Diamond Mine

This is a long-time-coming labour of love in which King Creosote sang and wrote lyrics over the music and backgrounds of Jon Hopkins. The melodies are simple and folky, the delivery is pure and unaffected, and the arrangements are a beautiful array of crystal pianos, picked guitars, harmoniums, eerie choral harmonies, unobtrusive electronica, sporadic strings and occasional backing vocals. It also emerges out of an evocative bedrock of tape hiss, found sounds and static, and the subject matter is melancholy, sweet and filled with loads of credibility-enhancing detail (“Why do we bother with all this fighting and especially at our age,” he sings sadly on ‘Running On Fumes’). Diamond Mine is lovely, basically.