Oct. 17, 2012 - Issue #887: Dedfest
Free Dimensional
Diamond Rings {recordings_bands_mg} Free Dimensional {/recordings_bands_mg}
Astralwerks,
2
If you're a fan of underground music—"hipster" if you're feeling uncharitable—the kind of fan that visits music blogs, trades tapes and playlists with friends, goes to shows in basements that cost less if you bring a vegan snack, there's a moment of discovery where an artist shifts your consciousness. After that, you carry that band as a totem, a short form of your own personality. It speaks to you on a deeper level. It belongs to you.There can also be a moment, unfortunately, where that artist ceases to be "yours" and belongs to everyone. A moment like that is not one of joy, where you feel the consciousness of the world shift to match your own. Instead, "your" artist's output shifts to match what is demanded of them by the larger, lowest-common-denominator public.
Free Dimensional is Diamond Rings' moment. The second one.
Gone is the weird-older-brother feel of his previous work. Gone are the Casio tones, the clumsy mixes, the personal lyrics. They've been replaced with the new, slick package of "Diamond Rings," production Tiësto would find acceptable, lyrics that are platitudes.
Take, for example, Free Dimensional's lead single, "I'm Just Me" as well as its accompanying video. Ostensibly a song about accepting yourself for who you are: apart from a few early lyrics, the whole thing is made up of rhyming gibberish, and the music is seamless, perfect. In the video, Diamond Rings stands motionless in the smoke, lasers and shadow, it gives away nothing of the person he's purporting to be so accepting of.
Compare that with the high-specificity of "All Yr Songs" ("In the summer weather / We'll put sunscreen on together / I would not want your skin to burn") or the goofy dance video to "Show Me Your Stuff" (which sees him dance in a bully-recalling school gym, herky-jerkily but still with plenty of smoke and lasers) and you can see he's not the same person.
"So what's wrong with that?" you might ask. "Why you gotta be such a snob, you hipster ballbag?"
Of course nothing is wrong with it if you're a circuit-party DJ looking for the next track. This is great dance music and, mixed with some careful beat matching and a little amyl nitrate, it'll make you rock hard. But that don't mean it's got soul.
Diamond Rings' appeal is that he's the weirdo at the dance party, the guy whose moves are out of time with everyone else's and who doesn't care—who revels in that. That's why you couldn't take your eyes off him. Now? Now he could be anyone.
vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
Privacy Policy:
Vue respects your privacy. We will not forward your personal information to any other organization except as required by law, and will use your e-mail address only to respond to your comments. We reserve the right to edit and remove comments for length, clarity and/or if they are illegal or inappropriate. Your email address is never shown to visitors to vueweekly.com. Read the whole policy at: http://vueweekly.com/privacy
Comments policy
Comments go online directly without first being seen or reviewed by editors at Vue. Don't personally attack people, don't be defamatory, don't be spam-atory, don't hawk your band, don't pretend to be someone else, be clear, be on topic, be nice. Read our extended comments policy here. »
We use Disqus for our comments system. What's that all about?
We found that managing the comment community at Vue was easier to do with a system like Disqus. If this isn't straightforward to you, get help here.