| ARTIST: Diads ALBUM: Make You Dirty LABEL: Blue Rycken Music REVIEWER: Matthew J. DATE: 3-8-09 
Diads is the duo of programmer, guitarist, and bassist Tim Kress and vocalist Graham Sedam. Their debut album is a mish-mash of weird electronics, rock guitar, synthpop keyboards, and industrial beats that could loosely be categorized as "alternative rock" but in actuality leaps from style to style with little rhyme or reason. Opening track "The Waiting Song" seems to set things up for Delerium-style ethnic fusion with its windy wordless chants and exotic backgrounds, but then "Mah Ching S'ng" goes an entirely different route with moody effects-laden guitars and wavering tenor vocals like someone doing a garage band version of Slowdive or Low, a theme the duo later returns to on the dreamy "Cerebral Sea." At times, Kress and Sedam's work borders on pure industrial; title track "Make You Dirty" is a brutal force march of stomping drum machines and overdriven vocals, and "Bad Luck Days" is gritty blues played through deconstructed equipment, like an outtake of an old Foetus album. Then there's the pretty acoustic stuff, like the stark piano ballad "A Lament Part 2" or the softly strummed "Jamais Vu." It's hard to tell what exactly Diads are going for, if they have an end goal in mind, but whatever they're doing is interesting, if not always pleasant and almost never particularly accessible. Still, even the weaker moments, like the bottom-of-a-barrel vocals on "Halves" or the repetitive drum loop on "Reflections of Rejection," have their own jagged logic, adding their own unique elements to the cacophony. There's a lot going on here, good and bad (and ugly), and it'll be interesting to see what how Diads evolve. Visit Kress and Sedam at www.diads.net. |
