Michael Diamond Vinyl, CD & Tape 2 Items

Indian born, UK artist Michael Diamond, co-founder of Vasuki Sound label and club night, announces new EP Placid Wakefulness, featuring single ‘Reverse Entropy’. available on all platforms 5th December via Vasuki Sound.

A uniquely multifaceted talent, Michael Diamond’s unforgettable ‘jazzed electronic’ sound is informed by a spectrum of influences, not least by intersection of the scientific and practical worlds of electronic music. From the music scholarship he won to read Medicine at Oxford where he quickly discovered new ways in which the two worlds can co-exist, his days were spent immersed in academic studies of music perception and cognition, while his nights were spent alongside the likes of Ben UFO, Batu & Ross From Friends, playing at one of UK’s most long-established nights ‘Simple’. A chance encounter there also led him to connect with musical collaborator Alex Wilson – the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year semi-finalist and then musical director of Oxford’s Jazz Orchestra – who appears frequently across Diamond’s compositions and on Placid Wakefulness.

No stranger to a concept piece, Diamond’s previous project, the highly personal and critically acclaimed exploration of culture and identity, Third Culture (album of the month/year acknowledgments from Stamp The Wax, Juno and Phonica Records, also earning him a DJ Mag ‘One To Watch’, a Youth Music Awards ‘Rising Star’ nomination and a Gilles Peterson’s ‘Future Bubbler’ accolade) explored the experience of being a ‘third culture kid’ born in Kerala, India and growing up in the UK with a sense of fractured identity.

On Placid Wakefulness, Diamond honours his academic research working alongside world-renowned musicologist Professor Eric Clarke. Specifically how music may affect our sleepfulness and wakefulness, how instinctively we are soothed by some sounds and energised by others - ‘what it is about dance music that makes people go hard all night long?’ and ‘what is it about ambient music that makes people feel the opposite way - to lull them into this sense of calmness or rest?’, mindful of the unconscious ways his findings were already manifesting in his work as an artist. And while his research provides a framework for some of the ideas within the piece, Placid Wakefulness can be viewed as more of an unintentional byproduct, or case-in-point of his findings, rather than a piece consciously constructed in their image.

Across Placid Wakefulness’s four tracks we find the artist unpacking a range of sonic ideas on this theme, from ambient calm to club-adjacent rhythms. The EP opens with hypnotic lullaby of ‘A Way of Listening’ complete with transcendent flutes provided by Alex Wilson, cello by George Lloyd-Own and a mellow groove. On the more energised ‘Reverse Entropy’, rhythmic ambiguity moves to rhythmic disambiguation with a four-to-the-floor beat as the track progresses, releasing tension and inviting an urge to dance as a jazz sax moment transmutes into glorious techno percussiveness.

On ‘Turning and Turning’ the bpm shifts down a gear, a sonic dreamstate where tough textural rhythms create a kind of liminal state tension. Closing out the EP we return to a sense of restfulness with the EP’s title track, where a gorgeous picked guitar loop interplays with vibrating ambient pads and a slow and steady beat. The Placid Wakefulness EP is a captivating testament to Diamond’s singular artistic talent and the fascinating interplay of neuroscience and how we experience and enjoy music.

One and a half years after his successful debut EP ‘You Like Jazz?’ on Salin Records, Michael Diamond comes back with another fresh and powerful release. Possessing a strong jazz feel albeit cloaked in the veil of a more modern electronic sound, the concept EP ‘Silk Road’ marks the next level for the 22-year-old as he dissolves any boundaries between genres, creating a symbiosis of sounds and textures to take you to places only he knows. We still enjoy remembering how we celebrated the release of his ‘You Like Jazz EP’ back in January 2020, Oxford, where Michael Diamond and Christophe Salin DJed back-to-back alongside live improvisation from saxophonist Alex Wilson. It was at that special weekend that Michael played some of his latest ideas to us over a coffee in his student room. They were the first versions of ‘Through Ivory Gate’ and ‘Adrift Penitent Moors (feat. Alex Wilson)’. Michael later wrote ‘Adrift Corrosive Waters (feat. Alex Wilson)’, ‘Glistening Currents’ and ‘Lullaby of Birdland’ especially for this EP and Salin Records. He decided to team up with his friend Alex Wilson again to provide some serenading sax lines to bring the whole story to life. ‘Through Ivory Gate’ pays homage to Michael’s Indian heritage. Inspired by the theme of Asian culture and the rest of the EP, Michael’s close friend Áine Kim Kennedy crafted an abstract poem to be read alongside listening to the music. It is a beautifully enigmatic verbalisation of the journey the EP intends to take you on. Finally, Daria Salin embodied the music and poem through her painting. The final result is a marriage of artforms; Music, Poetry and Art, all to be absorbed together as a holistic experience. We hope you enjoy your journey through the Silk Road!