Diable Amoreux — Within The Circle

Diable Amoreux are a mysterious one man(or woman) project from Tasmania who make difficult to define and at times highly unhinged music. ‘Within The  Circle’ finds the projects create this dense and  spiralling twenty minute track that takes in elements of droning psychedelic guitars, lo-grade synths and organs. Overlapping and wavering orchestration, discordant piano tinkles, seemingly random field recordings, weird and sinister alien chatter, and all manner of weird sonic flotsam and jetsam they fancy throwing in a long the way. And in general the album has quite a dark gothic, yet unhinged feel to it in.

The track/album starts off very oddly with this weird and creepy sounding alien meets cartoon animal vocalising appearing all on it’s own at first, then in time analogue  synth drones appear with wonky and very slightly off- key cheaply keyboard atmospherics. All which brings to mind a more ritual horror and unblanced take on 1980’s Residents weird synth dwell. Then really from the three minute mark onwards the track drifts, swirls and throbs through all manner of elements, samples and textures- it keeps it’s thick and lo-fi feel through-out, though any sonic reason is clearly thrown out the window. At times it does feel a little too random and drifting for it’s own good, but pretty soon you get pulled back into the swirling weirdness of it all wondering what weird element or sound will drift towards you next. Diable Amoreux sound really is very difficult to pin down to one place or form, but I guess if you said a mixture of: messed up and droning industrial textures, wonky ritual ambience, 1980’s The Residents material, ritual and slowed electronic based kraut rock and odd dislocated soundtracks elements- you'd be near!

Clearly ‘Within The  Circle’ wont be for everyone, but if you enjoy general oddness, dense swirling sonics and have a little patience this could well be for you.