Artist – Album: King Creosote and Jon Hopkins – Diamond
Mine
Released: 28th
March 2011
Sounds Like: Cardigans, bushy beards, and neeps and
tatties.
Contentious decision time – rather than Houses of the Holy
from hard rocking titans Led Zeppelin, I’ve opted to listen to Diamond Mine, a low
selling, low key collaboration by Scottish troubadour King Creosote and ambient
producer Jon Hopkins...
Personally, I was absolutely enamoured by the pair’s
sketches from Scotland, a collection of songs that evocatively brings up images
of stone wall cottages and cosy pubs in a fishing town in Fife. The album
begins with a barely heard welcome from a bonnie wee lass and the muffled
sounds of a shop counter transaction. Brian Eno-esque piano chords provide a
sparse backdrop. The lightly strummed guitar don’t make an appearance until the
second track ‘John Taylor’s Month Away’, a
song much more in the style of typical KC (KC rules OK?). His lilting, softly
accented croon captivates. And the album follows that pattern from there on in.
Ambient, atmospheric break is followed by lovely acoustic ditty, follows
ambient break, follows acoustic ditty. After just over half an hour, we finish with
the last few notes of gentle coda ‘Your
Young Voice’ and we’re transported back to our real lives; in my case, the
charcoal grey skies and tall buildings of Manchester.
It goes some way to show the high regard that I hold this
album in that i haven’t crow-barred into this review as many national
stereotypes and clichés as humanly possible, as I did for Frenchies Air, the
(not actually) Canadian Neko Case and St Patrick’s Day. Och aye the noo indeed.
Albumaday... rating:
7/10
1. First
Watch – 2:37
2. John
Taylor’s Month Away – 6:32
3. Bats
in the Attic – 3:43
4. Running
on Fumes – 6:36
5. Bubble
– 5:35
6. Your
Own Spell – 3:51
7. Your
Young Voice – 3:17
Listen to ‘Bats in the
Attic ’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAt4sk8znk4
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Also released on the 28th March:
1973: Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy
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