Search - Benjamin Diamond :: Out of Myself

With his first album for !K7 Records, Benjamin Diamond, whose voice graced the worldwide Stardust mega-hit "Music Sounds Better With You", confirms that music in 2005 will in fact sound much better - with him. After the huge success of the Stardust track, Diamond recorded his debut album Strange Attitude for Epic / Sony France which appeared in 2000. Since then, Benjamin Diamond has concentrated on the development of his own label, DiamondTraxx, as well as acting as guest vocalist (Octet, Cosmo Vitelli) and a remixer for various releases on Kompakt. This captivating singer-songwriter record bounds through a variety of genres and pulls influences from Prince, Bob Dylan, Ray Davies from The Kinks, Arthur Lee from Love, Paul Weller and New Order in uptempo rock hymns, tracks with fine orchestrations, and melancholic reduced Folk-Pop. The 11 fabulous pearls of pop that Diamond has brought to the surface are intriguing enough to keep your attention throughout the album. 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...". It is precisely such a place to which an album like Out Of Myself takes us. In fact, no pop record has been so simultaneously brilliant, simple, wily and effortlessly thrown together. Out Of Myself doesn't re-invent the wheel of pop music, but it fits it with a shiny new tire inflated with fantastic songs and a tread that doesn?t wear out, even after ten thousand miles.