He’s released more studio albums than the Rolling Stones, y’know…

While we’re on the subject of new releases (see post below) a special mention must be made of Diamond Mine by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins. Released at the end of March, this album has been something of a slow-burner, quietly picking up a Mercury nomination along the way to becoming ‘Best Album of the Year’, in my house at least.

King Kenny Anderson is, in the best tradition of these sorts of things, a songwriters’ songwriter. His laconic Fife drawl and wheezing accordion could easily have him marked down as a folkie, and perhaps in the truest sense of the word that’s what he is, but he shouldn’t be so easily pigeonholed. High Heid Yin of Fence Records (King Creosote, gettit?) he’s a non-stop writin ‘n recordin’ machine, with around 40 homemade and indie-released albums to his name (aye! – don’t believe me? start believin‘!) If you’d never heard it but assumed you knew all there was to know about King Creosote, it could be easy to dismiss Diamond Mine as yet another lo-fi strum through of half-baked ideas. Oh no! Seven years in the making, it’s an album packed full of stunning wee songs bursting with ideas.

This is in no small part down to the production work of Hopkins, an engineer with a set of ears more accustomed to the bleeps and farts of electronica than a b flat minor on electric guitar. He re-works many of King Creosote’s older songs and unfinished chord progressions and enhances them with his own take on ‘found sound‘ and ‘musique concrete‘.

As Hopkins (talking about the track Bats In The Attic) told Drowned In Sound around the time of release,“You can hear the guitar part from his original version at the beginning, but I played it back through a mobile phone speaker simulation to decimate* the quality, so that it retained its rhythm, but none of its notes, giving me freedom to change the chords of the song completely.”

Did you get that?

There’s more (great wee video……)

There’s a real ambience without it being ambient. The whole thing ebbs and flows, joined seamlessly by faded voices, the chinking of greasy spoon tea cups and a warm, wooly thwump…..thwump…..thwump….. that recalls the heady days of listening to LPs on my big old 1970s Grundig music centre. Or John Peel on Medium Wave under the covers at midnight. It’s a slow album, yet barely over 30 minutes long, and when you get to the end you’ll want to play it all over again. How many contemporary albums can you say that about, eh?

The Music:

Normally as an appetiser I’d post a track or two, but seeing as Fence are about as cottage industry as you can get I won’t on this occassion. You can have Home In A Sentence from 2007’s Bombshell LP instead. Uplifting melancholia that would’ve been a global smash hit in a parallel universe.

Now off you go and buy Diamond Mine. Follow the link there on the right hand side.  If you don’t like it I’ll give you yer money back. What’ve you got to lose?

And another thing…….

A sister EP sneaked out under the radar a couple of months ago that plays quite nicely alongside the LP. You can get Honest Words on vinyl and download here.

And another thing……..

* The Roman Army didn’t like to lose a battle. On the rare occasion that they did, the Centurion would ask his Optio (his second-in-command) to select 10 Legionaries at random. Then the other soldiers would be forced to batter them to death. And that’s where the word ‘decimated‘ comes from.

Here endeth this week’s history lesson.