#17 Feat. Hype in Electronica

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 Diamonds 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 UKs 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 Oxfords Jazz Orchestra – who appears frequently across Diamonds compositions and on Placid Wakefulness. No stranger to a concept piece, Diamonds 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 Petersons 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 and conducting interviews with some of the worlds most influential electronic music artists, including Objekt, Object Blue, Mr Bongo, and Call Super on the relationship between music and the human psyche. 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 Wakefulnesss 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 EPs 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 Diamonds singular artistic talent and the fascinating interplay of neuroscience and how we experience and enjoy music. Essential and unmissable! Michael Diamond says : This EP was a byproduct of the past couple of years, in particular my last year of study when I became interested in the (previously new to me) field of the neuropsychology behind music perception and why it makes us feel a certain way. This meeting point of science and music captivated me, and felt like the perfect intersection between my two interests: that there are certain features that seem to work on the brain to create a captivating emotional musical experience. Working closely with Prof. Clarke has been truly enlightening for me. When I was making these tunes I noticed how Id inadvertently made use of some of the brain mechanisms / techniques wed been researching / discussing. I was more aware of what was happening in my music as a result. What became apparent to me is that my own music seems to possess features which are simultaneously conducive to both sleep and wakefulness - I tend to enjoy energising drums / bass combined with more spacious calming atmospheric instrumentation and percussion. This combination is also apparent in a lot of the music I enjoy listening to. The EP combines these elements across its course with placid sleepy qualities but at the same time some of the energising elements of dance music too. Making music takes me in between these two states of consciousness. I loved working with Alex again, an incredible flautist and saxophonist, as well as G-lo whos cello cameos really elevated the piece for me. My long-term hopes are that this project and some of the other bits Ive been doing in the NHS will lead to new ways in which we can use music for therapeutic purposes. There is a growing amount of evidence to show that these kinds of soft interventions like music / arts therapy have a massive physical and psychological benefit - I find it very interesting to find out why they have an effect and how we can all derive benefit from it.

Alex Wilson, Michael Diamond, George Lloyd-Owen