BENJAMIN DIAMOND

BENJAMIN DIAMOND
OUT OF MYSELF (2005)
192 KBPS

With his first album for !K7, Benjamin Diamond, whose voice once made the worldwide Stardust mega-hit "Music Sounds Better With You" is back! To be labeled a "House musician" is definitely passé nowadays. Instead, we´re treated to a beautiful, heart-warming singer-songwriter-record, in which you can sense Diamond´s love for artists like Prince, Bob Dylan, Ray Davies from The Kinks, Arthur Lee from Love, Paul Weller und New Order in uptempo rock hymns, tracks with fine orchestrations, and melancholic reduced Folk-Pop. Benjamin Diamond has worked on his current album for two years, he composed all the tracks himself and oversaw all studio sessions. A couple of famous friends helped him throughout the process: Curtis co-composed "Lights In The Sky", Cosmo Vitelli arranged "These Emotions", Benjamin Morando (member of Octet) brought colour to the arrangements with his electronic copy-paste additions, and Julien Delfaud, whose artistry has already helped Air, Pet Shop Boys and Phoenix to achieve that crucial trace of feel-good sound to provide majority appeal, performed the mixing. Other noteworthy contributors include the Scottish drummer Marc Kerr (Mellow, Les Rita Mitsouko, Pierre Bondu, etc.) and the bass player Lionel Rault (Flairs, Ben Symphonic Orchestra). The 11 fabulous pearls of pop that Monsieur Diamond has brought to the surface are all so good that it's hard to emphasize any individual track or not to earmark each track as a single. It's all so good, be it the incredibly light-footed, oscillating "Let's Get High", the pleading-fascinating- empathetic "I Wish" or accomplished rockers like the opener, "Mr. Fate", which opens with, "Hey Mr. Fate, take me down your way and show me some places I've never been...".

1. Mr. Fate 3:49
2. Let's Get High 5:08
3. Lights In The Sky 4:27
4. I Wish 4:33
5. Give Me The Grace 5:03
6. Out Of Myself 4:33
7. These Emotion 3:44
8. No One Knows 4:52
9. There Is A Girl 4:03
10. She's Away 4:50
11. Sun Is Shining 7:58

password: NS103