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DIAGRAMS

Moon Diagrams

Cemetery Classics

    Moon Diagrams – the solo project of Deerhunter co-founder and drummer Moses Archuleta – returns with a second album, Cemetery Classics, on June 21. The 12-track album is a co-release between Sonic Cathedral (in the UK and Europe) and Angus Andrew from Liars’ new label No Gold (in the US and the ROW) and was mixed by James Ford. It features guests including Anastasia Coope, Patrick Flegel (Cindy Lee) and Josh Diamond (Gang Gang Dance). It’s Moses’ first new music since 2019’s Trappy Bats mini-album and the follow-up to 2017’s acclaimed debut Lifetime of Love and everything seems a bit more extreme – from the Basinski-esque degradation of ‘Neptune’ to the Faustian industrial noise of ‘Listen To Me’ via Art of Noise-style postmodern pop (the first single ‘Very Much My Promise to You’), Daft Punk bangers (‘Fifteen Shows at One Time’), trip-hop, shoegaze, Jan Hammer, Depeche Mode, late Leonard Cohen and more. “It’s about finding out your arms are too short to box with god,” says Moses of the emotional force that courses through Cemetery Classics. “It’s the inverse of a desert island disc – a graveyard disc. Songs to take into the afterlife.”

    TRACK LISTING

    1. NRG
    2. Mousetrap
    3. Fifteen Shows At One Time
    4. Metallics In Fur
    5. Big Ref
    6. Rewop
    7. Brand New Effie
    8. Neptune
    9. Very Much My Promise To You
    10. Listen To Me
    11. Left Hand Of God
    12. Fragment Rock

    Moon Diagrams

    Trappy Bats

      Moon Diagrams is the solo recording project of Deerhunter co-founder and drummer Moses John Archuleta. Two years after his acclaimed debut album Lifetime Of Love, Archuleta returns with Trappy Bats, a mini-LP that interweaves three brilliant new Moon Diagrams tracks with radiant reworks from Shigeto, Angel Deradoorian and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Trappy Bats was largely recorded in a single night as a means to process the intense intersection of Archuleta’s social, political and personal hysteria. Having been arrested for an unremembered missed court date, Archuleta spent 24 hours in a holding cell, offering ample time to reflect on his life, the current state of the nation (the jail televisions were showing a constant feed of the then-active Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville) and the other inmates. Upon being released the next day, Archuleta found himself suffering from a bout of insomnia and feeling the need to process everything through music.

      Here, Archuleta is in his freest and most grateful state, channelling the turmoil and confusion he was experiencing into an unencumbered fit of creativity. It’s pure, unadulterated escapism with an even more callous palette of sounds than before, clearly split between two moods. On what you might call the ‘up’ side, the title track could be the sonic spawn of Not Waving and Terrence Dixon: a snarling mix of percussive clatter and washes of orchestral tones coalesce into a pulsating groove across its almost 12-minute runtime, the underlying ’80s aesthetic making it feel like a turbo-charged Shep Pettibone remix of New Order, looped to infinity. Detroit electronica don Shigeto goes even further and implodes the track into a kaleidoscope of bone-jarring, viscerally giddy dance music. Over on the ‘down’ side, ‘Wipeout’ is a slow-motion waltz of dusty piano and clattering percussion loops that coolly stumble along with the woozy, nocturnal flare of The Caretaker or Philip Jeck. The haunted reverie ventures even deeper with a beatifically electrified ambient re-imagination by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Daisychain’ goes almost completely off the grid, offering up a sweetly submerged slab of constantly evolving murkiness in the vein of Demdike Stare or a dosed Andy Stott. The sweet shuffle levitates even higher with a celestial re-interpretation by sonic visionary Angel Deradoorian, formerly of the Dirty Projectors.The end result is an extended traipse through Saturday evening fever-dream techno, Sunday morning cigarette jazz-pop and every blank thought in between. 

      TRACK LISTING

      1. Trappy Bats
      2. Trappy Bats Meets Shigeto
      3. Wipeout
      4. Daisychain
      5. Daisychain Meets Deradoorian
      6. Wipeout Meets Jefre Cantu-Ledesma

      Lifetime of Love is the debut album by Moon Diagrams, the solo recording project of Deerhunter co-founder and drummer Moses John Archuleta. Gradually pieced together over a ten-year period, it finds Archuleta processing various stages of love, loss and regeneration via forlorn outsider pop, minimal techno and warm, weightless experimentation. Hymnal opener “Playground” has echoes of Eno and Grouper; lengthy workouts such as “The Ghost and the Host” recall long-lost Harmonia outtakes, or something from one of Warp’s Artificial Intelligence compilations; the bitter pill pop of “End of Heartache” has the scratchy guitar of New Order circa Brotherhood and the square pegness of Dazzle Ships-era OMD. Several songs are instrumental, while “Bodymaker” features Sian Ahern (Eaux, Sian Alice Group). Subtly grandiose and quietly epic, Lifetime of Love really does live up to its title: a hopeful and curious beginning makes way for a morose middle, before a bittersweet, optimistic end. 

      TRACK LISTING

      1. Playground
      2. Moon Diagrams
      3. Nightmoves
      4. Blue Ring
      5. The Ghost And The Host
      6. Magic Killer
      7. Bodymaker
      8. End Of Heartache

      When songwriter and producer Sam Genders last donned his Diagrams hat, captive listeners found themselves truly stunned by the Streatham Hill artist’s imaginative and inventive arrangements that made up 2012's debut album Black Light. Having now upped sticks from his London lodgings and settled in Sheffield with a new lease of life and wife, fresh pastures and friendships are what form the heart of Diagrams’ brand new album Chromatics.

      “Relationships are a constant thread. In all their frustrating, exciting, mundane, beautiful, wonderful, sexy, scary glory,” reveals Genders of the album’s themes." Whilst Black Light fizzed with electronic effects, synth-bass, programmed beats and low-key funk grooves that brought about comparisons to the leftfield pop of Arthur Russell, Metronomy, Steve Mason and Hot Chip, it’s without doubt that Genders’ next offering falls closer to home comforts and marks the next step in Genders’ renaissance. Take lead track ‘Phantom Power’; it’s the track which truly sums up what it’s like to find yourself forever reassessing. “It's about feeling like you're losing a grip on your sanity at one moment, then feeling inspired and up for anything the next. Or frustration with yourself yet believing that it's possible to sort yourself out,” explains Genders.

      TRACK LISTING

      Vinyl / CD Disc 1 
      1: Phantom Power
      2: Gentle Morning Song
      3: Desolation
      4: Chromatics
      5: You Can Talk To Me
      6: Shapes
      7: Dirty Broken Bliss
      8: Serpent
      9: The Light And The Noise
      10: Brain
      11: Just A Hair's Breadth

      Disc 2 (CD Only)
      1: Phantom Power (Instrumental)
      2: Gentle Morning Song (Instrumental)
      3: Desolation (Instrumental)
      4: Chromatics (Instrumental)
      5: You Can Talk To Me (Instrumental)
      6: Shapes (Instrumental)
      7: Dirty Broken Bliss (Instrumental)
      8: Serpent (Instrumental)
      9: The Light And The Noise (Instrumental)
      10: Brain (Instrumental)
      11: Just A Hair's Breadth (Instrumental)


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