Maps and Diagrams :: if all will be lost (quiet details)

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All in all, this personal take on the quiet details concept exhibits a deftly turned lower-case sound design prowess that bespeaks years of audio craftsmanship, constituting a compelling entry to a growing catalog.

Its maps more sketchy, diagrams more blurred

The quiet details series continues apace, with a periodicity that makes dwelling on work from earlier in the release schedule a necessity; of which a virtue is made via the opportunity to flag up Maps and Diagrams‘ take on the quiet details concept (“where each release is an artist’s own unique interpretation of that phrase.”). Tim ‘Diagram’ Martin has been active, periodically prolific, since 2001, with 30+ albums behind him, solo and collaborative, on labels like Time Released Sound, Toytronic, Fluid Audio, Expanding, Static Caravan, Nomadic Kids Republic, False Industries, Chemical Tapes, Smallfish, to name but several, while also curating Handstitched*, bespoke packaging specialists for the more experimental and electro-acoustic elements of his own work, esp. M&D, and other kindred spirits.

In this conceptually quieter paradigm, if all will be lost is among the most nuanced of M&D variants, its maps more sketchy, diagrams more blurred. Subtle melodic motifs processed, passing moments sketched, passed through tape and made into loops for recursive deployment shifting towards more experimental tonality and interstitial aperture, making for more fluidity, less structural constraint, and more reflective space in the production process. With a meta-theme of a world in climate survival mode, each piece of musical material was wrought into working tracks; elements possessed of a rough familiarity—metals, wood, strings, synths, field recordings, processed into a world all of its own—possessed of a serendipitous sense of some euphonic tonal encounter always about to occur. A profile/review of Tim Diagram of some vintage (igloomag, 2012) had it that he ‘…navigates expertly between mood paradigms of light and dark, playing off a reined in prettiness against a more ambiguous undertow, that guards against falling into the sea of twee, or straying into the land of bland inhabited by some of his sub-genre kin…’ This seems as apposite as ever on if all will be lost, as is his ‘way with the freeplay of forms between real, unreal, hyperreal,…’

All in all, this personal take on the quiet details concept exhibits a deftly turned lower-case sound design prowess that bespeaks years of audio craftsmanship, constituting a compelling entry to a growing catalog curated by Alex Gold (Fields We Found) which has seen more recent releases from such luminaries as Ian Boddy, Slow Reels, Seabuckthorn, and øjeRum.