DIAGRAMS "Antelope"

Here’s another is-it-a-band-or-is-it-a-person musical project sat behind a name that renders internet searching futile. A single song on Soundcloud with minimal supporting information does little to shed further light. And the song itself?

‘Antelope’ is a very English, almost pastoral piece of bouncy math-pop. The flat-vowelled, breathy vocal mirrors the jaunty rhythms in comparing a woman to the eponymous animal (“elegant..with the majesty of the night” but “she can fight with the big cats”) whilst referencing Big Bang Theory and the Matterhorn along the way. It makes less sense written down but located within the joyfully layered synths, elastic funk bass, sparing horn section and scatting backing vocals it works perfectly – still very English but with a freedom and spring that is more Kilimanjaro foothills than Kidderminster.

The website-cum-blog for Diagrams yields a little more info: ‘Antelope’ is from an EP due to be released this July (with artwork by Chrissie Abbott). It does seem Diagrams is a single person and is using the blog to talk not just about the making of this EP but to link to music, books and art he likes. Music includes the (excellent) Table on Static Caravan, the folky guitar of John Smith and bedroom folktronica of Broadcast 2000. Elsewhere Diagrams references visual artist Gerhard Richter, break-dancing, New Orleans funk, French chronophotographer Étienne-Jules Marey and a recent book purchase on harmony and numbers (“Harmonograph: A Visual Guide to the Mathematics of Music")

Learned without being smug, quirky without being too obtuse, it’s an intriguing insight into the mind of Diagrams without giving too much away about the man himself. Look forward to more music and more information this July.

Diagrams 'Antelope' by diagrams