Parisian 3-piece minimal-rockists La Diagonale Du Fou (The Diagonal of the Insane One) share their name with the winner of the 1985 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, a Swiss movie that uses chess as an allegory for the Cold War and the ideological battle between Communism and Capitalism. As it turns out, the music contained within La Forme Du Vent (The Shape of The Wind) - patient, cagey and tense - could have easily been designed to soundtrack a particularly nerve-racking chess game, or alternatively a Cold War-set spy film; the aptly named “Subterfuge,” for example, has the sneakiest riff this side of the Mission Impossible theme tune and upon hearing it, it’s not difficult to picture a faceless double-agent being pursued through the grey, dystopian backstreets of, say, East Germany in the early 80’s.
Dropping much of instrumental music’s obsession with effects pedals, the band plays with a sound that is refreshingly bare and open, which works well with its curiously unsettling melodies and rhythms. Throughout the record, the power of repetition is used to instill a sense of creeping dread in the listener; the simple, cyclical, insistent riff of “Dunn” is augmented by quieter moments where the disconcerting sound of a man crying out in terror are matched with a sinisterly inaudible vocal sample, while “Yardang”, which begins in a far more upbeat rock fashion to most of the record, can’t resist upping the unease by including a disturbing vocal that sounds uncannily like an undead eight-year-old trapped in R. Kelly’s closet.
Seven-minute closing track, “Hybride”, is a solid distillation of the band’s ideas, nabbing the riff from Shellac’s “My Black Ass,” then settling into the same tense blueprint laid out in the rest of La Forme Du Vent until the guitar finally reaches for the delay pedal as the band get ready for the song’s climax.
While it’s good to hear a band with such a distinct vision (and one not afraid to show the bare bones of their songs), across the length of a full record, the black and white approach to songwriting does leave the listener feeling a little weary and craving something a little more varied, colourfu,l and expansive. The task facing La Diagonale Du Fou now is of balancing their sense of control and restraint with expanding their sonic palette, a difficult and unenviable task, without a doubt, but if they apply the discipline and control so evident throughout La Forme Du Vent, it’s a task that is not necessarily out of their reach.
-Kris Ilic