Mr DiagonalJoin the Dots
DATA
Label
Self Released
Format
CD/Cassette/Digital
Release Date
July 26, 2024
Territory
Europe
TRACKLISTING
1. Hedges
2. California
3. Orange !
4. Sleepwalkers
5. The Boy from Outer Space
6. Into the Rustic Meadows of my Mind
7. Brixton Pastoral
8. Can’t Kill the Love
9. David Attenborough
10. Obvious
11. Passports
12. I Feel Terribly Bad
ABOUT THE RELEASE
Join the Dots is a ‘best of bedroom‘ album, selected from home and field recordings 2018-2024. A scrapbook of dream fragments and dispatches from a diagonal front line, it has the magical sheen of songs captured as near as possible to the moment of conception.
The songs are arranged with a primitive palette of piano, traveling guitar, primary school percussion, outmoded loops and obscure synths. In playful pop, fuzzy folk and mutant music hall, the album is designed to accompany Mr Diagonal‘s one-man-show at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe (august 2024).
Of particular note:
Brixton Pastoral, a new-age vision of London is an attempt to recreate the music of a black lady composer from London who appeared in a dream.
California is string-laden crooner pop written during a pause in a Hollywood film-shoot.
Orange! documents one of the recurring chromatic infatuation of which mr D is victim.
David Attenborough (see video) is a very BBC hallucination, somewhere between Lewis Carrol and Kate Bush.
From the topical to the willfully irrelevant, with moments of illumination and flashes of dark humour, Join the Dots is also 12 ways to reinvent the pop song on a low budget. It is a counterpoint to the Mr Diagonal’s (probably final) studio album to be released spring 2025.
Note
Join the Dots is designed to go with my one-man-show at the Edinburgh Fringe (august 2024).
Here is the presentation of the show:
Mr Diagonal, prime minister of pop always cuts a dash and declines to cut corners. A peerless pianist-entertainer in the ‘Noel Coward on mushrooms’ tradition, his witty words and slick licks have earned him exposure on BBC radio 3, the Guardian and Japanese national television. Join him at Edinburgh’s smartest cocktail bar for a magical evening of mutant music-hall on the Brecht-Bowie-Broadway spectrum.
Mr Diagonal is a Fair Trade cottage industry.
The album is not available on any streaming platforms.
You can enjoy three tracks for free on bandcamp.
The complete album is only available through mr Diagonal’s online shop and at his concerts.
COVER
