DIAMOND AGE

The Diamond Age
"Beguiling the Hours"
Via Dallas, the Diamond Age’s “reinterpretation” of Gareth Williams and Mary Currie’s 1985 cassette-only release, Flaming Tunes, is an ambitious experiment. Williams was the co-founder of the British group This Heat, and Flaming Tunes was partially inspired by his trips to India in the early 1980s after leaving the group. The result is more melodic and introspective, less challenging than This Heat. The Diamond Age makes it work, adding his own sheen to the songs while keeping the lo-fi blissfully intact. - Austin Chronicle Blog

(A Write up about the Flaming Tunes album that mentions Beguiling the Hours) - The Wire : Adventures in Modern Music

Florene | Diamond Age (Tradewinds)
Florene's sound has changed considerably since their inception, and there were times during their recent NX35 set where I wondered exactly who the band on stage even was. They have definitely lost a lot of their original freeform static passages and replaced them with more structured thump and straightforwardly accessible beats. I don't know when these changes came about exactly, but it was definitely good timing when you consider they are on a label now and look, Florene has got some mouths to feed and Daddy has to get paid, ok? One minute your pedals are sliding off of a rickety card table at Eighth Continent, and the next you're counting blog dollaz with your fellow Chillwave and No Fi Dance peers, sipping fancy drinks at Baby Acapulco's.

Nice surprise to see Diamond Age pop up on this bill, which is the very interesting project of North Texas' M. Leer. Let me see if I can break this down, since it's a little confusing. M. Leer is a member of History At Our Disposal and The Diamond Age is his side-project. At some point in the last few years he did a note-by-note reinterpretation of Flaming Tunes, which was a side-project that Gareth Williams of This Heat was involved in, along with Mary Currie. I have been meaning to shed more light on this for years, since it's one of the most obscure reworks I've ever heard of by a local musician. Both the original and The Diamond Age version are great. This show is worth your time and effort. - Defensive Listening

Diamond Age

Best Experimental/Avant Garde Act

Diamond Age is Dallas resident Matthew Leer's live PA project that harkens back to krautrock, combining grungy guitar with experimental percussive and melodic sampling. After starting the project in 2008 to make a reinterpretation of a release called Flaming Tunes from 1985, Leer ended up with an album's worth of tribute material that was released by UK label Life and Living Records.

Since opening for New Fumes at the Kessler Theater in 2010, Diamond Age has matured in its live incarnation, with both an LP and a seven-inch split with New Fumes on the immediate horizon.

In other words, things are picking up for Leer.

"For the most part," he says, "my policy is 'Say yes.'" - Dallas Observer