Diamond Mine

Described by singer/songwriter Kenny Anderson (aka King Creosote) as the "soundtrack to a romanticized version of a life lived in a Scottish coastal village", Diamond Mine is a seven-track collection of previously unrecorded Anderson originals that have been doused in Brian Eno-inspired soundscapes by ambient producer Jon Hopkins, littered with rural field recordings and studded with occasional flourishes of accordions and strings. Languid, pastoral, and remarkably serene (each track segues into each other like ice melting on a spring pond), Diamond Mine is so unobtrusive that it barely registers. Anderson's lilting croon, which deftly blends traditional, Scottish folk stoicism with modern, indie folk candor, sits front and center, though his delivery is so even-handed that even he blends into the foliage, but on stand-out cuts like "John Taylor's Month Away" and "Running on Fumes," his deft lyricism and gift for guiding a melody through such open terrain helps to keep this lovely collection of ambient folk songs from disappearing into the ether. ~ James Christopher Monger