Diagrams – Diagrams (Full Time Hobby)
4/5
By: Josh Daniel
With ex Tunng member Sam Genders at the helm, this immersive selection of modern folk (with a couple of surprises thrown in) will engage listeners with its lush arrangements and bemusing, insightful poetry.
Where Gender's lyrical contributions towards Tunng were once more concerned with the day-to-day tea and coffee of English life, there is a slightly more surrealist, spectral theme to these tales of the everyday. The album art's mirrored images of barren coastlines and triangular staircases echo this sentiment of something beautiful, useless and not quite what it seems.
The jumpy funk of 'Hill' is either the stand out track in a series of beautifully subdued folktronica, or else an absurd freak funk ditty that belongs to a more adventurous outfit. However, it must be remembered that Diagrams’ sense of adventure is set well within the parameters of a normal existence. Here it's the arrangement rather than the words that provides the strange landscape, as the lyrical reminder retorts: “There is no way to be yourself, if you don't go there.” It's an odd shaped, unsettling song, difficult to easily embrace but I keep returning to its quirky, brassy charms like an allusive itch.
The EP begins rather grandly (“There's a wall in the great divide, which wire do they cut to blow it?”) with 'Night All Night', a wonderful vocal harmony infused song of many faces, instruments, rhythms and various percussive trills that hint at a menacing layer underneath this veneer of a stable existence, or more specifically a night out, as the characters “...dance like honest fools.” As an evening out can't be enjoyed without fully succumbing, the protagonist here seems distracted with thoughts of snowglobes, lions and fire, whilst elsewhere “...light and dark twist in the rush.” It's a
familiar story of detachment with a delightful twist, an old friend brought to life with new experience.
Elsewhere, 'Antelope' bursts with a poppy creative energy, strings providing colour underneath the rigid brass in the foreground. 'Woking' and 'IceBreakers' talk of endless days and nights, with molecules, mountains and fireflies all around, but even the image of catching a train to Woking is peppered with peculiar percussive clicks, whirrs and talk of spider's throats. The image of a plain domestic life is under attack - or at least reproach – from creatures showing themselves from behind the sofa, and underneath the wallpaper.
The sound of rain on window, cars passing by during a thunderstorm provides the elongated bookend to the EP, a reminder of how dreary life in England can sometimes seem if you forget to turn things sideways every now and then. With Diagrams, the clock is upside down but still working - you just have to adjust your perspective for these “...abstract patterns on your eyes [and ears].” As Genders sings himself: “If it's wrong to be here like this, it’s the perfect mistake.”
Diagrams 'Antelope' by diagrams
Artists in this article: Diagrams
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