to make Trails, the follow-up to his much-lauded 2013 debut album Changing Days, Mano knew that a little time away from the dancefloor was in order. Although much of Trails was first conceptualized while Mano was on the road, by the time that 2015 rolled around, the record was little more than a collection of notes he’d jotted down on airplanes. Some of the ideas and themes were there, but Mano needed time—and a fair bit of quiet—to let them germinate. As such, he took a break from DJing, decamped to the Swiss countryside and adopted a new routine, one that involved waking up at dawn each day and taking long meditative runs through the hills and forests overlooking Lake Zürich before planting himself in the studio. It was winter andthe environment was frozen and snowy, but amongst all that nature, Mano’s creativity flourished, and the resulting flood of inspiration produced Trails.
