#126 Fabulous Diamonds - Fabulous Diamonds II

Read a promising review of this on dusted.

This is, at heart, a minimalist album. I had always sort of assumed that minimalism in music referred to the number of notes, that if it sounded sparse, it was minimalist. For example, The Books would be minimalist under this definition. John told me about another concept though, which I guess you could call compositional minimalism, which is where you try to compose music by specifying as little as possible. For example, there are pieces that provide a page worth of short snippets, with the instruction to each musician to repeat each phrase as many times as they like, before moving onto the next "loop". Under this definition, the meticulously-groomed soundscapes of The Books are far from minimalist, but bands like The Beta Band come to mind.

There's your crash course in music theory. Anyway, in this latter sense, its a highly minimalistic album, this. Each song is built from a simple, basic loop, some drums that repeat, but that constantly stray slightly from the beat, some repeated vocal lines, and a solo instrument or two that wanders in and out. The majority of the album is occupied by two 10+ minute tracks that follow this formula. Predictably, the result is repetitive, but it kind of works. There's something meditative about it, it reminds me of white light/white heat-era velvet underground stuff.

Weirdly, the same formula is applied to make four 3-minute songs in the middle, and it kind of works there too. I'm not sure why I like this. I think maybe because it works well as background music, or because it manages to be just varied enough to be interesting. Its also, in some indulgent kind of way, the kind of music I like to make, but wouldn't subject anyone else to. The end result, in any case, is a curiously enjoyable listen, given how simple its building blocks are 4/5