Posts Tagged ‘Fabulous Diamonds’

Underwater Visitations Sunday Brunch Takeover #2/Episode 10: The Woodsman Episode

Thursday, June 24th, 2010


Heat can be pretty psychoactive. I have suffered through enough late summer DIY shows in this city to know that it can make you feel drunk when you are dry, induce dizziness, lightheadedness, blurred vision, tunnel vision — and, on rare occasions, even predator vision. It can dull your experience of the most bad-ass jam you’ve heard all year while heightening its impression in memory. I am actually pretty glad that I missed Woodsman’s set at Monster Island Basement in Brooklyn last Friday because it don’t think I would have survived to tell the story. When they swung by Newtown Radio last Sunday, the station was probably just as cramped, but the free-standing air-conditioner wheezing dutifully in the corner lowered the temperature to a level that was pleasantly hallucinogenic. Each color and each sound was more saturated than usual, each beat went straight to the temple. Maybe it’s just that Woodsman is so percussion-heavy, but I couldn’t help feeling like was trapped inside my favorite Can video — minus the long and stringy hair.

“Underwater Visitations Episode #10: The Woodsman Episode

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Download the entire episode here

Playlist after the jump.
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Sightings: Fabulous Diamonds, “Track 3″

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Fabulous Diamonds II, the Austrialian duo’s second full-length, opens with drummer and vocalist Nina Venerosa yelling something unintelligible at synth player Jarrod Zlatic as he counts off the first bar; still, seemingly against all odds, they begin in perfect unison. Chapter Music’s Guy Blackman, who will be releasing the album on CD next month, informs me that this detail is somehow characteristic of their sound: Fabulous Diamonds’ minimalist kraut-nostalgic jams cut are razor sharp, searing with the white-hot precision of two musical hearts that have learned, over the years, to beat as one. But all that repetition wouldn’t do anything for us if it weren’t for what lies beneath. “Track 3,” one of the album’s shortest and punchiest, is haunted by a certain nail-biting tension — one that pushes up against this primitive skeleton throughout, granting it shape, granting it movement. I’ve only tested this out in my apartment late at night, but I think it may have the same effect on actual bones.

Fabulous Diamonds, “Track Three” (Fabulous Diamonds II, Chapter Music/Silt Breeze)

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