King Creosote and Jon Hopkins: Diamond Mine

    I love to go through all the lists of year's best albums, songs, etc. because I find new music I've never heard of before. This qualifies as such, and I was pleasantly surprised to read that Diamond Mine (released end of March 2011 by Domino Records), the combined effort of King Creosote and Jon Hopkins, was picked by Bob Boilen of NPR's "All Songs Considered" blog as his favorite of 2011. I was excited because I had never heard of it, among numerous other albums on his list of 11, but it just sounded like a good combination. Indeed, Scottish indie singer-songwriter, King Creosote, and English producer and ambient/electronica musician Jon Hopkins have together made probably the most relaxing and sometimes evocatively gorgeous album of 2011. The album was also nominated for the Mercury Prize this past year.
    I won't go into a full bio of both contributors as usual, but I will say that King Creosote (actually named Kenny Anderson), along with having an extensive solo catalogue started in 1998 (through Fencer Records here and now Domino here), is also part of a band called The Burns Unit, a Canadian Scottish conglomerate, and put out a solo album Thrawn in February of 2011. Jon Hopkins was originally the keyboard player for Imogen Heap, then went on to produce, collaborate [with artists the likes of Coldplay--Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends], and start an ambient electronica career, with three LPs (more at his website here) and a recent soundtrack to a British movie called Monsters in 2010. Enough, though little, said about that.
    Fun fact, amazingly, Diamond Mine took seven years to finish, and was made one track at a time. Three songs, "The Racket They Made", "Admiral" and "Leslie" were not included in the release, but given a birth in other albums. King Creosote and Jon Hopkins also released a 3-track follow up EP, Honest Words, in September 2011.
    Musically, Diamond Mine is sublime. It contains background noise of sorts, conversation between people at a pub or something, as in the first track "First Watch", seagulls in the next, "John Taylor's Month Away", and other white noise as with ambient sounds that might help someone sleep; for example, a sifting, airy "shhh" sound (don't know how else to describe it than by use of onomatopoeia). Often this is the beginning or end of a track, a transition between songs, but each track expands into King Creosote singing simple folk-inspired melodic material with acoustic guitar, accordion, synth or piano, with light drumming perhaps. It is truly soothing music. A female vocalist appears on maybe a couple tunes as well, I believe she is Sarah Jones, who later appears again on the Honest Words EP.
   Check out Jon Hopkins' albums here as well as King Creosote, Thrawn, here on their respective MySpace sites. Also, listen to "Bubble" on the Domino Records page for Diamond Mine here. The 'Monthly Sample Tracks' has a link to the same song, as I do not currently have a legal link to a different song. Finally, do check a video of "John Taylor's Month Away" on The Guardian's internet site here. Enjoy!